A brief look at the stories making headlines in the Russian-language press

This is a story about a boy, small, with dark black hair and glasses, an orphan with a deep scar from just after his birth, who is clad in a wizard's hat and cloak.

The piercing wail of ambulance sirens, victims' bodies covered in blood, fear in the eyes of those who managed to escape unharmed this time.

A car bomb exploded Tuesday morning at a police station south of Baghdad as dozens of would-be recruits lined up to apply for jobs, and a hospital official said at least 50 people were killed and another 50 injured.

Prime Minister Tony Blair met the Libyan foreign minister Tuesday, the highest-level contact between the two countries in more than 20 years.

An Iranian plane crashed Tuesday near an upscale neighborhood as the Kish Air Fokker-50 prepared to land at Sharjah airport in the United Arab Emirates, killing 43 people aboard, Emirates officials said.

An overwhelming majority of France's National Assembly voted Tuesday to ban religious emblems in state schools, a measure Paris wants to keep tensions between Muslim and Jewish minorities out of public classrooms.

After sporadic gun battles Monday, police regained control of the important port city of St. Marc, 72 kilometers west of Port-au-Prince, as rebels in nearly a dozen other towns pressed ahead Tuesday with a bloody uprising that has killed at least 42 people, prompting fears of a plot to oust embattled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf suspected for at least three years that Pakistan's top nuclear scientist was sharing nuclear technology with other countries, The New York Times reported Tuesday.