Quinn signs sex-abuse education mandate

Teachers across Illinois will begin teaching their students on how they can protect themselves against sexual abuse and assaults. (WGN - Chicago)

After watching Gov. Pat Quinn sign into law a new mandate for child sex-abuse education in Illinois schools, the woman behind that measure will be hitting the road to push the cause nationwide.

On Thursday, Quinn signed "Erin's Law" at the Children's Advocacy Center of North and Northwest Cook County in Hoffman Estates. That's where, 14 years ago, a then-13-year-old Erin Merryn first spoke up about sexual abuse she had endured.

"You do not know how joyous this is for me, how hard I've worked for this," Merryn said of the law, which extends state-mandated sexual abuse and assault awareness and prevention efforts to elementary and middle schools. Previously, only high schools were required to teach it.

Although it's an unfunded mandate, Merryn, 27, said the law lets school districts decide how to implement it. Districts can choose either to use and pay for existing research-based curriculum, or train teachers on how to educate their students.

"Schools don't just need to hire someone to come in (from) outside the school," Merryn said. "You've got the staff right there that you already pay that are capable of teaching this, with the proper training."

Rep. Fred Crespo, D-Hoffman Estates, said "Erin's Law" is the first unfunded school mandate in two years. Crespo, vice-chair for the Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, said unfunded mandates are always a concern and an issue.

"We're very convinced we just need to make this happen," Crespo said. "We have other unfunded mandates. Somehow the school districts do manage a way to do those things."

With children as young as preschoolers, the education will be tailored for age appropriateness, Merryn said. For some, it could be as simple as teaching them to whom they could turn if they feel uncomfortable.

Lawmakers at the event praised Merryn for having the courage to quit her job as a youth and family counselor in 2010 to take on a national awareness campaign. Merryn became devoted to the cause after being sexually abused as a child between the ages 6 to 8, and again from age 11 to 13.

Merryn's campaign also focuses on support for child advocacy centers, ending stigma about sex abuse and reminding adults to be aware and to act.

At the bill signing, Quinn invited Merryn to a national governor's meeting next month. The Schaumburg native and author is working to get similar laws passed in all 50 states. It took Merryn three years to get the Illinois state law passed. She had tears in her eyes as she accepted Quinn's invitation, saying: "You will save me many, many years."

saho@tribune.com

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The New Old Age Blog: Grief Over New Depression Diagnosis

When the American Psychiatric Association unveils a proposed new version of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of psychiatric diagnoses, it expects controversy. Illnesses get added or deleted, acquire new definitions or lists of symptoms. Everyone from advocacy groups to insurance companies to litigators — all have an interest in what’s defined as mental illness — pays close attention. Invariably, complaints ensue.

“We asked for commentary,” said David Kupfer, the University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist who has spent six years as chairman of the task force that is updating the handbook. He sounded unruffled. “We asked for it and we got it. This was not going to be done in a dark room somewhere.”

But the D.S.M. 5, to be published in May, has generated an unusual amount of heat. Two changes, in particular, could have considerable impact on older people and their families.

First, the new volume revises some of the criteria for major depressive disorder. The D.S.M. IV (among other changes, the new manual swaps Roman numerals for Arabic ones) set out a list of symptoms that over a two-week period would trigger a diagnosis of major depression: either feelings of sadness or emptiness, or a loss of interest or pleasure in most daily activities, plus sleep disturbances, weight loss, fatigue, distraction or other problems, to the extent that they impair someone’s functioning.

Traditionally, depression has been underdiagnosed in older adults. When people’s health suffers and they lose friends and loved ones, the sentiment went, why wouldn’t they be depressed? A few decades back, Dr. Kupfer said, “what was striking to me was the lack of anyone getting a depression diagnosis, because that was ‘normal aging.’” We don’t find depression in old age normal any longer.

But critics of the D.S.M. 5 now argue that depression may become overdiagnosed, because this version removes the so-called “bereavement exclusion.” That was a paragraph that cautioned against diagnosing depression in someone for at least two months after loss of a loved one, unless that patient had severe symptoms like suicidal thoughts.

Without that exception, you could be diagnosed with this disorder if you are feeling empty, listless or distracted, a month after your parent or spouse dies.

“D.S.M. 5 is medicalizing the expected and probably necessary process of mourning that people go through,” said Allen Frances, a professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the D.S.M. IV task force and has denounced several of the changes in the new edition. “Most people get better with time and natural healing and resilience.”

If they are diagnosed with major depression before that can happen, he fears, they will be given antidepressants they may not need. “It gives the drug companies the right to peddle pills for grief,” he said.

An advisory committee to the Association for Death Education and Counseling also argued that bereaved people “will receive antidepressant medication because it is cheaper and ‘easier’ to medicate than to be involved therapeutically,” and noted that antidepressants, like all medications, have side effects.

“I can’t help but see this as a broad overreach by the APA,” Eric Widera, a geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote on the GeriPal blog. “Grief is not a disorder and should be considered normal even if it is accompanied by some of the same symptoms seen in depression.”

But Dr. Kupfer said the panel worried that with the exclusion, too many cases of depression could be overlooked and go untreated. “If these things go on and get worse over time and begin to impair someone’s day to day function, we don’t want to use the excuse, ‘It’s bereavement — they’ll get over it,’” he said.

The new entry for major depressive disorder will include a note — the wording isn’t final — pointing out that while grief may be “understandable or appropriate” after a loss, professionals should also consider the possibility of a major depressive episode. Making that distinction, Dr. Kupfer said, will require “good solid clinical judgment.”

Initial field trials testing the reliability of D.S.M. 5 diagnoses, recently published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, don’t bolster confidence, however. An editorial remarked that “the end results are mixed, with both positive and disappointing findings.” Major depressive disorder, for instance, showed “questionable reliability.”

In an upcoming post, I’ll talk more about how patients might respond to the D.S.M. 5, and to a new diagnosis that might also affect a lot of older people — mild neurocognitive disorder.

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 24, 2013

An earlier version of this post misspelled the surname of a professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the D.S.M. IV task force. He is Allen Frances, not Francis.

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United to cut 600 front-office jobs

United Continental Holdings Inc. will cut about 600 front-office jobs through voluntary and involuntary cuts, the company said Thursday as it announced disappointing financial losses for 2012.

The world's largest airline did not detail where cutbacks will take place, but Chicago is likely to be most affected considering the corporate headquarters and network operations center are in downtown Chicago and that Chicago O'Hare airport is one of the airline's largest hubs.

The job cuts were announced Thursday morning during a conference call about the airline's profits. United officials said they were disappointed in the airline company's 2012 performance and pledged to improve in 2013, both in financial performance and the airline's operational reliability.

They said they intend to win back corporate customers who defected to other airlines last year when the airline experienced periods of poor on-time performance and high cancellations rates. The operational problems, which have abated since the fall, stemmed from numerous computer-related glitches after the airline merged United and Continental customer reservation systems onto a common platform last March.

United CEO Jeff Smisek called 2012 "the toughest year of our merger integration," but that the airline was "back on track."

"Despite our integration pains, we accomplished an enormous amount and we are now in a position to go forward as a single carrier and compete effectively on a global scale," he said. "Our operations are running smoothly. Our many product improvements are rolling out and our customer satisfaction scores are climbing."

Smisek also said the airline maintains its confidence in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which was grounded in the U.S. and elsewhere after numerous glitches, including a serious fire hazard with its lithium ion batteries.

He said he had confidence in the airplane and "Boeing's ability to fix the issues just as they have done on every other new aircraft model they've produced."

Smisek said he has no indication on when the Federal Aviation Administration will allow the planes to fly again, including Dreamliner on a route between Chicago and Houston. Boeing is also based in Chicago.

United, the only U.S. carrier currently operating 787 planes, has six Dreamliners. Smisek said the company expects to take delivery of two additional 787s in the second half of this year.

EARNINGS

United Continental said it lost $723 million in 2012, or $2.18 per share. Excluding special charges of $1.3 billion, mostly related to merging United and Continental, the company earned $589 million, or $1.59 per share, meeting Wall Street analyst expectations.

In the fourth quarter, United lost $620 million, or $1.87 per share, compared with a loss of $138 million, or 42 cents per share, in the same quarter a year earlier.

It took charges of $430 million in the quarter, with much of that tied to paying off pension debt and costs for systems integration and training and severance. Excluding items, United said the 2012 quarterly loss was 58 cents a share, compared with a 61 cent loss expected by analysts on average, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue fell 2.5 percent to $8.7 billion.

Superstorm Sandy, which barreled through the U.S. Northeast in late October, reduced revenue by about $140 million and profit by about $85 million in the fourth quarter. The storm caused shutdowns at major New York area airports, including New Jersey's Newark Liberty International where United operates a major hub.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Customer service will be a larger focus for the airline, Smisek said during the conference call.

That focus includes a comprehensive customer service training program for airport agents, contact center agents and flight attendants, he said. It will also roll out a program called "It's Our Job," a companywide approach to customer service "that clearly explains our customer service standards and expectation for front line coworkers," Smisek said.

It will also include an expanded recognition program to reward employees for outstanding service, collecting more customer-satisfaction data and roll out of a new set of tools for airport agents, he said.

JOB CUTS

As far as the job cuts, they will not affect unionized workers, such as pilots, flight attendants and airport ground workers, a spokeswoman said. The airline in December reduced the officer ranks by several positions, representing 7 percent of managers with titles of vice president and higher. It will reduce management and administrative staff by 6 percent through voluntary and involuntary cuts and not filling empty positions.

Those cuts will begin in early February, Smisek said in a letter to employees Thursday morning.

gkarp@tribune.com

 

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TSX near 18-month high, buoyed by Agrium, RIM

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada’s main stock index hit a near 18-month high on Thursday, as shares of Agrium Inc rose after the fertilizer maker raised its profit forecast and as U.S. manufacturing and labor data drove optimism on the economic outlook of Canada’s largest trade partner.

Shares of Research In Motion Ltd also boosted the market, rising more than 3 percent after a report that China’s Lenovo Group said a bid for the BlackBerry maker was among the options available to boost its mobile business.

Canadian stocks were also supported by data that showed Chinese manufacturing growth hit a two-year high this month. Gains were kept in check by falling gold stocks, which slipped with the price of the precious metal.

In the United States, a private survey showed that factory activity advanced at the fastest pace in nearly two years this month, while the government reported the number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits hit a five-year low last week.

“There’s a growing feeling that we’re heading in the right direction. The U.S. economy is showing a little bit of life, and that’s spilling over into Canada,” said Fred Ketchen, director of equity trading at ScotiaMcLeod.

The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> was up 41.36 points, or 0.32 percent, at 12,835.41, after touching 12,863.47, its highest since August 2, 2011.</.gsptse>

Seven of the 10 main sectors on the index were trading higher.

The materials sector, which includes mining stocks, slipped 0.1 percent as declines in gold stocks offset a rise in shares of fertilizer giants Agrium and Potash Corp .

Agrium rose 3.5 percent to C$ 114.55 after it raised its fourth-quarter earnings forecast as strong grain and oilseed prices spurred demand for its fertilizer products over the fall season.

Ketchen, noting the activity in Agrium shares over the past few days, said, “People are taking another look at it, thinking maybe it’s time to get back in.”

Potash was up 2.1 percent at C$ 42.77.

The energy sector gained 0.6 percent and was the biggest contributor to the market’s gains as U.S. crude oil prices rose.

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd rose 1.5 percent to C$ 30.62.

Financials, the index’s weightiest sector, added 0.4 percent. Toronto Dominion Bank

was up 0.4 percent at C$ 83.51, and the Royal Bank of Canada rose 0.3 percent to C$ 61.62.

(Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson and Leslie Adler)

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Pentagon chief to remove military ban on women in combat

Former Navy SEAL Dick Couch comments on U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's decision to lift the military's ban on women serving in combat.

WASHINGTON—

The U.S. military will formally end its ban on women serving in front-line combat roles, officials said on Wednesday, in a move that could open thousands of fighting jobs to female service members.

The move knocks down another societal barrier, after the Pentagon scrapped its “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” ban in 2011 on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military.

The decision by outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is expected to be formally announced on Thursday and comes after 11 years of non-stop war that has seen dozens of women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They have represented around 2 percent of the casualties of those unpopular, costly wars, and some 12 percent of those deployed for the war effort, in which there were often no clearly defined front lines, and where deadly guerrilla tactics have included roadside bombs that kill and maim indiscriminately.

“This is an historic step for equality and for recognizing the role women have, and will continue to play, in the defense of our nation,” said Democratic Senator Patty Murray from Washington, the outgoing head of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

The move was also welcomed by Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who said it reflected the “reality of 21st century military operations.” In addition, the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a suit in November seeking to force the Pentagon to end the ban, applauded the move.

The decision overturns a 1994 policy that prevents women from serving in small front-line combat units.

‘HISTORIC MOMENT'

Following the expected announcement on Thursday, the military services will have until May 15 to submit a plan for implementing the decision. That plan, which has to be approved by the defense secretary and notified to Congress, will guide how quickly the new combat jobs open up and whether the services will seek an exemption to keep some closed.

The policy would be implemented by 2016.

Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine captain and head of the Service Women's Action Network, said her decision to leave the Marine Corps in 2004 owed partly to the combat exclusion policy.

“I know countless women whose careers have been stunted by combat exclusion in all the branches,” said Bhagwati, who called the decision an “historic moment.”

“I didn't' expect it to come so soon,” she said.

For Panetta, the decision adds to his legacy as a secretary who oversaw the end of “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” and now started the process to end discrimination against women. Otherwise, his tenure has been dominated by budget wrangling, the end of the Iraq war and the troop reduction in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama has nominated former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel as Panetta's successor.

The decision comes nearly a year after the Pentagon unveiled a policy that opened 14,000 new jobs to women but still prohibited them from serving in infantry, armor and special operations units whose main function was to engage in front-line combat.

Asked last year why women who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan conducting security details and house-to-house searches were still being formally barred from combat positions, Pentagon officials said the services wanted to see how they performed in the new positions before opening up further.

Nearly 300,000 women have been deployed in the U.S forces in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over the past 11 years, or about 12 percent of the total. Women have counted some 84 hostile casualties in those wars.

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Obama inauguration TV viewership down by 17.2 million from 2009

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Some 20.6 million Americans watched President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony and related events on television, according to ratings data on Wednesday. That’s down sharply from his first inauguration in 2009.

TV ratings company Nielsen said 18 U.S. television networks and cable channels carried live coverage over about six hours of Monday’s swearing-in ceremony, speech and parade in Washington.

Monday’s TV audience was a drop of 17.2 million from 2009, when 37.8 million Americans – the highest number since Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration – watched Obama formally take office as the first black president in U.S. history.

The Nielsen figures did not measure viewers who watched Monday’s daylong ceremonies online via live streaming on many TV channels, nor overseas audiences.

Second-term inaugurations of U.S. presidents have traditionally drawn smaller numbers of viewers than those for first terms.

Reagan’s 1981 inauguration drew the biggest television audience of the past 44 years, attracting some 41.8 million U.S. viewers, according to Nielsen.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bill Trott)

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Well: Long Term Effects on Life Expectancy From Smoking

It is often said that smoking takes years off your life, and now a new study shows just how many: Longtime smokers can expect to lose about 10 years of life expectancy.

But amid those grim findings was some good news for former smokers. Those who quit before they turn 35 can gain most if not all of that decade back, and even those who wait until middle age to kick the habit can add about five years back to their life expectancies.

“There’s the old saw that everyone knows smoking is bad for you,” said Dr. Tim McAfee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But this paints a much more dramatic picture of the horror of smoking. These are real people that are getting 10 years of life expectancy hacked off — and that’s just on average.”

The findings were part of research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, that looked at government data on more than 200,000 Americans who were followed starting in 1997. Similar studies that were done in the 1980s and the decades prior had allowed scientists to predict the impact of smoking on mortality. But since then many population trends have changed, and it was unclear whether smokers today fared differently from smokers decades ago.

Since the 1960s, the prevalence of smoking over all has declined, falling from about 40 percent to 20 percent. Today more than half of people that ever smoked have quit, allowing researchers to compare the effects of stopping at various ages.

Modern cigarettes contain less tar and medical advances have cut the rates of death from vascular disease drastically. But have smokers benefited from these advances?

Women in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s had lower rates of mortality from smoking than men. But it was largely unknown whether this was a biological difference or merely a matter of different habits: earlier generations of women smoked fewer cigarettes and tended to take up smoking at a later age than men.

Now that smoking habits among women today are similar to those of men, would mortality rates be the same as well?

“There was a big gap in our knowledge,” said Dr. McAfee, an author of the study and the director of the C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Public Health.

The new research showed that in fact women are no more protected from the consequences of smoking than men. The female smokers in the study represented the first generation of American women that generally began smoking early in life and continued the habit for decades, and the impact on life span was clear. The risk of death from smoking for these women was 50 percent higher than the risk reported for women in similar studies carried out in the 1980s.

“This sort of puts the nail in the coffin around the idea that women might somehow be different or that they suffer fewer effects of smoking,” Dr. McAfee said.

It also showed that differences between smokers and the population in general are becoming more and more stark. Over the last 20 years, advances in medicine and public health have improved life expectancy for the general public, but smokers have not benefited in the same way.

“If anything, this is accentuating the difference between being a smoker and a nonsmoker,” Dr. McAfee said.

The researchers had information about the participants’ smoking histories and other details about their health and backgrounds, including diet, alcohol consumption, education levels and weight and body fat. Using records from the National Death Index, they calculated their mortality rates over time.

People who had smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes were not classified as smokers. Those who had smoked at least 100 cigarettes but had not had one within five years of the time the data was collected were classified as former smokers.

Not surprisingly, the study showed that the earlier a person quit smoking, the greater the impact. People who quit between 25 and 34 years of age gained about 10 years of life compared to those who continued to smoke. But there were benefits at many ages. People who quit between 35 and 44 gained about nine years, and those who stopped between 45 and 59 gained about four to six years of life expectancy.

From a public health perspective, those numbers are striking, particularly when juxtaposed with preventive measures like blood pressure screenings, colorectal screenings and mammography, the effects of which on life expectancy are more often viewed in terms of days or months, Dr. McAfee said.

“These things are very important, but the size of the benefit pales in comparison to what you can get from stopping smoking,” he said. “The notion that you could add 10 years to your life by something as straightforward as quitting smoking is just mind boggling.”

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Chicago hotel occupancy climbs back

Visitors filled downtown hotel rooms in 2012 at a rate not seen since before the recession.

Hotel occupancy rose to 75.2 percent, up from 72.2 percent in 2011, according to an announcement by Choose Chicago, the city's tourism and convention agency, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The 2012 level matched a previous record set in 2007.

Hotel operators also saw increases in two other key measures, though those remain slightly below their peaks. The average daily room rate rose to $187.27, from $177.33 in 2011. And the revenue per available room, a key indicator of profitability, increased by 10 percent to $140.76.

The data comes from STR Global, with analysis by Choose Chicago.

Among the factors affecting performance, officials said, was a more aggressive marketing strategy. They cited Choose Chicago's regional advertising campaigns. An eight-week winter and 12-week summer campaign, at a combined cost of $2 million, targeted Cincinnati, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and St. Louis.

The improved performance, along with a hike in the city's hotel tax rate, brought the city's hotel tax revenue to more than $100 million for the first time. This was an increase of $25 million, or 33 percent, from 2011.
 
The city share of the hotel tax increased by 1 percentage point last year, bringing the total Chicago hotel tax rate to 16.39 percent. The city's share of that is 4.5 percentage points.

 kbergen@tribune.com | Twitter@kathy_bergen

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Three reasons to root for RIM

I have expressed skepticism that RIM (RIMM) will really be able to pull off an epic comeback and reestablish BlackBerry as a legitimate contender with the iPhone and the barrage of Android smartphones that get released every year. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want it to happen. Quite the contrary, I’m hoping that RIM proves all us nasty skeptics wrong, defies the odds and produces a big hit with the BlackBerry Z10 that’s set to be released over the next couple of months.

[More from BGR: As data gets cheaper for Verizon to transmit, customers are paying more]

So why am I rooting for RIM even if I’m dubious of its prospects for success? Three specific reasons come to mind.

[More from BGR: Success with BlackBerry ‘diehards’ isn’t the key to BlackBerry 10′s future]

First, I think the mobile market will benefit from having a third option besides iOS and Android, and it doesn’t look as though Microsoft (MSFT) is up to the task just yet. Sure, Windows Phone devices have started to make some progress in Europe, but in North America the platform’s market share has remained largely flat despite the large piles of money Microsoft is spending to promote it. This gives RIM an opportunity to elbow itself into the discussion in the United States and Canada as a legitimate contender for consumers who have moved on to iOS or Android but who still miss their BlackBerry phones of old.

Second, I think CEO Thorsten Heins has some interesting and ambitious ideas for where he’d like to take the company in the future. Sure, there are times when I can’t tell whether he really has a plan to boldly remake BlackBerry or is just insane, but when I hear him talk about integrating BlackBerry 10 into cars, I am intrigued. Heins is also easy to root for when you consider how well he’s played the thoroughly lousy hand he was dealt when he took over as RIM CEO last year — the fact that he’s generated significant support from both carriers and app developers at a time when it looked like the company could collapse at any moment has been impressive.

And finally, I’ve come to really love RIM’s crazy fans over the past year, even if they don’t like me all that much. Every time I’ve written a post critical of RIM or BlackBerry, they were there to immediately pounce on me, declare me a hopeless “iSheep” and tell me how stupid I’ll feel when RIM emerges triumphant and stomps all over the iPhone and Android. I’m not sure such dedication to a product is emotionally healthy, but it is something I have to respect and I hope that BlackBerry 10 will, at the very least, make RIM’s loyal and long-suffering fans happy.

So now’s the time, RIM. Next week will be your chance to make me look like a fool for ever doubting the power of BlackBerry 10. And for all the reasons I listed above, I hope you take it.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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“Zero Dark Thirty” heads to Europe: will torture controversy follow?

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Best Picture Oscar nominee “Zero Dark Thirty” rolls out in several Western European countries starting Wednesday, absent – at least for now – the firestorm of criticism that has accompanied its U.S. release.

The movie has been a lightning rod for detractors in the U.S. over its perceived endorsement of torture, an allegation that director Kathryn Bigelow and Sony executives have repeatedly denied.

“Overall, I believe Europeans are far less ambiguous than Americans when it comes to the use of torture,” Bruce Nash of box-office tracking service TheNumbers told TheWrap.

“To the extent that the film is perceived as pro-torture — whether it is or not, and I don’t believe it is — if that somehow became how the film is defined, that would hurt it at the box office,” Nash said. “But I don’t think that’s the case.”

Bigelow, screenwriter Marc Boal and several others involved with the picture have been in Europe for the past two weeks to promote the film. Boal told the New York Times that interviewers in France seemed to regard the torture issue as belonging to the Americans, and in fact appreciated the film’s head-on approach.

Indeed, the film begins its foreign run with a lot of momentum. The dark thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden was No. 1 in its first week of wide release on January 11 and has finished a strong second for the past two weeks.

Of course, the publicity surrounding the torture issue hasn’t hurt it at the box office in the U.S. The domestic haul for “Zero Dark Thirty” to this point is nearly $ 57 million, ahead of pre-release projections and likely heading for $ 100 million.

The film’s five Oscar nominations and the critical acclaim it has received have helped, too, but even Sony has acknowledged the flood of news stories raised the film’s profile.

Universal will be handling the film’s release in most countries in Western Europe, after buying rights to those territories from Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures, which financed it and cut distribution deals territory by territory.

It will open in France and Switzerland on Wednesday and in the U.K and Finland on Friday. Its debut in Germany will be on January 31, and Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Norway and South Africa will follow in February. Regional distributors will handle the film’s February releases in Russia and Latin America, and the Annapurna is still considering a China run.

“Zero Dark Thirty” is one of three Best Picture Oscar nominees that is currently hitting overseas theaters with a distributor different than the one that handled its U.S.release.

Sony, which along with the Weinstein Company co-financed “Django Unchained,” is overseeing the foreign release of Quentin Tarantino’s slave saga. It opened last weekend and took in $ 48 million from 54 overseas markets.

DreamWorks’ “Lincoln,” distributed by Disney in North America, debuted in Spain and Mexico this past weekend via Fox.

With an explanatory preamble approved by director Steven Spielberg added, “Lincoln” opened to $ 2.3 million on 344 screens in Spain and to $ 729,000 on 259 screens in Mexico. “Lincoln” goes much wider next weekend, when it opens in 19 markets including Brazil, Germany, Italy, Russia and the U.K..

As for the torture controversy that accompanied “Zero Dark Thirty’s” U.S. release, it doesn’t seem to have caused the slightest ripple.

Indeed, the fact that torture has been used in the war against terror has been seen as a reality in Europe for some time.

In December, Europe’s highest court, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, concluded that techniques used routinely by the Bush-era CIA in connection with its extraordinary-renditions program constituted torture.

If torture does not become an issue, The Numbers’ Nash said it should do solid business. He pointed out that other U.S. films about the war on terror have done pretty well overseas. In 2006, “United 93″ made $ 31 million domestically and nearly $ 45 million overseas. Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” did $ 70 million in the U.S. and went to make $ 92 million abroad that same year.

Bigelow’s last movie, “The Hurt Locker,’” was about a U.S. bomb squad in the Iraq war, and it nearly doubled its $ 17 million domestic take, with $ 32 million from abroad in 2009. The bulk of that foreign run came after its surprise victory over “Avatar” for the Best Picture Oscar, however.

This weekend’s U.K. and France debuts will be telling, but Universal quietly opened “Zero Dark Thirty” on just 250 screens in Spain on January 4. With a minimum of criticism, politicians’ ire or public furor, the movie has taken in nearly $ 4 million over three weekends.

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