Canberra, Mar. 29 : Australian troops engaged in the war against Taliban may have to spend almost a decade in Afghanistan, an expert has claimed.

Clive Williams, Australian National University’s Visiting Professor on Defense Studies, said the fight with the Taliban would continue while US-aligned troops train the Afghan Army.

Sydney, March 29 : Researchers in Sydney are struggling to find volunteers for a study to determine the effect of binge drinking on the teenage brain, and also to find whether alcohol affects its development.

Professor Lindy Rae, who is leading a team at the Prince of Wales Medical Research Unit at Randwick, says that animal studies have already shown that young rats are more sensitive to alcohol-induced damage than adult rats, with substantial deterioration in the frontal lobe, which underlies planning, impulse control and reasoning.

Melbourne, March 29 : Kate Moss’ romance with rocker Jamie Hince may have inspired her to curb her hard-partying behaviour.

Melbourne, March 29 : A 25-year-old Adelaide University student is in the news because of her hairstyle, which makes her resemble Princess Diana.

Psychology student Gules D''''Orsi has revealed that it was during a trip to Madrid last year that she realised how much she looked like the late Princess.

"I was in Plaza Mayor and a homeless man came up to me and started screaming,'''''''' the Daily Telegraph quoted Gules (pronounced "Jules'''''''') as saying.

Sydney, March 29 : An electricity company in Australia is planning to install a new electronic control box in homes, which would allow it to switch off individual appliances, such as air conditioners and plasma TVs, to ration power use.

According to a report carried out in news. com. au, the new device, made by Australian firm ETSA, would go in the meter box and remotely read meters, turn power on and off, report outages - and, if the customer agreed, ration power to an individual home.

Brisbane, Mar. 29 : A Chinese-Australian woman, who is at the centre of a top-level espionage inquiry met both Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and former PM John Howard at a private dinner here in 2004.

Rudd is believed to have talked at length in Mandarin with Helen Liu, who is at the centre of allegations that the nation''s top spy organisation, the highly-secretive Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), tapped into the laptop of Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon, without his knowledge.