In brief: Keira and Gwyneth to star in new King Lear

British actress Keira Knightley, who was nominated for an Oscar in her last big film, Atonement, is to play Cordelia in a $35m Hollywood adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear, it was announced in Cannes yesterday. Gwyneth Paltrow (pictured at Cannes yesterday with designer Valentino, left) is tipped to take the role of Regan, the King's treacherous middle daughter, and Anthony Hopkins will play Lear... Also announced in Cannes, there will be a sequel to last year's St Trinian's movie, in which English actor Rupert Everett will reprise his role as the headmistress... The Dalai Lama is due to arrive in London for a 10-day visit; he will address Parliament and meet the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace, but he is not being received by Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street... Chris Martin's group Coldplay have donated a £3,000 piano to a Gloucestershire primary school that lost its musical instruments in last year's floods; bass guitarist Guy Berryman heard about the school’s plight from a neighbour... Barack Obama has told Republicans to "lay off my wife" after an election advertisement produced in Tennessee targeted Michelle Obama as "unpatriotic" for the remark she made in February: "For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country"... Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbekistan-born billionaire who has a 23 per cent stake in Arsenal football club, has taken advantage of the property slump and paid £48m for Beechwood, a Regency property set in eight acres in Hampstead, which had been on the market for £65m... The record-breaking prices paid for works by Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon last week in New York - which, as reported on The First Post, are believed to have been brought by Roman Abramovich – look set to continue at Christies in London next month: up for auction are Freud's Naked Portrait With Reflection and three self-portrait studies by Bacon executed in Paris in 1975 when he was trying to recover from the suicide of his lover George Dyer...