World highlights

• Libya's Supreme Court will rule next month on an appeal by six foreign medics sentenced to death for infecting Libyan children with HIV in a trial that has affected Tripoli's ties with the West. "The case is reserved for a verdict on July 11," judge Fathi Dhan, told the court yesterday. The five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were convicted in December of deliberately infecting 426 children with HIV in a highly politicised trial that have slowed attempts by Opec-member Libya to end its long international isolation.

• Thousands of US troops swept into the northern and southern beltlands of Baghdad yesterday in simultaneous operations against militants that the military said was the start of a summer of hard fighting in Iraq. The operations signal a new phase in Washington's Iraq strategy. The military is going on the offensive to crush al Qaeda and other militants, who have defied a major crackdown to secure Baghdad by hiding out in the lush green farmlands and towns bordering the Iraqi capital.

• President George W. Bush yesterday vetoed legislation to expand federally funded embryonic stem cell research, triggering an uphill battle in the Democratic-led Congress to override him. Two-thirds majority votes would be needed in the Senate and House of Representatives to overcome Bush's opposition and make the bill law, and backers conceded they are short of support.

• New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said yesterday he was not a candidate for the 2008 US presidential election despite having changed his political affiliation to independent from Republican. A day after announcing the shift, Bloomberg said - as he has before - that he intended to serve as mayor until the end of his term in 2009.