Argentina’s 11-Year War With Hedge Funds

Since it defaulted on its debt more than a decade ago, Argentina’s economy has engaged in a Cold War of sorts with international investors. Buenos Aires stuck bondholders with a take-it-or-leave-it exchange offer of 30¢ on the dollar, the harshest sovereign debt haircut in at least half a century.

Companies delisted. Foreign investors bolted. Argentina, meanwhile, was demoted from the league of “emerging markets” to that of less-developed “frontier” economies, alongside Bangladesh and Kenya—among which the South American nation has been struggling to remain. To inflict injury on these insults, late President Néstor Kirchner and the wife who succeeded him, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, have nationalized $ 24 billion in private pensions and assumed control of the country’s top energy company, which was majority owned by Spain’s Repsol (REP:SM). The government also instituted bizarre regulations, such as one that requires car importers to match their imports with exports of equal value.

However, a hardy group of “holdout” creditors, including U.S. institutional investors and a handful of elderly Argentinian pensioners, refused to participate in the nation’s 2005 and 2010 debt restructurings, wagering that they could band together to get better terms out of Buenos Aires. Last month’s scorched-earth volley: A court in Ghana, of all places, detained an Argentine frigate at the request of a hedge fund that says Buenos Aires owes it $ 300 million on old debt. Argentina just escalated the affair to the United Nations. All this at a time when the defiant Kirchner has rekindled nationalism over the Falkland Islands, over which Argentina went to war with the U.K. more than 30 years ago.

Now, the battle for the economic soul of the nation of 41 million—amid a raging international debate about the limits of creditor rights (Greece, anyone?)—is taking place in, of all places, New York. In courtrooms there, the aforementioned aggrieved hedgie, Paul Singer, is spearheading a campaign to wrest better payment on the debt he owns. Last week, U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa ordered Argentina to deposit $ 1.33 billion to pay the Singer-led holdouts. On Wednesday, an appeals court gave Argentina more time to fight the ruling.

The nervously awaited outcome could either sink Argentina’s economy or make it ever more hostile to the global capital markets. Or neither. Or both. Probably some titration therein. Fitch Ratings was sufficiently spooked by the standoff to say an Argentine default is now “probable.” It’s not just a matter of Argentina facing off with its creditors: Bondholders who agreed to the haircut don’t necessarily want to see the renegades made whole, especially if it threatens their own payments. Accordingly, Bush v Gore super lawyer David Boise has entered the crowded fray. It gets better: Theodore Olson, Boies’s Supreme Court opponent in Election 2000, could well end up arguing opposite Boies again. (At least they agree on something.) The boom in Argentina-related billable hours is an international incident unto itself. According to law firm White & Case, since Argentina’s default, jilted bondholders have filed at least 180 civil lawsuits against the country in the Empire State.

Confused? So is everyone else. This explainer, by Ohio State international financial law professor Steven Davidoff, is a must-read.

How, you ask, can Argentina possibly still wield any financial suasion abroad? Well, 1) Look at it on a map. 2) Try its steak. The geographically blessed nation has undeniable breadbasket appeal, with its abundance of soybeans, livestock, and minerals in a China-dominated world that wants ever more of those things.

Witness how very well Brazil, Colombia, and Peru have done during Argentina’s pariah decade. For all its faults, Argentina remains the continent’s No.2 economy. (Columbia is disputing that.) So even as its Merval stock index has been whittled to near-irrelevance by the delistings and falling international interest, it has more than quintupled since the nation’s financial meltdown.

“My view is that Argentina will stand more defiant than ever but at the same time, it will do whatever it can to make sure to keep servicing their debt and show the world community that they are the victims and that the ‘vulture funds’ are the bad guys,” says Santiago Maggi, managing partner with Latmark Asset Management in Miami.

“Without accessing capital markets, we have been punctually paying since 2005 with our own resources and we are going to continue to do so because we are going to honor our obligations as corresponds to a country that has recovered its self-esteem,” Kirchner said in a speech earlier this week.

Can she hang on long enough to be kept to her word? On top of legal and frigate-forfeiture problems, Argentina is mired in a deep recession marked by growing labor unrest, high inflation, and declining infrastructure.

Which, depending on Kirchner’s read, could call for more sticking it to los capitalistas.

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Rapper PSY wants Tom Cruise to go ‘Gangnam Style’

BANGKOK (AP) — The South Korean rapper behind YouTube’s most-viewed video ever has set what might be a “Mission: Impossible” for himself.

Asked which celebrity he would like to see go “Gangnam Style,” the singer PSY told The Associated Press: “Tom Cruise!”

Surrounded by screaming fans, he then chuckled at the idea of the American movie star doing his now famous horse-riding dance.

PSY’s comments Wednesday in Bangkok were his first public remarks since his viral smash video — with 838 million views — surpassed Justin Bieber‘s “Baby,” which until Saturday held the record with 803 million views.

“It’s amazing,” PSY told a news conference, saying he never set out to become an international star. “I made this video just for Korea, actually. And when I released this song — wow.”

The video has spawned hundreds of parodies and tribute videos and earned him a spotlight alongside a variety of superstars.

Earlier this month, Madonna invited PSY onstage and they danced to his song at one of her New York City concerts. MC Hammer introduced the Korean star at the American Music Awards as, “My Homeboy PSY!”

Even President Barack Obama is talking about him. Asked on Election Day if he could do the dance, Obama replied: “I think I can do that move,” but then concluded he might “do it privately for Michelle,” the first lady.

PSY was in Thailand to give a free concert Wednesday night organized as a tribute to the country’s revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who turns 85 next month. He paid respects to the king at a Bangkok shopping mall, signing his name in an autograph book placed beside a giant poster of the king. He then gave an outdoor press conference, as screaming fans nearby performed the pop star’s dance.

Determined not to be a one-hit wonder, PSY said he plans to release a worldwide album in March with dance moves that he thinks his international fans will like.

“I think I have plenty of dance moves left,” he said, in his trademark sunglasses and dark suit. “But I’m really concerned about the (next) music video.”

“How can I beat ‘Gangnam Style’?” he asked, smiling. “How can I beat 850 million views?”

___

Associated Press writer Thanyarat Doksone contributed to this report.

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‘The Inbetweeners’ Canceled by MTV

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “The Inbetweeners” now falls solidly in the “canceled” camp.

MTV has decided not to go forward with a second season of the scripted series, which premiered in August and was an adaptation of a British sitcom of the same name.

“While we won’t be moving forward with another season of ‘The Inbetweeners,’ we enjoyed working with the show’s creators and such a talented, funny cast,” an MTV spokesperson told TheWrap in a statement.

The series starred Joey Pollari, Bubba Lewis, Zack Pearlman, Mark L. Young and Alex Frnka as a group of “inbetweeners” – that is, kids who fall somewhere between nerds and jocks on the spectrum of teenage cliques.

The “Inbetweeners” cancelation follows the dropping of the MTV scripted effort “I Just Want My Pants Back” in May after one season.

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Small sachets are big help for clean water in developing world

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Greg Allgood tears open a small sachet and dumps the powder into a large plastic container filled with brown, murky water. After about five minutes of stirring, clumps of sludge form and sink to the bottom as the water starts to clear.

“You let it settle, pour it through a cotton cloth and then you wait 20 minutes and it’s ready to drink,” said Allgood, the U.S.-based director of Procter & Gamble Co’s not-for-profit programme to provide clean water in developing nations and disaster zones.

“We reverse engineered a municipal water treatment plant, so something that costs tens of millions of dollars we can make for three and a half cents.”

P&G, a consumer products giant, works with international and local humanitarian groups such as Care, World Vision and Save the Children to get the sachets to areas where dirty water is a leading cause of illness and death.

One sachet purifies 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of water, enough for five people for one day, and it does not matter that the container and straining cloth are not clean. Shipping, duties and distribution, education and training by the groups on the ground take the final cost to about 10 U.S. cents per packet.

The dirt in Allgood’s demonstration came from his garden, where his dog likes to romp. Iron sulphate is the coagulant that pulls together soil, heavy metals and parasites. Chlorine – a precise 80 granules per sachet – kills viruses and bacteria, including those that cause cholera.

“When the water is really dirty, there aren’t a lot of low-cost technologies that work very well,” Allgood, who has a PhD in toxicology and is P&G’s point person in the Clinton Global Initiative, told Reuters in an interview before the formal opening of a new production plant in Singapore on Thursday.

“It seems strange to us but I hear it so many times – people see this and they say ‘Oh my God, I was drinking dirty water’.”

About 40 million sachets will be made this year at a plant in Pakistan and 100 million in Singapore, which is also P&G’s global disaster relief hub. The goal is to make 200 million a year by 2020, equal to 2 billion liters of clean water.

Many of the sachets are sent to development projects in Africa and emerging Asian countries but were also handed out to people hit by floods and other disasters in Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Haiti, Allgood said.

Clean water is also vital to people with HIV/AIDS, he added, as their damaged immune systems make them very vulnerable to life-threatening diarrhoea and other infections.

“It goes well with Scotch,” Allgood joked, handing over a glass of clear, clean water that had been dangerous to drink 30 minutes earlier and now had only a slight taste of chlorine.

In Haiti after the devastating earthquake of 2010, he said, the sachets were part of relief supplies and he visited tents for cholera victims, showing aid workers how the powder works.

“I grabbed a bucket out of the place where the effluent was from where they washed the clinic. I went and treated it and told the World Vision folks we had to drink it,” he said. “They looked at me like I was crazy. But we did drink it.”

(Reporting by John O’Callaghan, editing by Elaine Lies)

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Is SAC Capital’s Steve Cohen Worth Catching?

Preet Bharara started work as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York on Aug. 13, 2009, less than a year after the most harrowing days of the financial crisis. Bharara’s office is known for prosecuting crime on Wall Street; his predecessors include Elihu Root, Henry Stimson, and Rudy Giuliani. In three and a half years on the job, Bharara has won convictions against Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, accused arms trafficker Victor Bout, and multiple corrupt New York politicians. But his claim to fame—the one that earned him the cover of Time last February—is his single-minded devotion to eliminating an insider-trading epidemic that seems to be rampant at certain hedge funds in and around New York City.

Two days before Thanksgiving, Bharara, who has already won some 70 convictions for insider trading, collected another pelt. At his direction, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Mathew Martoma, a 38-year-old former hedge fund manager at SAC Capital Advisors, at Martoma’s 8,000-square-foot Boca Raton (Fla.) mansion. In a statement, Bharara described Martoma’s alleged crime as “cheating coming and going—specifically, insider trading first on the long side, and then on the short side, on a scale that has no historical precedent.” Conspicuously absent from Bharara’s statement was any mention of Martoma’s former boss, Steven Cohen, the founder of SAC Capital. But Wall Street is rife with speculation that Cohen is Bharara’s ultimate target.

The possibility that Cohen might share the fate of fellow hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam, who was found guilty of conspiracy and securities fraud in May 2011 and sentenced to 11 years in prison, has caused a frisson of anticipation in the financial world. On Nov. 28, the president of SAC Capital, Tom Conheeney, told investors that the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering filing a civil suit against the firm.

Yet Cohen may prove to be an elusive prey. And it’s worth asking whether relentlessly hunting insider-trading suspects like Cohen is a wise use of the government’s resources—especially considering that the people responsible for the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression continue to get off scot-free.

Cohen himself is no small fish. He grew up in Great Neck, Long Island, the third of eight children. His father owned a clothing manufacturer in the Bronx; his mother was a piano teacher. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978, Cohen took a job at Gruntal & Co., a small Wall Street brokerage. An amazingly successful if restless trader, he made millions for himself and for Gruntal. In 1992, hungry for a bigger platform, he set up a hedge fund with a $ 25 million grubstake—half of which was his own money. In the first year, the fund was up 17 percent; the next year it was up 51 percent. The rest is the stuff of Wall Street legend, as are his $ 1 billion art collection and his 36,000-square-foot mansion in Greenwich, Conn. SAC Capital now has some $ 14 billion under management.

Bharara has been circling Cohen for years, pursuing a slew of additional insider-trading charges against seven former SAC traders. But he hasn’t snared Cohen. And the Martoma gambit may fall short as well.

The gist of Bharara’s complaint against Martoma is that between 2006 and 2008, Martoma obtained material, nonpublic information from Dr. Sid Gilman, now 80, a neurologist at the University of Michigan, who was a paid consultant to two health-care companies, Elan (ELN) and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (now part of Pfizer (PFE)), working together to develop a new Alzheimer’s drug. At first, Gilman shared with Martoma the good news that the drug trial was going well. As a result, Martoma and SAC amassed around a $ 700 million stake in Elan and Wyeth. In March 2008, when other executives at SAC Capital were questioning the large investment in the two companies, Cohen defended it by writing that Martoma “anticipated positive news” from the drug trial and he was the person “closest” to it.

On July 17, 2008, just days before he was to share his confidential findings at a health-care conference, Gilman told Martoma there were problems with the drug trial. Martoma then e-mailed Cohen: “Is there a good time to catch up with you this morning? It’s important.” One hour later, Cohen responded with his cell-phone number. According to the sworn affidavit of the FBI agent investigating the case, the two men talked for 20 minutes. At Cohen’s direction, during the next four days, SAC Capital dumped most, but not all, of its stock in the companies. It also put on a large short trade—betting the companies’ stock would fall.

On July 30, after the public announcement about the drug trial at the industry conference, the shares of Elan and Wyeth fell, 42 percent and 12 percent, respectively. According to Bharara, SAC Capital not only made profits of about $ 83 million on its short trade but also avoided losses of about $ 194 million had it not sold its stock in the two companies a few weeks earlier—a $ 276 million swing. (Bharara called it “The most lucrative inside tip of all time.”) In 2008, SAC paid Martoma a $ 9.3 million bonus. In 2010, Martoma was fired from the firm after two years of unsatisfactory performance and because he appeared to be “a one-trick pony with Elan,” according to an SAC e-mail. (His lawyer said in a statement that Martoma is innocent.)

In exchange for his cooperation, Dr. Gilman and the U.S. Department of Justice have entered into a non-prosecution agreement. According to the Wall Street Journal, the FBI and Bharara tried for a year to get Martoma to flip and cooperate with them against Cohen. Unlike the Rajaratnam case, there are no recordings of incriminating conversations involving Cohen and his portfolio managers or outside tipsters. The New York Times described the evidence compiled by the FBI against Cohen as “entirely circumstantial.”

Among other things, Cohen is a brilliant poker player—which means he’s adept at not tipping his hand. In a rare interview with Vanity Fair’s Bryan Burrough in July 2010, he brushed aside the implication that he had done anything like what Rajaratnam was accused of. “I look at my firm, and I don’t see any of that. In some respects I feel like Don Quixote fighting windmills,” he told Burrough. “There’s a perception, and I’m trying to fight that perception. I find it offensive that they lump SAC into these articles. I really do. The press, I mean, they don’t understand what the hell—they don’t understand what they’re writing about.”

When it comes to winning a conviction for insider trading, the law requires not only proof that material, nonpublic information was exchanged but also that the exchange of that information constituted “a breach of duty” to someone—say, shareholders or a board of directors. When Bharara won the conviction of Rajat Gupta, the former McKinsey senior partner who was on the board of directors of Goldman Sachs (GS), the jury found that Gupta had both shared insider information about Goldman with Rajaratnam and violated his duty to Goldman’s shareholders not to do so. That could be a snag in any case against Cohen. To whom did Cohen “breach” his “duty”? Certainly not his fund investors, who benefited tremendously from the trade. Still, the one journalist who has spoken to Cohen in recent years, Burrough, predicted in an e-mail to me, “They’re gonna get Cohen. They wouldn’t be building this pyramid if they didn’t intend to.”

If Cohen and his firm are nothing more than a criminal enterprise engaged in widespread insider trading, then Bharara is absolutely right to spend his time and his office’s resources going after them. Insider trading is justifiably illegal because the proper functioning of the capital markets depends on people having confidence the market is not a rigged game.

The bigger question for government prosecutors, though, is why none of the traders, bankers, or executives at the Wall Street banks who caused the 2008 financial crisis has been brought to justice. After the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, some 3,500 bankers ended up criminally prosecuted and behind bars. This time around, no one on Wall Street has done jail time. In a June 2011 speech, Bharara said, “We too want to hold accountable anyone who deserves to be punished. … Any case we make, however, will be because it is appropriate and deserved, not because there is overwhelming public pressure to do so.”

It’s true that the only thing worse than allowing the bankers to get away unscathed is prosecutorial misconduct. There’s a world of difference, however, between being meticulous and careful in bringing cases and appearing to do nothing at all when trillions of dollars have been lost and not a soul has been held accountable. That doesn’t mean the government should stop looking into the misdeeds of the likes of Steve Cohen. But it shouldn’t ignore those who did worse.

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Rugby-England add flyhalf Burns to squad for All Blacks’ test

LONDON, Nov 27 (Reuters) – England called up uncapped Gloucester flyhalf Freddie Burns on Tuesday to their squad for Saturday’s test against New Zealand in place of the injured Toby Flood.

Flood sustained ligament damage to a big toe during the 16-15 loss to South Africa at Twickenham last Saturday.

Owen Farrell, whose last start was in the first test in South Africa this year, is set to replace Flood in the starting XV against the world champions.

Lock Courtney Lawes, who missed England’s first three tests of the November series because of a knee injury, has also been included in the 23-man squad. Two other locks, Mouritz Botha and Tom Palmer, have been omitted.

After beating Fiji in their opening match, England have lost to Australia and the Springboks and now face a daunting match against the All Blacks who are unbeaten in 20 tests since the start of their victorious World Cup campaign last year.

“For those in Saturday’s squad the message is clear – last week we went toe to toe with the second best team in the world and felt we should have won,” England head coach Stuart Lancaster said in a statement.

“Now we have a chance to take on the number one side in front of a passionate Twickenham crowd, who have been fantastic throughout the Internationals, and it is a challenge we will meet head on.” (Reporting by John Mehaffey; Editing by Ken Ferris)

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U.S. author sues filmmaker Tyler Perry over plot of 2012 film

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An American author sued the prolific filmmaker Tyler Perry in a federal court on Tuesday, accusing him of lifting the plot of his 2012 movie, “Good Deeds,” from her book.

Terri Donald, who also writes under the pseudonym TLO Red’ness, says Perry based the film on her 2007 book, “Bad Apples Can Be Good Fruit.”

The lawsuit, filed in Philadelphia, says Donald sent a copy of her book to Perry’s company before production on the movie began.

Donald is seeking $ 225,000 in initial damages as well as an injunction requiring the company to add a credit for her book in the opening and closing credits. The lawsuit also calls for the company to provide an accounting of the movie’s revenues.

The drama, which stars Perry as a wealthy businessman who meets a struggling single mother, earned approximately $ 35 million at the box office after its February release.

Representatives for Perry and Lions Gate Entertainment, which released the film and is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

Perry is best known for his portrayal in drag of the character Madea in several of his films.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Paul Simao)

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Indian board rejects AstraZeneca’s patent plea on cancer drug

(Reuters) – India‘s patents appeal board has dismissed British drugmaker AstraZeneca‘s petition challenging an earlier ruling that refused patent protection for a cancer-fighting drug, in the latest blow for Big Pharma in the country.

The Indian patents office in 2007 refused patent protection to AstraZeneca’s quinazoline molecule, citing lack of invention. The Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) on Monday upheld the refusal.

The decision is also a setback for struggling AstraZeneca, which is battling to turn itself around as key drugs lose patent protection.

Global drug companies suffered a high-profile reversal in March when India granted the first ever compulsory license to domestic drugmaker Natco Pharma to sell cheap copies of Bayer’s cancer drug Nexavar. Bayer has appealed the order.

And early this month IPAB revoked a six-year-old Indian patent granted to Roche’s hepatitis C drug Pegasys, citing lack of evidence that the drug was any better than existing treatments.

Multinational drug manufacturers regard India’s $ 13 billion drug market as a huge opportunity, but are wary of what they see as lax protection for intellectual property in a country where generic medicines account for more than 90 percent of sales.

Indian generic companies, which do not need to plough money into future research, can produce drugs at a fraction of the cost of originator firms like Roche or Bayer.

Natco and another domestic drugmaker, G. M. Pharma, had opposed the initial patent application for AstraZeneca quinazoline derivative. The London-listed company filed a review petition, which India’s patent office dismissed in 2011.

A challenge to a review petition does not come under the purview of the IPAB, and even on merit the petition has failed, S. Majumdar & Co, the counsel for Natco Pharma, said in a statement.

AstraZeneca could not immediately be reached for a comment by Reuters. The company has the option to take its case to India’s Supreme Court.

(Reporting by Kaustubh Kulkarni in MUMBAI; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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Dog days in Cuba: from shih tzus to schnauzers

HAVANA (AP) — The Cuban capital has played host to political summits and art festivals, ballet tributes and international baseball competitions. Now dog lovers are getting their chance to take center stage.

Hundreds of people from all over Cuba and several other countries came to a scruffy field near Revolution Plaza this past week to preen and fuss over the shih tzus, beagles, schnauzers and cocker spaniels that are the annual Fall Canine Expo’s star attractions. There were even about a dozen bichon habaneros, a mid-sized dog bred on the island since the 17th century.

As dog lovers talked shop, the merely curious strolled the field, checking out the more than 50 breeds on display while carefully dodging the prodigious output of so many dogs.

The four-day competition, which ended Sunday, included competitions in several breeding categories, and judges were flown in from Nicaragua, Colombia and Mexico.

“This is a small, poor country, but Cubans love dogs,” said Miguel Calvo, the president of Cuba’s dog federation, which organized the show. “We make a great effort to breed purebred animals of quality.”

Winners don’t receive any trophy or prize money, but that doesn’t mean the competition is any less fierce.

Anabel Perez, owner of a cocker spaniel named Lisamineli after the U.S. actress, spent more than half an hour coifing the dog’s hair in preparation for the competition, while the owner of a shih tzu named Tiguer meticulously brushed his coat nearby.

“I’m a hairdresser for humans,” explained Tiguer’s owner, Miguel Lopez. “So it’s easy for me. I like shih tzus because they are a lot of work to keep well groomed.”

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Bin Laden movie “Zero Dark Thirty” based on first-hand accounts

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The makers of a Hollywood movie about the U.S. operation to kill Osama bin Laden denied asking for classified material for their film, but say they did conduct interviews with a CIA officer and others at the heart of the decade-long hunt for the al Qaeda leader.

“It was all based on first-hand accounts so it really felt very vivid and very vital and very, very immediate and visceral of course which is very exciting as a filmmaker,” Kathryn Bigelow, director of “Zero Dark Thirty,” told ABC News in an interview airing on Monday.

Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal said in a “Nightline” interview that they were originally working on a film about the failed bid to find bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan during the U.S-led invasion there in 2001.

But their plans changed swiftly after U.S. President Barack Obama announced in May 2011 that a Navy commando unit had killed bin Laden in a compound in Pakistan.

“I picked up the phone and started calling sources and asking them what they knew and taking referrals and knocking on doors and really approached it as comprehensively as I could,” Boal told “Nightline” according to an advance excerpt.

“I certainly did a lot of homework, but I never asked for classified material,” he said. “To my knowledge I never received any.”

The release of “Zero Dark Thirty” – seen as a strong contender for Oscar nominations – was pushed back to December after the film got caught up earlier this year in a U.S. election year controversy.

The U.S. admiral who oversaw the secret operation in May denied a claim that the Obama administration arranged for Bigelow and Boal to be given special access to top officials while researching their movie.

The film reconstructs the hunt for bin Laden largely through the eyes of a young female CIA officer, played by Jessica Chastain, who helps find him through a long-forgotten courier. Obama only makes a fleeting appearance in the film.

“It was a couple of months into the research when I heard about a woman, part of the team, and she has played a big role and she had gone to Jalalabad and been deployed with the SEALs on the night of the raid,” Boal told ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz in the “Nightline” interview.

While some of the dialogue is word for word and based on interviews with the young CIA officer and others, some of the dialogue is dramatized, said the Oscar-winning makers of 2008′s “The Hurt Locker,” about a U.S. Army bomb disposal team during the Iraq War.

The assault on bin Laden’s Pakistan compound was recreated as accurately as possible, using a full-scale version built in Jordan. The floor, the tile, the carpet, the furniture and the marks on the walls were copied from images seen in ABC News footage that Bigelow said they reviewed frame by frame.

The full interview can be seen on “Nightline” on Monday evening.

“Zero Dark Thirty” opens in U.S. movie theaters on December 19. Nominations for the 2013 Academy Awards are announced on January 10 ahead of the February 24 Oscar ceremony.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant)

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