560 anti-Bush protesters arrested

POLICE in New York have arrested more than 560 protesters after demonstrations outside the Republican convention turned wild.

Demonstrators and an entire midtown Manhattan block were wrapped in orange netting in a bid to control the anti-Republican activists who massed in the streets for marches to the site of the convention.

Outside the New York Public Library, in the streets near the famed Herald Square and at the site of the fallen World Trade Centre, demonstrators pointed themselves toward Madison Square Garden and promised to get their message across that they want President George W. Bush out of office.

By late evening that the planned march had deteriorated into blocks of human gridlock in several parts of the city.

Police said more than 560 people were arrested at various protests around the city - by far the largest number of single-day arrests since demonstrations began last week.

More than 1,000 people in all have been arrested since then.

Near Ground Zero, officers encircled scores of demonstrators with orange netting during a rally before the march.

Detained protesters were loaded onto an off-duty city bus, and police put the count at about 200. The demonstrators insisted they were following police orders.

An Associated Press photographer was detained briefly in the cordon before being released; a photo messenger working with the photographer was arrested and taken into custody.

Near Herald Square, a bus carrying convention delegates was blocked by protesters until police arrived. About 150 people were arrested, police said.

Police also announced the arrest of a 21-year-old Yale student after he entered a restricted area near Vice President Dick Cheney’s booth at the convention on Monday night, coming within 10ft of him and shouting anti-war and anti-Bush statements. Cheney was never in any danger, and no weapon was found on the man, authorities said.

Outside the midtown hotel where Texas delegates are staying, about two dozen protesters, depicting employees of "Hallibacon," grunted through plastic pig snouts and wallowed in stacks of fake $100 bills bearing the images of Bush and Cheney.

The protesters accused Cheney and Halliburton, the company he once led, of profiting from the war in Iraq and its aftermath. They chanted: "We love money. We love war. We love Cheney even more."

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