International credit ratings agency Moody's downgraded euro member Cyprus to junk status Tuesday on heightened concerns over its banking sector's exposure to Greece.

The agency cut its rating on Cyprus by one notch to Ba1 and assigned a negative outlook, meaning that further downgrades are possible.

Police recently cited a city club for allowing violent mosh pit dancing and vowed a crackdown on what they called "dangerous behavior" and a "public safety hazard."

The Boston Herald (http://bit.ly/wNguyU) reports that police cited the House of Blues for a license violation because of a mosh pit that broke out during a Feb. 21 show by Flogging Molly.

Jay-Z may have 99 problems, but getting to the venue isn't one.

The rapper brought the beat to South By Southwest, but not before he needed a police escort to make it from the airport to the show, which started 40 minutes late.

British experts at the world's biggest artificial joint registry said doctors should stop using metal-on-metal hip replacements, citing an analysis showing they have to be fixed or replaced more often than other implants.

All metal hip joints were already under scrutiny over questions about how long they last, and one major manufacturer recalled its product over a year ago. Last year, regulators in the U.S. asked makers to conduct safety studies on them. Most artificial hip joints are plastic or ceramic.

Syrian military forces have recaptured the northern rebel stronghold of Idlib along the border with Turkey, a major base that army defectors had held for months, a pro-government newspaper reported Tuesday.

Fresh from a month long campaign that drove rebels out of another key base in central Homs, President Bashar Assad's forces launched a siege on the city of Idlib three days ago. The city had been under control of hundreds of fighters for the rebel Free Syrian Army.

Taliban militants opened fire Tuesday on an Afghan government delegation visiting one of the two villages in southern Afghanistan where a U.S. soldier is suspected of killing 16 civilians.

The gunfire killed an Afghan soldier who was providing security for the delegation, said Gen. Abdul Razaq, the police chief for Kandahar province where the visit took place. Another Afghan soldier and a military prosecutor were wounded in the attack, he said.

IOC President Jacques Rogge says he's optimistic that Saudi Arabia will send female athletes to the Olympics for the first time at this summer's London Games.

Rogge tells The Associated Press the IOC is in talks with Saudi Arabia on the "practicalities" of including women on its Olympic team.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has landed robotic explorers on the surface of Mars, sent probes to outer planets and operates a worldwide network of antennas that communicates with interplanetary spacecraft.

Its latest mission is defending itself in a workplace lawsuit filed by a former computer specialist who claims he was demoted — and then let go — for promoting his views on intelligent design, the belief that a higher power must have had a hand in creation because life is too complex to have developed through evolution alone.

Amateur cybersleuths have been hunting malware, raising firewalls and fending off mock hack attacks in a series of simulations supported in part by Britain's eavesdropping agency.

The games are intended to pull badly-needed talent into the country's burgeoning cybersecurity sector, according to former security minister Pauline Neville-Jones, who spoke at a closing ceremony held Sunday at the Science Museum in the English port city of Bristol.

Sunday was "fun day" for Beyonce and Jay-Z: The new parents enjoyed a concert by R&B singer The-Dream in New York.

The couple jammed to the singer-songwriter in the VIP section of SOB's, a small club that houses a few hundred people.