FRANKFURT: The European Central Bank held its benchmark rate unchanged at 4 percent on Thursday, despite surging inflation and a stronger euro, as it considers how ripples from the U.S. subprime mortgage morass will affect the economy.

Analysts expect the ECB, which oversees monetary policy the 13 countries that use the euro, to wait until the second quarter of next year before it moves again, in no rush to follow rate cuts in the United States and Canada. Britain also cut its key rate by a quarter of a point to 5.5 percent on Thursday, worried about a slowing economy.

Markets will be waiting for hints about the ECBs path from President Jean-Claude Trichet later in the day.

“Inflation has increased over the recent months and economic data are not so weak that the ECB is really concerned about the economy in Europe,” said Commerzbank economist Matthias Rubisch. “If you look in the future, probably weaker economic data will lead to the ECB lowering rates.”

Higher prices for oil and food have led inflation in the euro zone Д a bloc of 317 million people that accounts for more than 15 percent of the worlds gross domestic product Д higher in recent months. It surged to 3 percent last month, according to a first estimate, its highest point since the currency was introduced into general circulation in 2002 and well above the ECBs guideline of just under 2 percent.

Nearly all the analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires believe the ECB will keep its rate unchanged until the second quarter of next year, with some predicting gradual decreases to as low as 3.5 percent by the end of the year.

“Money market rates are rising again, but with the ECB Council unconvinced about either a dramatic slowing of growth prospects or an impairment of credit supply, it wont feel compelled to alter its policy course,” Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a note to investors.

Most of the uncertainty in the markets traces back to the subprime mortgage debacle that originated in the United States and snaked worldwide because the bad loans had been repackaged and sold on to other banks. The worries about the U.S. housing market and the U.S. rate cuts have hurt the dollar, which has been setting new lows against the euro and trading around 26-year lows against the pound.

Thousands of nurses walked off their jobs Wednesday morning at the start of what is expected to be a 48-hour walkout at 15 Northern California hospitals, all but two of which are in the Bay Area.

Hospital officials said replacement workers were in place and services will not be interrupted.

Officials from the California Nurses Association said as many as 5,000 nurses are expected to participate, making it the largest nursing strike in California in a decade.

Union leaders said the action, which is directed at hospitals affiliated with the Sutter Health network, is centered on unresolved contract issues affecting staffing, health and retiree benefits. The union has been negotiating with many of the hospitals since spring.

But the hospitals see it differently.

“This is a union pushing union priorities. They’re out to get a master contract,” said Jonnie Banks, spokeswoman for Eden Medical Center, referring to the union’s desire to get a contract that covers all Sutter hospitals in the region.

Linda Bowers, a registered nurse who was on the picket lines Wednesday morning at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center’s Berkeley campus, said she was most concerned about potential cuts to retiree health benefit.

“I saved for my retirement,” said Bowers, who will celebrate her 34th anniversary with the hospital next month. “My finances aren’t the issue, but retiree health care is.”

Hospital officials said many registered nurses crossed the picket lines Wednesday.

Kevin McCormack, spokesman for St. Luke’s Hospital and California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, said about 26 percent of California Pacific’s nurses crossed the picket lines. “We brought in enough nurses to cover every single shift if no nurses crossed over, so we’re actually in better shape,” he said.

Hospital officials at Alta Bates Summit, the largest hospital involved in the strike, said nearly half the nurses crossed the picket lines, while at Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, the number was about 18 percent.

Jan Rodolfo, an oncology nurse at Alta Bates Summit in Oakland who is also on the union’s bargaining team, disputed those numbers.

“There are always going to be some nurses who cross the picket lines, but it’s very few,” Rodolfo said.

Both sides agreed that Wednesday’s strike activities went smoothly without major incidents. Hospital officials said some patients had questions, but were generally not affected.

While the labor action is scheduled to end by 7 a.m. Friday, striking nurses at two hospitals may not return immediately to work.

Officials at Alta Bates Summit said the hospital signed a five-day contract with a company providing replacement nurses, so its nurses are expected to be locked out until Monday. At Eden Medical Center, striking nurses won’t be allowed to return until Saturday.

At Alta Bates Summit, nurses vowed they would return Friday.

“They’ve told us we’re locked out for five days, but we told them it’s a two-day strike, and we’ll be here at 7 a.m. (Friday), ready to return to work if we’re scheduled,” said Christine McCargar, a union negotiator who has been a nurse since 1969.

No new negotiations are scheduled. Several hospital officials said they are willing to return to the table but the union is digging in its heels.

Nurses also walked out at two hospitals outside the Bay Area. Those hospitals, which are operated by Fremont-Rideout Health Group, are Fremont Medical Center in Yuba City and Rideout Memorial Hospital in Marysville.

E-mail Victoria Colliver at vcolliver@sfchronicle.com.

The leader of a breakaway polygamous sect of Mormons was yesterday convicted of abetting in the rape of a 14-year-old girl who was forcibly married off to a cousin.

Warren Jeffs, 51, is the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and revered by his followers as God’s prophet.

He was convicted by an eight-member jury in St George, Utah, on two charges of being an accomplice to the rape of the girl, who was one of the followers of his church. She was married despite her objections to a cousin who was 19 years old.

In testimony, the forced bride, now 21, told the court she had wept in despair as Jeffs presided over her “celestial marriage” at a Nevada hotel. She had told Jeffs and her mother that she did not want to be married.

She said she had been raised in such isolation that she knew nothing of sex, and had to be coaxed to kiss her husband. A month after they were married, her husband told her it was her duty to have sex with him.

“My entire body was shaking. I was so scared,” she testified. “He just laid me on the bed and had sex.”

Immediately afterward, she retreated into the bathroom and took two bottles of pain reliever. The woman’s husband, Allan Steed, has not been charged with any crime.

Yesterday’s verdict brought a rare spotlight on the continued practice of polygamy by a community of 10,000 which appeared to live under Jeffs’s complete control. The splinter group has been disavowed by the mainstream Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

Testimony revealed a society that operated like a cult, where Jeffs wielded all power, and routinely assigned young girls to marriages against their will, or ripped families asunder when he believed the unions should come to an end.

In the communities governed by the church, in border areas of Utah, Colorado and Arizona, the word of Jeffs was law. “Everyone should now know that no one is above the law, religion is not an excuse for abuse and every victim has a right to be heard,” Utah’s attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, who had supported Jeffs’s prosecution, told the court.

Lawyers for Jeffs claim that he is a victim of religious persecution.

Yesterday’s verdict arrived after more than 17 hours of deliberation, and only after one juror was replaced by an alternate for reasons that were not disclosed.

It brings to an end Jeffs’s domination of the church he has led since 2002, dictating even the most minor details in the lives of his followers.

The charismatic church leader is also charged in Arizona with being an accomplice to incest. He was captured at a routine traffic stop in Las Vegas after more than 18 months on the run.

But Richard Holm, a former member of the sect, said he did not believe the conviction would have much impact on the sect or polygamy in Utah.

“He will be regarded as a martyr. There is a power base and system in place to carry on,” Holm said.

But Holm was relieved with the guilty verdict. “I think he [Jeffs] saw an opportunity to take glory, credit and power for himself … In doing so, he abused and hurt a lot of people,” he said.