Weekend round-up in 500 words

TWO THOUSAND people walked through Manchester on Saturday to protest about the Israeli attack on Gaza. The Israeli attack follows a continued indiscriminate rocket assault on southern Israel. The Manchester protest was the largest outside London and passed off peacefully. In London hundreds of protesters had thrown shoes at the gates of Downing Street, mimicking the Iraqi journalist who hurled his footware at President George Bush last year. In Manchester shoes remained on feet.

A SIEGE which started on Friday lunchtime in Hindley, Wigan, ended overnight. Police marksmen had surrounded the house after it was thought an armed man was holding another hostage. A 2am police went into the house and arrested two men, nobody was injured. As yet there are no reports of whether any weapons were recovered.

LS LOWRY, the late Greater Manchester artist, is proving popular again. Two oil paintings by the famous curmudgeon are for sale in Gloucestershire for almost half a million pounds. A 1953 work depicting a busy street scene is being sold for £325,000, an industrial landscape has a price of £150,000. Both are amongst 12 large and small works collectively valued at £1m. Up to fifty dealers are at the arts fair in Westonbirt.

THE MAIN RAIL LINE between Manchester and London is still severely disrupted following a plane crash and is not expected to re-open until Monday. Three people were killed when a Piper Cherokee light aircraft hit power lines above the West Coast Mainline in Staffordshire and came down between two sections of track on Friday. The casualties were pilot Alan Matthews, 59, of Walsall, West Midlands, and Nick and Emma O'Brien, a married couple with two children.

THE MANAGER of Manchester City, Mark Hughes, has described his team’s FA Cup performance yesterday as ‘indefensible’. This was apt as Manchester City almost played without defence in their 0-3 capitulation to Championship strugglers Nottingham Forest at the City of Manchester Stadium. To further compound Mark Hughes’ problems Shaun Wright-Phillips is out for four weeks following the match. Hughes claims he still has the support of the boardroom. New signing Wayne Bridge from Chelsea was paraded on the pitch before kick-off.

WIGAN, BOLTON and Macclesfield also crashed out of the FA Cup in a bad day for the region’s football. Today Manchester United play Southampton away hoping to avoid a similar cup upset to that suffered by City. If they succeed they will be the only Greater Manchester team into the fourth round of the competition.

MANCHESTER INTEREST abounds in Channel Four’s new edition of Celebrity Big Brother. The main city focus will be on Old Trafford-born Terry Christian, the outspoken DJ and writer. Christian lost a claim of unfair dismissal against the BBC last year after his contract wasn’t renewed. The Quays-based actress Tina Malone, who plays Mimi Maguire in TV’s Shameless, the comedy drama set on the fictional Chatsworth estate in Manchester, is also a contestant. Other ‘stars’ include Michael Jackson's sister La Toya Jackson and TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson.