City news in 250 words

FURTHER SIGNS of economic gloom emerged as furniture retailing chain ILVA was placed in administration. For the moment, the staff of around 100 people working at ILVA’s Manchester store have retained jobs there while administrators, Kroll, seek a buyer.

MOORS MURDERER, Ian Brady, has been told to “put up or shut up” by Liverpool lawyer David Kirwan who acts for Winnie Johnson, the mother of Keith Bennet, one of Brady’s victims whose body has never been recovered. Brady has said that Keith, who he has admitted to abducting and murdering in 1964, is buried on Saddleworth Moor where he and his co-conspirator, Myra Hindley, buried their other young victims. Manipulative to the last, Brady, now 70, insists that he is willing to return to the moors to aid in the search for Keith’s body but only if West Yorkshire, rather than Greater Manchester Police oversee the search. Mr Kirwan says that Winnie is unable to rest until Keith, who was 12 when he vanished, is finally found.

WIGAN BAND, The Verve, release their first album since 1997 on 18 August. This weekend’s Glastonbury headliners have named the album Forth. The first single from the album, 'Love is Noise', is streamed on their MySpace page.

DEAN BOTTOMLEY, 21, from Stockport was jailed by Judge Khokhar for four months for temporarily blinding a police helicopter pilot, Captain Mark Westwood, who was flying over Heaton Norris on April 16. He pointed a laser pen, purchased on the internet for £30, at the helicopter.