When Hollywood’s most glamorous couple announced their separation over the weekend, they appealed to the media for ”kindness and sensitivity” in the coming months. The request seemed hopelessly optimistic. He was, after all, voted sexiest man alive and she starred in Friends, the United States’s best-loved sitcom of the past decade.

Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday night won a landslide victory in the Palestinian presidential election and was on Monday expected to outline his vision of a post-Yasser Arafat future.The militant Islamic group Hamas, which boycotted the elections along with another militant group, Islamic Jihad, said on Monday it could work with Abbas, but questioned his real margin of victory and complained of electoral irregularities.

Residents of a swanky New York street are in uproar after finding themselves unwitting exhibits at the recently rebuilt Museum of Modern Art (Moma). In a case of life imitating art, the renovated museum, with a clear glass floor-to-ceiling wall looking out on to West 54th Street, gives its 10 000 daily visitors a bird’s-eye view into the upmarket apartments across the road.

The Mugrabi family, who have paid dearly for the Palestinian uprising, reflected the divisions in Palestinian society over Sunday’s presidential election. Mohammed, the only one of five sons neither dead nor in jail, voted: his father, Yusuf, refused to take part.

Israel is to create an international genetic database to identify victims of last month’s tsunami. The proposal was accepted by all nations involved in the disaster. Many victims cannot be identified without using DNA fingerprinting to match their genetic material with that of their families. Israeli forensic scientists are considered experts in this technique because of the country’s experience with suicide bombers.

Cricket provided the spectacle and the fund-raising vehicle as Ricky Ponting’s World XI beat an Asian XI by 112 runs on Monday in a benefit match that generated Aus,6-million (R66,3-million) for the tsunami relief fund. Ponting stroked 115, New Zealand all-rounder Chris Cairns smashed 69 off 47 balls and West Indian Brian Lara hit 52.