World Briefs

CULIACAN, Mexico – Police hunted Tuesday for 27 farmworkers who were kidnapped in northwestern Mexico by dozens of heavily armed men with military-style uniforms.

Assailants roused the farmworkers from bed before dawn Monday at a vegetable farm just outside the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan, then drove off with the group, according to state Attorney General Alfredo Higuera.

The victims, all men between 16 and 61 years old, made less than $10 per day.

Higuera said the motive of the mass kidnapping was still being investigated. But local news media reported that a drug gang may have kidnapped the men to make them work growing marijuana. The owner of the vegetable camp has family ties to Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, a suspected leader of the Juarez drug cartel.

RATANPUR, Nepal – The teenage boy revered by many as a reincarnation of Buddha sat silently in the jungle as he blessed his devotees Wednesday with a light tap on the head, which they consider the touch of the divine.

His face was still, his long hair spilled over his white robe, and he never said a word.

The followers of Ram Bahadur Bamjan, 18, believe he has been meditating without food and water since first spotted in the jungles of southern Nepal in 2005, when believers say he spent months without moving, sitting with his eyes closed beneath a tree.

Bamjan re-emerged this week to meet his followers, who have come by the thousands to see him in the jungles of Ratanpur, about 100 miles south of Katmandu.

Bamjan is expected to address his followers on Nov. 18 and then retreat again into the jungle for meditation.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A school partially collapsed in the capital on Wednesday, injuring nine people less than a week after the collapse of another school killed 89.

Portions of the Grace Divine school in Port-au-Prince came crashing down while class was in session. As word of the incident spread, crowds of anxious parents descended along with ambulances and crews from the collapse of the College La Promesse in nearby Petionville.

Two Grace Divine students were hospitalized with severe injuries while seven people outside the school suffered minor injuries, said Edouard Ernseau, a city building inspector.

The cause of the incident was unknown, though Ernseau said recent heavy rains may have weakened the two-story concrete structure.On Saturday, Haitian President Rene Preval said poor construction, including a lack of steel reinforcement, was to blame for the collapse of College La Promesse the day before.