Washington, February 19 : Dita Von Teese confessed she was just having fun when she lied about not having sex for a year after her divorce.

Moscow - Kyrgyzstan's parliament approved on Thursday a government decision to shut down a US air base on its territory, which has been a crucial for supplying US and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The decision was overwhelmingly passed with 78 votes for and 1 vote against, Russian news agencies reported.

The United States has 180 days to close the airbase in the Central Asian state, the head of the country's security council, Adukhan Madumarov said earlier.

There has been speculation that Russia had intensified pressure on the former Soviet republic to terminate the lease.

Washington, Feb 19 : A new research has found evidence unexploded munitions in oceans are leaking cancer-causing materials and endangering sea life.

The research trip, to Puerto Rico, was undertaken by ecologist James Porter, who took samples from underwater nuclear bomb target USS Killen.

Though he had expected to find evidence of radioactive matter, what he found instead was a link to cancer.

Data revealed that the closer corals and marine life were to unexploded bombs from the World War II vessel and the surrounding target range, the higher the rates of carcinogenic materials.

Juneau (Alaska, US), Feb. 19 : Alaska Governor and former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has been asked by officials to pay back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. She reportedly owes taxes on more than 17,000 dollars in per-diem expenses.

State employees who live more than 50 miles away from Alaska''s capital, Juneau, are entitled to state aid in the form of per-diem payments. Juneau is approximately 600 miles from Palin''s home town of Wasilla, making the governor eligible for the payments.

Washington, Feb 19 : NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer has identified dwarf galaxies forming out of nothing more than pristine gas likely leftover from the early universe.

Dwarf galaxies are relatively small collections of stars that often orbit around larger galaxies like our Milky Way.

The findings surprised astronomers because most galaxies form in association with a mysterious substance called dark matter or out of gas containing metals.

The infant galaxies spotted by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer are springing up out of gas that lacks both dark matter and metals.

Though never seen before, this new type of dwarf galaxy may be common throughout the more distant and early universe, when pristine gas was more pervasive.

Washington, Feb 19 : Teenagers who receive pressure from their peers or others to turn down the volume of their iPods instead turn them up higher, researchers have found.

The study on the iPod-listening-generation also showed that teen boys listen louder than teen girls.

And CU-Boulder audiologist and doctoral candidate Cory Portnuff, who headed the study, said that teens who express the most concern about the risk for and severity of hearing loss from iPods actually play their music at higher levels than their peers.

He said that such behaviours put teens at an increased risk of music-induced hearing loss.