Egypt's military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi swore in a new cabinet on Wednesday including new Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri and a former police chief to head the interior ministry.

The new line-up of 30 ministers, including the prime minister, retains 12 from the last cabinet. Three ministers appointed by strongman Hosni Mubarak shortly before his overthrow have also survived the shuffle.

An Egyptian court rejected Wednesday a petition to remove the chief judge in ex-president Hosni Mubarak's murder trial, filed by a lawyer claiming the judge favored the defense, state media reported.

"The Cairo appeal court has backed keeping judge Ahmed Refaat in the trial of former president Hosni Mubarak," the official MENA news agency reported, adding the court also fined the lawyer who moved to dismiss him.

Syria's isolation will intensify if Damascus fails to stop killing protesters, the British Foreign Office's minister for the Middle East, Alistair Burt, said on Wednesday.

"These killings must stop," Burt told Agence France Presse in Tripoli, where he reopened the British Council which had been closed during the armed revolt against Moammar Gadhafi's regime.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denied ordering the killing of thousands of protesters and said "only a crazy person" would target his own people, in a U.S. television interview released Wednesday.

Speaking to ABC News, Assad brushed off widening international sanctions and questioned the U.N. death toll of more than 4,000 since the eruption of the unrest in March, saying most victims were government supporters.

Yemen's Prime Minister-designate Mohammed Basindawa said on Wednesday he had finalized his new unity government and would disclose the line-up later in the day.

"The government has been formed and we will announce it formally this evening," Basindawa told Agence France Presse in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

Syria's government on Wednesday welcomed a pledge by Turkey not to let its territory be used as a springboard for any attacks against its neighbors.

"We welcome any Turkish statement aiming to preserve good neighborly relations with Syria," foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Maqdisi told a news conference broadcast live on state television.

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi is due in Baghdad on Thursday to discuss the regional bloc's sanctions against Syria, which Iraq refuses to enforce, a foreign ministry official told Agence France Presse.

"He will hold talks with (foreign minister) Hoshyar Zebari, particularly on Syria," the official said.

Former Israeli President Moshe Katsav entered a minimum security prison on Wednesday to start serving a seven-year sentence for rape, but not before defiantly accusing the state of Israel of "executing" an innocent man.

The day was a bittersweet one in Israeli history, at once shameful because the holder of such a lofty office was going behind bars for such a heinous crime, but at the same time a moment of honor because it proved that in Israel, even a president is equal before the law.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed the need for a post-Assad Syria to protect the rights of minorities, ethnic groups and women as she met in Switzerland on Tuesday with Syrian opposition leaders.

Clinton made the points as she met for the first time with members of the Syrian National Council (SNC), which formed in October amid efforts to oust President Bashar al-Assad who is leading a deadly crackdown on protests.

The United States and France said Tuesday that they were sending their ambassadors back to Syria to champion protesters facing a deadly crackdown, after pulling the envoys out due to security fears.

The two countries said U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford and French Ambassador Eric Chevallier would aim to support the people of Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad's nine-month crackdown is said to have killed more than 4,000 people.