Over 35,000 progressive Israelis gathered in the capital Tel Aviv yesterday to mourn peace-seeking prime minister Yitzhak Rabin on the 18th anniversary of his assassination by a religious extremist.

The protest at Rabin Square, where Mr Rabin was killed in 1995 by Jewish extremist Yiga Amir, was held under the slogan "Remembering the murder, struggling for democracy."

Protesters were mostly young people from a wide political spectrum but united in a call for peace with the Palestinians.

They carried portraits of Mr Rabin, who was assassinated after addressing a rally in the same square on November 4 1995, and waved banners with slogans damning racism and intolerance.

"Stop the price tag, defend democracy," read one banner, referring to the so-called "price tag" attacks on Palestinians by extremists opposed to the dismantling of settlements in the occupied West Bank.

"My grandfather was assassinated for peace and you owe this peace to us, to all of us," Mr Rabin's grandson Yonatan Ben Artzi told the crowd, aiming his remarks at pro-settlement Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Assassin Yigal Amir is currently serving a life sentence. He had hoped that shooting the prime minister would derail the Oslo Accords, which had been signed in 1993 by Mr Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organisation representative Mahmoud Abbas.

An official ceremony will be held tomorrow at the Jerusalem cemetery where Mr Rabin is buried.

Irish doctors warn budget cuts are causing brain drain
Country's best medics being forced to leave as pay plummets and working conditions deteriorate

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) warned at the weekend that the country's best doctors are being forced to leave because of deteriorating working conditions and rampant budget cuts.

Consultants have suffered a succession of pay reductions in recent years while pay levels for new consultants have been hacked back by 25 per cent.

The association also warned that the 28 emergency departments across the country could not continue to function due to a continuing lack of resources.

IHCA president Dr Denis Evoy said: "The continued degradation of consultants' working conditions and contracts is changing the medical landscape in Ireland and resulting in a system that cannot cater for its patients."

He told the IHCA annual conference in Maynooth that around 20 per cent of consultant posts in the public health system were either vacant or merely filled on a temporary basis.

"Ireland's health service is being run with a focus on the implementation of declining annual budgets rather than encouraging excellence and making patients the priority," he said.

"An extra 230,000 patients went through the doors of our hospitals last year compared with 2007, a period that has seen cuts of around a quarter in acute services budgets.

"The continued focus on absolute budget cuts rather than a targeted emphasis on strategic savings is destined for abject failure."

And he finished with the stark warning: "Our health system and its front-line workers cannot continue to deliver the services being expected from them while maintaining acceptable levels of patient care."