World in brief

Saudi hospital: Idi Amin is in coma

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia - An ailing Idi Amin, whose eight-year presidency of Uganda is remembered for the torture and killing of more than 200,000 people, was in a coma in a Saudi hospital Sunday, medical staff at the hospital said.

Amin, believed to be 80, was in critical condition and on a respirator at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Jiddah, staff members said on condition of anonymity. Amin, who has been living in exile in Saudi Arabia, was admitted to the hospital Friday.

A hospital official told the Associated Press late Sunday that Amin's condition had stabilized.

MIAMI - As Tropical Storm Danny became a tropical depression in the upper Atlantic on Sunday, forecasters were keeping an eye on a weather system near the Caribbean that could strengthen into a tropical storm.

Tropical depression 6, east of the Lesser Antilles, will be named Tropical Storm Erika if it continues to strengthen. A hurricane hunter plane will investigate it today, said Richard Pasch, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

At 8 p.m. eastern, that depression had maximum sustained winds of 35 mph, with the system's center at latitude 13.5 N, longitude 53.6 W, or about 400 miles east of Barbados. It was moving west near 23 mph.

At 5 p.m., Danny was centered at latitude 40.4 N, longitude 38.8 W, or about 415 miles west-northwest of Flores in the Azores. It was moving toward the southeast at 12 mph.

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea would find it hard to secretly build another plutonium production plant, a key step toward making nuclear weapons, South Korean experts said Sunday. Yet they did not rule it out amid suspicions the North may be operating a second facility, possibly buried deep in the mountains.

Visiting Seoul, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Sunday that North Korea must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, and that multilateral talks involving the United States, China, Japan and the two Koreas were essential to a resolution.

FIGHTING IN LIBERIA: Gunmen spread out on rooftops Sunday as government and rebel fighters in shorts and flip-flops traded grenade and machine-gunfire in an all-out battle for the capital Monrovia, President Charles Taylor's only remaining stronghold.

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