Cyprus dodged a disorderly default and unprecedented exit from the euro by bowing to demands from creditors to shrink its banking system in exchange for 10 billion euros ($13 billion) of aid.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades agreed to shut the country's second-largest bank under pressure from a German-led bloc in a nighttime negotiating melodrama that threatened to rekindle the debt crisis and rattle markets.

"It's been yet another hard day's night," European Union Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told reporters in Brussels early today. "There were no optimal solutions available, only hard choices."

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