California ‘Faces Budget Crisis’,Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger

The governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has declared a fiscal emergency, amid fears the state could run out of cash by early next year.

He has ordered lawmakers to hold a special session to tackle the $11.2bn (£7.5bn) deficit in California, one of the world’s biggest economies.

Across the US, state tax revenues are down because of the economic slump.

State governors are to meet President-elect Barack Obama later on Tuesday to press the case for federal help.

Governor Schwarzenegger on Monday invoked powers allowing him to declare a fiscal emergency as the new state legislature was sworn in.

“Without immediate action, our state is headed for a fiscal disaster,” Mr Schwarzenegger said, saying that the current $11.2bn shortfall could swell to “a staggering $28bn” over the next 18 months.

“I compare the situation that we are in right now to finding an accident victim on the side of the road that is bleeding to death,” the Republican governor told a news conference in Los Angeles.

“We wouldn’t spend hours debating over which ambulance we should use, or which hospital we should use…No, we would first stop the bleeding, and that’s exactly the same we have to do here.”

He said the state was already drawing up plans to lay off public employees.

Spending cuts

Under the fiscal emergency, lawmakers have 45 days to pass legislation addressing the budget crisis. If they miss the deadline, 15 January, they have to stay in session without considering any other business until agreement is reached.

The previous state legislature failed to reach agreement on a series of spending cuts and tax increases.

However, the elections in November produced little change in the legislature’s political make-up, with the Democrats three seats short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass fiscal measures.

“It’s our job as legislators working with the governor to try to make a major dent in the problem, and we can only do so by cutting expenses and by raising addition revenue,” the Senate president, Democrat Darrell Steinberg, told the BBC.

But Republicans indicated their continued opposition to both Mr Schwarzenegger’s and the Democrats’ proposals.

“This is not blind ideology on the part of Republicans, but our sincere belief that higher taxes will hurt the economy and lead to more uncontrolled spending,” Republican minority leader Mike Villines said.

Governors from across the US are set to meet Mr Obama later on Tuesday in Philadelphia to discuss ways of tackling the budget shortfalls many states are experiencing.

“Without federal help…what we will have to do is just make continuing cuts and/or raise taxes, both of which would have further deleterious effect on our states’ economy. We simply need help,” Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said.

But as he left for the National Governors’ Association meeting in Philadelphia, Mr Schwarzenegger said he would not be asking for federal help until California’s lawmakers addressed the budget crisis.

“The federal government shouldn’t give us a penny until we straighten out our mess and we can live within our means,” he said.

US Carmakers In New Bail-Out,Ford,US Congress

Ford has asked the US Congress for a $9bn (£6bn) bridging loan in case it gets in financial difficulties.

In return, it pledged to reduce its boss’s pay to one dollar a year should it have to use the emergency loan.

General Motors and Chrysler are also presenting their new cost-cutting plans to Congress to try and get $25bn (£17bn) in emergency loans.

The Detroit Three need to make more concessions to secure the much-needed government bail-out.

Ford also said it would sell its five corporate jets as part of its cost-cutting plan.

Other measures could include selling some businesses, such as Swedish carmaker Volvo.

Ford said a $14bn investment was needed in new technologies in the next seven years in order to improve fuel efficiency.

But it is also seeking an emergency bridging loan from the US government in case it got into financial difficulties.

“Ford is asking for access to up to $9bn in bridge financing, but reiterated that it hopes to complete its transformation without accessing the loan should Congress agree to make the funds available,” the carmaker said in a statement ahead of a hearing in Congress.

Ford said it expected to return to profit, or at least break even, by 2011.

But the White House has already expressed scepticism about the plans.

“We are sticking to our guns that the companies have to prove that they are viable before taxpayer dollars should be given to them,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

Avoiding criticism

The company’s heads decided not to use private jets to get to Washington this time to avoid criticism.

GM chief executive Rick Wagoner and Chrysler head Robert Nardelli are expected to arrive to Washington by commercial flights or use other means of transport, while Ford chief executive Alan Mulally was said to be driving a Ford hybrid car from Detroit.

GM has warned it could run out of cash in a matter of weeks and cannot wait until President-elect Barack Obama – who may be more sympathetic to industry pleas – is sworn in in January.

The company was left with $16bn in cash at the end of September after losing $6.9bn in the previous three months.

But Republican critics and some Democrats say the financial crisis is not the only reason why the biggest US carmakers are in trouble.

They say that the Ford, GM and Chrysler’s production was inefficient, and that their labour costs were higher than many of their foreign rivals.

Other critics want to make sure that the Detroit automakers adopt more environmentally friendly policies, including strict fuel efficiency targets, in return for government aid.

The union representing the autoworkers, the UAW, is reportedly considering renegotiating their union contracts.

Two Congresses

Most analysts think that GM is “too big to fail”, while Chrysler is the most vulnerable of the Detroit Three and might be forced into a partnership with stronger rivals.

The three carmakers Tuesday’s presentations precede hearings in Congress later this week.

According to sources familiar with the carmakers’ plans and statements from the companies, GM may consider selling off its Pontiac, Saab and Saturn brands, while Ford could sell off its Volvo luxury brand.

They may also move to consolidate their sprawling dealer networks.

The lame-duck Congress could vote on a bail-out plan, or could delay consideration until the new Congress, with a much bigger Democratic majority, takes office on 6 January.

The Bush administration has offered to accelerate the payment of some $25bn in green investment credits already allocated to the car industry, but this has been opposed by Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Israel Buries Mumbai Attack Dead

Thousands of mourners bid an emotional farewell in Israel to Jewish victims of the Mumbai attacks.

Large crowds gathered for the funerals of a rabbi and his wife, who ran the Chabad House Jewish cultural centre in the Indian city.

Those present included President Shimon Peres, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

Six Jews died at the centre, which was one of several places targeted in the attacks that left 188 people dead.

The victims’ bodies were flown to Tel Aviv on an Israeli air force flight early on Tuesday.

They include four Israelis, one US citizen and one Mexican.

‘Why, why, why?’

At the Chabad headquarters in Kfar Chabad, a village near Tel Aviv, around 10,000 mourners thronged the main square for the funerals of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, 29, and his wife Rivkah, 28.

The two bodies, wrapped in blue and white prayer shawls, were laid out on a podium.

Many mourners had tears streaming down their faces as a rabbi delivered a eulogy asking: “Why, why, why?”

The couple’s two-year-old son, Moshe, survived the attack. He was found crying next to their bodies by his Indian nanny, Sandra Samuel.

She hid in a cupboard when the centre was attacked, but emerged to rescue the child after his parents were killed.

Ms Samuel was given a passport at the last minute and travelled to Israel with the young boy and his grandparents for the funerals.

The Israeli foreign ministry was said to be considering granting Ms Samuel the status of “Righteous Gentile” – one of the highest honours Israel can bestow on non-Jews – which would allow her to remain in Israel for some time.

The Holtzbergs will be buried on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives.

Bitter homecoming

In Mea Sharim, an ultra-Orthodox enclave in Jerusalem, thousands of people mourned Aryeh Leibish Teitelbaum, a 38-year-old US citizen who lived in Jerusalem.

Mr Teitelbaum was in Mumbai last week supervising the preparation of kosher food.

A funeral was also held for Mexican citizen Norma Schwartzblatt-Rabinowitz. The mother-of-two had been planning to move to Israel to live with her daughters, media reports said.

Earlier, a brief ceremony was held at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv as the flag-draped coffins arrived.

Among those on the Israeli air force plane were the parents of Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg, who had attended an emotional ceremony at a Mumbai synagogue on Monday.

“The house they built here in Mumbai will live with them,” Rivkah’s father, Shimon Rosenberg, told about 100 mourners at Keneseth Eliyahoo synagogue.

“They were the mother and father of the Jewish community in Mumbai,” he said. “The House of Chabad will live again.”

The Chabad centre was stormed on Wednesday evening by armed militants who seized hostages and fought a gun battle with Indian commandos.

Indian forces eventually regained control of the centre, killing several gunmen, but six of the hostages were found dead.

‘Saving Money With Sex’, Britons

As the credit crunch bites, Britons may be turning to sex as a cheap way to pass the time, a charity says.

A YouGov survey of 2,000 adults found sex was the most popular free activity, ahead of window shopping and gossiping.

The Scots were most amorous with 43% choosing sex over other pastimes, compared with 35% in South England.

Aids charity the Terrence Higgins Trust, which published the survey, also welcomed recent figures showing an increase in condom sales.

Around one in 10 respondents to the survey, carried in November, said their favourite free activity was window shopping and 6% chose going to a museum as the cheapest way to pass the time.

But the sexes differed on their priorities, with women preferring to gossip with friends while men had sex firmly at the top of their list.

Safe sex

Publishing the results to coincide with World Aids Day, the Terrence Higgins Trust reminded people to practise safe sex and pointed out that a packet of condoms costs a fraction of the cost of a night out.

Lisa Power, head of policy, said: We’re glad that people are finding ways of relieving some of their credit crunch woes, but if there’s one thing it’s worth forking out for, it’s condoms.

“Alternatively you can get them free from family planning and sexual health clinics.

“Rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections are on the up so when you snuggle down with a partner, make sure you do it safely.”

Rebecca Findlay, from the Family Planning Association advised: “If anyone’s having more sex at the moment whatever the reason, do think about your contraception, your condoms and any testing you might need for sexually transmitted infections.

“And you can get all of these for free on the NHS.”

Apple Pushes Anti-Virus,Fresh Threat

Apple has urged Mac owners to use anti-virus software.

In a note posted on its support site in late November, Apple said it wanted to “encourage” people to use anti-virus to stay safe online.

The move is widely seen as a response to the growing trend among cyber criminals of booby-trapping webpages that can catch out Mac users.

Before now Mac users have been largely free of the security problems that plague Microsoft’s Windows.

Fresh threat

The support note recommends that Mac owners install one or more of three anti-virus products.

Advice on the site said: “Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.”

Apple recommended users try McAfee VirusScan, Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 11, or Intego VirusBarrier X5.

The vast majority of malicious programs circulating online are aimed at Microsoft’s Windows, largely because the software is used by so many people.

A handful of viruses have been written that targets Mac’s OSX, but most have been demonstration versions only and few have had any significant impact on Apple users.

One virus, known as AppleScript.THT, could take control of a Mac and grab screenshots or keystrokes.

However, in recent months, hi-tech criminals have signalled a change in tactics away from e-mail borne viruses. Instead, many are infiltrating popular webpages in a bid to infect the machine of any and every visitor.

Many seek to steal valuable information such as login names, passwords or game accounts instead of trying to install themselves on a machine.

US ‘Warned India’:Mumbai

The US warned India about a possible threat at least a month before last week’s Mumbai attacks, US media have quoted unnamed officials as saying.

One official said India had been told of an apparent plot to launch an attack from the sea, the AP agency reports.

The reports came as India’s navy chief said there had been “systemic failures” in the country’s security and intelligence services.

At least 188 people are now known to have died in the coordinated attacks.

The allegations are likely to add to the growing public anger that the attacks were not prevented.

India’s home minister and the chief and deputy chief ministers of Maharashtra state have all resigned amid criticism of the government’s handling of the crisis.

Two warnings

An Indian official appeared to confirm the US media reports that there was a known threat to at least some of the locations targeted, including the Taj Mahal Palace hotel.

Mumbai police chief Hassan Gafoor told a news conference on Tuesday that they had “had an alert that hotels like Taj could be exposed to such danger”.

ABC News quoted Indian officials as saying that after receiving the US warning, they also intercepted a satellite phone message on 18 November warning of a seaborne attack on Mumbai.

The city had been on high alert but security measures at the attacked hotels had recently been relaxed, the network reported.

ABC also reported that the Indian authorities had seized a mobile phone SIM card belonging to the attackers, which they said had led to a “treasure trove” of contacts and information.

Indian officials have repeatedly said there is evidence that the militants behind the attacks had Pakistani links.

Mr Gafoor said that the only captured militant, named as Azam Amir Qasab, was “certainly from Pakistan”.

Islamabad has offered India a joint investigation into the attacks but has denied any involvement and warned against attempts to inflame tensions in the region.

Best Crime Of The Century:11 of 25

THE PATTY HEARST KIDNAPPING, 1974

Her family is a storied one, albeit the kind of stories that involved yellow journalism, character assassination, political manipulation and gossip mongering. Who knew that Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, the inspiration for Orson Well’s biting film Citizen Kane, would herself become the central character of one of the biggest news stories of the turbulent 1970s? It was shocking enough on Feb. 4, 1974 when the 19-year-old heiress was kidnapped by a ratty band of Bay Area urban revolutionaries, the Symbionese National Liberation Army, who demanded as ransom that her father feed all the hungry in California. But then, just over two months later, she was seen on camera assisting them in a bank robbery. Soon enough, the kidnap victim had an arrest warrant of her own. It would be nearly a year and a half before she was captured. Despite the defense’s strategy of brainwashing, her two-month trial in 1976 led to a seven-year sentence. It was later commuted by then-President Jimmy Carter and she served only 22 months. Bill Clinton granted her a full pardon on the day he left office. Nowadays, Hearst is a socialite, not a guerrilla, though she appears in a number of director John Waters’ subversive, sly and crude comedies.

New Picture Of The Early Earth,Updated Picture

The first 700 million years of Earth’s 4.5-billion-year existence are known as the Hadean period, after Hades, or, to shed the ancient Greek name, Hell.

That name seemed to fit with the common perception that the young Earth was a hot, dry, desolate landscape interspersed with seas of magma and inhospitable for life. Even if some organism had somehow popped into existence, the old story went, surely it would soon have been extinguished in the firestorm of one of the giant meteorites that slammed into the Earth when the young solar system was still crowded with debris.

Scars on the surface of the Moon record a hail of impacts during what is called the Late Heavy Bombardment. The Earth would have received an even more intense bombardment, and the common thinking until recently was that life could not have emerged on Earth until the bombardment eased about 3.85 billion years ago.

Norman H. Sleep, a professor of geophysics at Stanford, recalled that in 1986 he submitted a paper that calculated the probability of life surviving one of the giant, early impacts. It was summarily rejected because a reviewer said that obviously nothing could have lived then.

That is no longer thought to be true.

“We thought we knew something we didn’t,” said T. Mark Harrison, a professor of geochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. In hindsight the evidence was just not there. And new evidence has suggested a new view of the early Earth.

Over the last decade, the mineralogical analysis of small hardy crystals known as zircons embedded in old Australian rocks has painted a picture of the Hadean period “completely inconsistent with this myth we made up,” Dr. Harrison said.

Geologists now almost universally agree that by 4.2 billion years ago, the Earth was a pretty placid place, with both land and oceans. Instead of hellishly hot, it may have frozen over. Because the young Sun put out 30 percent less energy than it does today, temperatures on Earth might have been cold enough for parts of the surface to have been covered by expanses of ice.

In a new analysis, published in the current issue of the journal Nature, the zircons, the only bits of earth older than 4 billion years definitively known to have survived, provide another tantalizing hint about the Hadean period. Dr. Harrison and two U.C.L.A. colleagues, Michelle Hopkins, a graduate student, and Craig Manning, a professor of geology and geochemistry, report that minerals trapped inside zircons offer evidence that the processes of plate tectonics — the forces that push around the planet’s outer crust, forming and shaping the continents and oceans — had already begun.

“The picture that’s emerging is a watery world with normal rock recycling processes,” said Stephen J. Mojzsis, a professor of geology at the University of Colorado who was not involved with the U.C.L.A. research. “And that’s a comforting thought for the origin of life.”

With the old views of the Hadean period, the origin of life on Earth posed a huge problem. The earliest, and still debated, evidence for life lies within rocks in Greenland dated at 3.83 billion years. The rocks show a shift in the relative amounts of carbon-12, the usual form of carbon, and carbon-13, a less common but stable form of carbon. That shift was attributed to the presence of microorganisms, which would tend to concentrate the lighter carbon.

What was surprising, perhaps unbelievable, in the old views was that life started immediately at the end of the Late Heavy Bombardment, seemingly showing up the instant that it was possible.

In the new view of the early Earth, life could have emerged hundreds of millions of years earlier. “This means the door is open for a long, slow chemical evolution,” Dr. Mojzsis said. “The stage was set for life probably 4.4 billion years ago, but I don’t know if the actors were present.”

The revolution in early Earth studies comes largely from rocks in western Australia. The rocks are three billion years old, but they contain zircons that are older. Zircons, made primarily of the elements zirconium, oxygen and silicon, are extremely hard and durable and can survive conditions that erode, melt or otherwise transform the rock around them.

The zircons also contain enough uranium that they can be precisely dated by the decay of that uranium. In 2001, two groups, one led by Dr. Harrison and the other by John W. Valley of the University of Wisconsin,reported that the Australian zircons formed during the Hadean period  as long ago as 4.4 billion years and were later embedded in the younger, 3-billion-year-old rocks.

The relative amounts of oxygen isotopes in the zircons points to the presence of water. Minerals like clays and carbonates that form in water prefer to incorporate oxygen-18 into their crystal structure, and the zircons contain relatively high levels of oxygen-18 compared to the more common oxygen-16.

In the U.C.L.A. study, the researchers studied tiny mineral grains trapped inside the zircons between 4 billion and 4.2 billion years ago as they were being formed. From the mix of elements they identified in the minerals, the scientists could calculate the depth and temperature at which the zircons crystallized — 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit at a depth of 15 miles — and the calculations showed a flow of heat coming out of that part of the Earth of 75 milliwatts per square meter.

That is too cool. The Earth during the Hadean period may not have been hellish, but it was hotter than today, and the heat flow should have been about three times the amount that was calculated.

That meant the zircons formed in a cool part of the crust. On Earth today, one such place is a subduction zone, where an ocean plate slides under a continental plate and is pushed into the mantle. The waterlogged ocean plate then melts at relatively low temperatures. The U.C.L.A. scientists believe that the high water content and the low temperatures inferred from the zircons thus point to the existence of such a subduction zone. And a subduction zone could not have existed unless some type of plate tectonics was already at work.

“It’s not a smoking gun,” Dr. Harrison said. “But we’re left without any other plausible explanation.”

Many geologists believe that the crust was too thin or the interior too hot for plate tectonics to occur back then. Neither Venus nor Mars shows obvious signs of plate tectonics, past or present, suggesting that only a limited range of planetary temperature and structure give rise to the phenomenon.

Dr. Sleep of Stanford said of the U.C.L.A. findings: “It may well be a subduction zone. It looks like a subduction zone.”

Dr. Valley has also concluded the Earth became cool and watery early in its history, but remains skeptical about the inferences about plate tectonics.

“To me, it’s not ruled out by anything,” he said, “but it’s far from proven with the certainty that Mark states it.” Dr. Valley said it was possible that some of the elements measured by the U.C.L.A. researchers might have infiltrated the zircons through tiny cracks.

If plate tectonics were overturning the Earth’s crust during the Hadean period, it would have shaped not just the land forms, but also the air and the climate.

In the 1980s, a climate model proposed a thick atmosphere of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, raising the average surface temperature to 185 degrees Fahrenheit, not quite boiling.

But if plate tectonics had already begun, much of the carbon dioxide would be trapped in carbonate rocks and then pushed into Earth’s interior. In 2001, a climate model by Dr. Sleep and Kevin Zahnle of the NASA Ames Research Center found that the late Hadean Earth then would have been somewhat chilly.

Neither near-boiling temperatures nor the chilly conditions make life impossible, but these factors could change ideas about how and when life started.

Earth, like the other planets, coalesced more than 4.5 billion years ago. It is commonly hypothesized that almost immediately, a Mars-size object about 4,000 miles wide hit it — a true cataclysm that vaporized much of the object and Earth. Some of the debris ejected into orbit became the Moon. The molten Earth cooled quickly, probably within a few million years, and nothing that large ever struck again.

Dr. Sleep said his calculations suggested that during the 700 million years of the Hadean period about 15 objects 100 miles wide or wider hit the Earth. About four of the objects were wider than 200 miles, and those collisions would have been violent enough to boil off most of the oceans. (By contrast, the more recent object that hit the Earth 65 million years ago and helped kill off the dinosaurs was about 6 miles wide.)

But in numerical simulations that will be presented this month at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, Dr. Mojzsis and Oleg Abramov, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado, show that the Late Heavy Bombardment impacts were not quite as lethal as had been thought.

“Things are hurt really bad,” Dr. Mojzsis said. But the computer calculations indicated that even rocks up to 300 miles wide would not kill everything, that pockets would exist where organisms that thrive in high-temperature environments like hydrothermal vents could survive.

Genetic studies of current life support that notion, pointing to an organism that lived in a high-temperature environment as the last common ancestor. That does not mean that life started there, but that is almost certainly where survivors of the giant impacts would have huddled.

For the question of whether life existed during the Hadean period, researchers would like to find carbon and then perform an isotope analysis similar to what was done with the Greenland rocks. Despite analyzing 160,000 grain-size zircons, the U.C.L.A. researchers have not found carbon. (Another group has reported,the presence of small diamonds but that has not been confirmed.)

The search for more substantial amounts of Hadean rock also continues. Three months ago, researchers reported that a swath of bedrock in northern Quebec might be 4.28 billion years old, which would provide a mother lode of material to study. That bedrock includes intriguing structures known as banded iron formations, which are believed to occur only with the help of living organisms. But other scientists have questioned the age of the rocks, suggesting that they may really be 3.8 billion years old.

Dr. Mojzsis said “Hadean” might not be a misleading name for the earliest eon of Earth’s history, after all. The ancient Greek concept of hell was not one of fire and brimstone. “In Greek mythology, Hades was a dark, cold, mysterious place,” he said. “It seems to me the Hadean is living up to that moniker.”

Facebook,To Extend Its Reach Across The Web,Updated

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Facebook, the Internet’s largest social network, wants to let you take your friends with you as you travel the Web. But having been burned by privacy concerns in the last year, it plans to keep close tabs on those outings.

Facebook Connect, as the company’s new feature is called, allows its members to log onto other Web sites using their Facebook identification and see their friends’ activities on those sites. Like Beacon, the controversial advertising program that Facebook introduced and then withdrew last year after it raised a hullabaloo over privacy, Connect also gives members the opportunity to broadcast their actions on those sites to their friends on Facebook.

In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni and the online video hub Hulu.

Facebook Connect is representative of some surprising new thinking in Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their users, the Internet giants have all announced plans to share at least some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying information again and again on different sites.

Supporters of this idea say such programs will help with the emergence of a new “social Web,” because chatter among friends will infiltrate even sites that have been entirely unsociable thus far.

For example, a person might alert his Facebook friends to the fact that he is watching a video on CBS.com and invite them to join him there to watch together and discuss the video as it plays.

“Everyone is looking for ways to make their Web sites more social,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer. “They can build their own social capabilities, but what will be more useful for them is building on top of a social system that people are already wedded to.”

MySpace, Yahoo and Google  have all announced similar programs this year, using common standards that will allow other Web sites to reduce the work needed to embrace each identity system. Facebook, which is using its own data-sharing technology, is slightly ahead of its rivals.

The effort is particularly important for Facebook, which once represented the seemingly boundless promise of the Web 2.0 boom. It desperately wants to make certain the other Web companies do not supplant it and become the most popular hub for online socializing.

Facebook, with 120 million members worldwide, has also been under extra pressure to get its revenue to match its media hype and membership growth. Responding to reports that Facebook was looking for more capital after raising $235 million last year, Ms. Sandberg said she would not rule that out. “There is a lot of interest in investing in us and we are always open to the right financing at the right price,” she said.

The most immediate challenge confronting Facebook is to create an enduring stream of advertising revenue.

A survey last week from the research firm IDC suggested that social networks were a miserable place for advertisers: just 57 percent of all users of social networks clicked on an ad in the last year, and only 11 percent of those clicks led to a purchase, IDC said. And it turns out that marketers are not so interested in advertising on pages filled with personal trivia and relationship updates.

“What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?” Ted McConnell, a general manager at Procter & Gamble, asked last month at an industry conference.

This is where Facebook Connect could help. No money changes hands between Facebook and the sites using Connect, and executives are wary of discussing how it could bring in revenue. But there are some obvious possibilities.

Facebook has detailed information about its users: their real identities, what they like and dislike and whom they associate with. With a member’s permission, it could use that data to help other Web sites deliver more personalized ads. Similarly, those sites could tell Facebook what its users are doing elsewhere, helping to make its own ads more targeted.

“It’s becoming very clear that advertisers don’t know how to advertise on Facebook,” said Charlene Li, an independent consultant and social media analyst. “But if you take a group of Facebook friends and put them on a travel site where they are spending more time and generating more ad dollars in a focused area like travel, that is an opportunity ripe for getting revenues back and sharing it.”

Facebook executives argue that Connect will naturally increase traffic on the site and increase ad revenue as a result. Ms. Sandberg said the company had no plans to explore any other advertising potential with Connect.

That reluctance is partly born of experience. Last year, Facebook was lambasted for its Beacon advertising program, which some thought failed to properly warn users that their actions on other sites were being shared on Facebook. Some users’ purchases on e-commerce sites, for example, were broadcast to their friends, in some cases spoiling gift plans.

As a result, Facebook executives have been exceedingly circumspect with Connect, introducing it slowly and pitching it as a privacy tool. They argue that it allows users to set their privacy settings once on Facebook and then apply them on other sites.

Facebook has also taken other precautions. According to staff members at the political advocacy group MoveOn.org, which led the charge against Beacon, Facebook executives gave them an early briefing this summer about Connect.

For now, Facebook is also carefully authorizing each partner in the Connect program and reviewing how it will use data on Facebook members and discuss the feature publicly. It plans to allow Web sites to register themselves for Connect, without having to seek approval, in the next few weeks.

“They so desperately want to avoid another Beacon,” said an executive with a company that plans to use Connect but has been waiting for a green light from Facebook for months. This person did not want to be quoted by name criticizing Facebook.

When asked about the potential promises and pitfalls of Connect, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said: “We want to make the experience as lightweight and easy to use as possible. But we also have to make sure that people understand what’s going on and have control over it.”

Executives at the social network MySpace, which has similar goals, are more outspoken in discussing their identification system.

“There are so many important issues to get right,” said Jason Oberfest, a vice president at MySpace. “Consumers need to understand where their data is going and how it’s being used.”

“Then, if we can get the privacy issues right, if it’s totally clear to the user what is happening, there is potential for advertising,” Mr. Oberfest added. “But certainly not without a lot of testing and consideration.”

Arrogant, Abusive And Disruptive,a Doctor,Health Steps

It was the middle of the night, and Laura Silverthorn, a nurse at a hospital in Washington, knew her patient was in danger.

The boy had a shunt in his brain to drain fluid, but he was vomiting and had an extreme headache, two signs that the shunt was blocked and fluid was building up. When she paged the on-call resident, who was asleep in the hospital, he told her not to worry.

After a second page, Ms. Silverthorn said, “he became arrogant and said, ‘You don’t know what to look for — you’re not a doctor.’ ”

He ignored her third page, and after another harrowing hour she called the attending physician at home. The child was rushed into surgery.

“He could have died or had serious brain injury,” Ms. Silverthorn said, “but I was treated like a pest for calling in the middle of the night.”

Her experience is borne out by surveys of hospital staff members, who blame badly behaved doctors for low morale, stress and high turnover. (Ms. Silverthorn said she had been brought to tears so many times that she was trying to start her own business and leave nursing.)

Recent studies suggest that such behavior contributes to medical mistakes, preventable complications and even death.

“It is the health care equivalent of road rage,” said Dr. Peter B. Angood, chief patient safety officer at the Joint Commission, the nation’s leading independent hospital accreditation agency.

A survey of health care workers at 102 nonprofit  hospitals from 2004 to 2007 found that 67 percent of respondents said they thought there was a link between disruptive behavior and medical mistakes, and 18 percent said they knew of a mistake that occurred because of an obnoxious doctor. (The author was Dr. Alan Rosenstein, medical director for the West Coast region of VHA Inc., an alliance of nonprofit hospitals.)

Another survey by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a nonprofit organization, found that 40 percent of hospital staff members reported having been so intimidated by a doctor that they did not share their concerns about orders for medication that appeared to be incorrect. As a result, 7 percent said they contributed to a medication error.

There are signs, however, that such abusive behavior is less likely to be tolerated. Physicians and nurses say they have seen less of it in the past 5 or 10 years, though it is still a major problem, and the Joint Commission is requiring hospitals to have a written code of conduct and a process for enforcing it.

Still, every nurse has a story about obnoxious doctors. A few say they have ducked scalpels thrown across the operating room by angry surgeons. More frequently, though, they are belittled, insulted or yelled at — often in front of patients and other staff members — and made to feel like the bottom of the food chain. A third of the nurses in Dr. Rosenstein’s study were aware of a nurse who had left a hospital because of a disruptive physician.

“The job is tough enough without having to prepare yourself psychologically for a call that you know could very well become abusive,” said Diana J. Mason, editor in chief of The American Journal of Nursing.

Laura Sweet, deputy chief of enforcement at the Medical Board of California, described the case of a resident at a University of California hospital who noticed a problem with a fetal monitoring strip on a woman in labor, but didn’t call anyone.

“He was afraid to contact the attending physician, who was notorious for yelling and ridiculing the residents,” Ms. Sweet said. The baby died.

Of course, most doctors do not spew insults or intimidate nurses. “Most people are trying to do the best job they can under a high-pressure situation,” said Dr. Joseph M. Heyman, chairman of the trustees of the American Medical Association.

Dr. William A. Norcross, director of a program at the University of California, San Diego, that offers anger management for physicians, agreed. But he added, “About 3 to 4 percent of doctors are disruptive, but that’s a big number, and they really gum up the works.” Experts say the leading offenders are specialists in high-pressure fields like neurosurgery, orthopedics and cardiology.

In one instance witnessed by Dr. Angood of the Joint Commission, a nurse called a surgeon to come and verify his next surgical patient and to mark the spot where the operation would be done. The harried surgeon yelled at the nurse to get the patient ready herself. When he showed up late to the operating room, he did not realize the surgery site was mismarked and operated on the wrong part.

“The surgeon then berated the entire team for their error and continued to denigrate them to others, when the error was the surgeon’s because he failed to cooperate in the process,” Dr. Angood said.

A hostile environment erodes cooperation and a sense of commitment to high-quality care, Dr. Angood said, and that increases the risk of medical errors.

“When the wrong surgery is done on patients,” he said, “often there is somebody in that operating room who knew the event was going to occur who did not feel empowered enough to speak up about it.”

Dr. Norcross blamed “the brutal training surgeons get, the long hours, being belittled and ‘pimped’ ” — a term for being bombarded with questions to the point of looking stupid. “That whole structure teaches a disruptive behavior,” he said.

Dr. Norcross and other experts said staff members’ understandable reluctance to challenge a physician, especially a popular surgeon who attracts patients to the hospital, created an atmosphere of tolerance and indifference. So did a tendency among doctors to form “old boy” networks and protect one another from criticism.

But things have begun to change. Today, good communication and leadership are two of the six core skills taught in medical schools and residency programs. More nurses are challenging doctors on their inappropriate behavior, and fewer hospitals are tolerating disruptive doctors. “Today they’re getting rid of that doctor or sending them to anger management,” said Dr. Thomas R. Russell, executive director of the American College of Surgeons.

Hospitals have also developed more formal and consistent ways of addressing disruptive behavior, Dr. Rosenstein said. They are also trying to improve relations and mutual respect between doctors and nurses.

At John Muir Health, a nonprofit group of two hospitals in Walnut Creek and Concord, Calif., a committee of physicians, nurses and other staff members was formed to focus on collaboration and communication between disciplines.

“When complaints are submitted, we try to be proactive early to let them know there is not going to be any tolerance for that,” said Dr. Roy Kaplan, John Muir’s medical director for quality.

Some physicians worry that hospital administrators will abuse the stricter codes of conduct by using them to get rid of doctors who speak out against hospital policies. And the Joint Commission rulings have spawned a cottage industry of anger management centers and law firms defending hospitals or physicians.

Professionals like Ms. Silverthorn, the nurse in Washington, said the change was overdue.

“We go to school, we have a very important job, but there’s no respect,” she said.

She recalled a particularly humiliating moment on Dec. 25, 2006. Working in the pediatric emergency room, she called a drug by its generic name rather than its brand name.

“I was quickly shouted out of the trauma room and humiliated in front of everyone,” she said. But while “everyone knew the doctor was actually the one who didn’t know what he was doing,” she continued, no one said a word.