I've Made £300k as a Hooker

STUNNING star student Paige Ashley turned her back on a lawyer's career to make £1million as a real life Belle de Jour.

Just like the anonymous sex blogger who last week revealed herself as scientist Dr Brooke Magnanti, Paige became a hooker to fund her studies.

But unlike Dr Magnanti, Paige was seduced by the chance to earn up to £20,000 a time and gave up her dream to work in vice full time.

Six years later she has £300,000 in the bank, a posh North London flat, a soft-top sports car and a boob job. But although Paige has vowed to keep on hooking until she has saved the magic million, she admits: "I wouldn't say I was happy.

"I can't turn my back on this. I'm making too much money. But all I've ended up doing is giving myself a hollow life.

"I should have roughed it with the other students. Now I'd love to turn back the clock and be slumming it in a bedsit."

Like the real-life Belle de Jour - played by Billie Piper in the BBC series Secret Diary of a Call Girl - Paige came from a comfortable middle-class home.

Her parents are wealthy farm owners and she enjoyed a privileged childhood. She went to a well-regarded school in Weybridge, Surrey, where she got four A-levels - including three grade As.

Her next step was to go to college to become a lawyer but her mum and dad said she had to learn to stand on her own two feet. "They said there'd be no handouts for uni so I decided to get the money myself," explained Paige.

"The problem was I'd had a nice upbringing and didn't want to slum it in some grotty bedsit spooning Pot Noodles into my mouth and drinking cider."

Then a pal confessed she'd joined a London escort agency, so Paige signed up too. But it was far from glamourous.

She recalled: "There's not a lot going for what I call bottom-end escorting.

Grunted

"My first client was a fat lawyer, who met me in a Travelodge. I remember lying back while he grunted on top of me. Not good! His breath stank - it was a big turn-off. But at least I had money.

"One bloke wanted me to re-enact a fantasy that he was a baby and I had to feed him with a bottle. Another insisted on putting on MY clothes before sex.

"I'd meet them in hotels that were usually grotty flea pits."

After two months she had £2,000 and applied to universities. But then another firm that had seen her photo on the escort agency website got in touch.

"They wanted to see if I was well- spoken and could conduct myself well in social situations," said Paige. "They asked if I wanted to join them, and told me I'd be earning £5,000 to £10,000.

"I thought that was a month but they said per BOOKING and that I could be going to locations all over the world. It seemed too good to be true."

Her first job was meeting an American businessman at a Michelin-starred restaurant in London's Mayfair then going to his hotel. He paid £5,000 for the night.

Paige said: "I was told to go out and buy a little black dress, keep the receipt and he'd pay for it. This was a million miles from the jobs I was used to, where I'd turn up and just be thankful the bloke had two eyes, a nose and a mouth!

"He was waiting for me with a bunch of flowers. He pretended he knew me and we chatted, ate and drank wine. We went back to his hotel and he ordered champagne before asking me to undress.

"I enjoyed the whole experience. I'd never been pampered before. Later he told me he was married with three kids.

"Most of my clients were married but this seemed more dishonest because he was wining and dining me. If his wife knew, she'd be devastated.

"I lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling numb. But I knew I'd have to put those sorts of thoughts behind me and get on with it." Her first job abroad was in Spain, where she spent a week as a 65-year-old businessman's "wife" for £30,000. She has since been flown to Australia, LA, Las Vegas, the Middle East and Brazil by other men.

"My biggest one-off job was with three Arab businessmen at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi," she said. "It's a seven-star hotel and everything is decked out in gold leaf. They paid me £20,000 for one night with all of them. By morning I was exhausted.

"Arab men are fascinated by Western women. We're almost like status symbols to them. I've met girls working in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Bahrain who've made a million out of escorting."

Her worst bookings with her new agency have been in Britain - with MPs. She said: "My job has taken me right to the heart of Westminster. I've had sex with about a dozen MPs at different times, all of them Conservatives and all what I'd term upper-class.

"They seem to think they're being naughty by spending £5,000 to have a night with me. They're rubbish in bed - all fingers and fumbling. I find them pretty distasteful.

"Funnily enough, since the expenses scandal broke I haven't met any."

Three years ago Paige told her parents about her job. "I expected them to go mad," she said. "Amazingly they didn't. Mum's first words were: 'Do they wear a condom?' I said: 'Of course they do.' She was a bit shocked I think, as was Dad. He sort of shook his head and got on with life." Since then Paige has been getting on with her chosen way of life.

But she now admits: "I've slept with more than 500 men, I travel the world and make lots of money but I wouldn't say I was happy. My job means I simply don't trust men - they are all ruled by what is between their legs.

"And all the glitz and glamour has gone out of it. I find five-star hotels pretty soulless places populated with people who should have better things to spend their money on."

She went on: "I've seen the world. I've been pampered, mollycoddled and spoilt, what more is there to do?

"At the age of 25 I feel a little bit burnt-out. But I'm tied to the golden handcuffs that is high-class escorting."

Shocking Treatment Helps Erectile Dysfunction

If you experience impotence, instead of a little blue pill maybe you want to apply shockwaves to your privates instead.

Experiments now suggest directing shockwaves at penises can help treat erectile dysfunction.

"We can really reverse erectile problems with this," researcher Yoram Vardi, head of the neuro-urology department at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, told LiveScience.

"While patients with erectile dysfunction can function with Viagra or Cialis, this is not a cure — when they stop the medication, they cannot function," he added. "This is only a preliminary study, but here with shockwaves, we can do something biological for the problem — after treatments, these patients can function without the need for medication."

In animal studies, low-intensity shockwaves have been proven to trigger growth of new blood vessels from existing ones. Vardi and his colleagues therefore speculated that shockwave therapy could help men whose erectile dysfunction stems from reduced blood flow to their penises.

"Cardiovascular problems are responsible for approximately 80 percent of patients with erectile dysfunction, so that's a huge amount of patients," Vardi explained.

Volunteers shocked

The researchers treated 20 volunteers with an average age of 56 years old who had mild or moderate erectile dysfunction for roughly three years.

At each session, a device that resembles a computer mouse applied shockwaves at five different sites on their penises.

"These are very, very low energy shock waves," Vardi said. Each shockwave applied roughly 100 bar of pressure — some 20 times the air pressure in a bottle of champagne, but less than the pressure exerted by a woman in stiletto heels who weighs 132 lbs. (60 kg).

"This sort of energy is completely different from what you would get in a massage, although everyone can do what they want," Vardi said.

Each site on the penis received some 300 shockwaves over the course of three minutes. The men underwent two weekly sessions for three weeks, and then repeated this course of therapy after three weeks of rest.

Significant improvement was seen in 15 of 20 men. "We didn't find any side effects, and it didn't hurt," Vardi noted.

Even if further studies bear out these results, this is not a cure for everyone, Vardi cautioned. The researchers chose men whose problems were apparently due to blood flow, as opposed to nerve, muscle or other issues.

Expanding tests

The researchers are now expanding their research with placebo groups and more patients.

"This is only the beginning — we need to understand much better what is happening," Vardi said. "We also want to see how long this response will stand — is it forever, one year, two years, six months? We know that at three months, it stays the same."

Vardi and his colleagues detailed their findings November 17 at the European Society for Sexual Medicine meeting in Lyon, France.

A Romp Around the Clock Stops Time in Sydney

The identity of a couple caught making love in a clock tower in central Sydney on Friday remains a mystery, but their intimate moment won’t be forgotten after passers-by captured it on video and mobile phone cameras.

The couple was in full view of the busy street below, with people at a bus stop laughing and pointing at the twosome.

German traveler Dirk Gensler, who was staying at an adjacent backpacker hostel, was gobsmacked by what he saw when he peered out his window.

"I was amazed by it, it was the middle of the day and so many people could see it," he said.

"I thought it was pretty cool."

Management of UniLodge, the student residential building housing the clock tower directly across the road from a major shopping center, insisted that there was no way the pair could be residents.

UniLodge assistant manager Ravi Krishna said that while the rooftop was accessible to those who live in the building, it was impossible to scale the wall that led to the clock tower.

Renewed Hope for an AIDS Vaccine

The long search for an AIDS vaccine has produced countless false starts and repeated failed trials, casting once bright hopes into shadows of disenchantment. The now familiar swings appeared in high relief this past fall, with news of the most recent, phase III trial in Thailand. Initial fanfare for a protective outcome gave way to disappointment after reanalysis showed that the protection could be attributed only to chance. But rather than dashing all hopes for an AIDS vaccine, the trial has heartened some researchers, who see new clues in the battle against the fatal illness.

Costing $105 million and enrolling more than 16,000 subjects, the Thai clinical trial was the largest AIDS vaccine test to date. It began in 2003, and early results released in September showed a slim but statistically sound benefit from the vaccine (a series of inoculations with drugs known as ALVAC-HIV and AIDSVAX B/E). But in October the full report, with various statistical analyses, was released in a Paris meeting to greater skepticism. Specifically, 74 people who had received the placebo became infected with HIV in the trial period, compared with the 51 people who became infected after receiving the vaccine, which makes for a protective effect of 31.2 percent. By including, however, the seven people who turned out to have had HIV at the start of the trial (two in the placebo group and five in the vaccine group), the effectiveness drops to 26.4 percent.

"There are still a huge number of uncertainties surrounding this trial," says Dennis Burton, an immunologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. The subjects were in low- and moderate-risk groups, such as heterosexuals in monogamous relationships, rather than higher-risk groups such as intravenous drug users. "The numbers involved are small," he adds, noting that statistically the protective effects could be the result of mere chance.

Still, many researchers are convinced that the trial has provided plenty of data to run with. "This contributes more evidence that an AIDS vaccine may be possible," says Jerome Kim of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and co-author of the Thai trial study (which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in October). "We’ve taken a very small step," Kim says. "It's not a home run, but it opens the door to future work." Vaccine proponents also point to the lessons learned from the failed Merck STEP trial. That vaccine test, halted in 2007, got only as far as phase II, but even so it did not leave researchers back at square one. It suggested, he notes, how some HIV strains could be blocked from infecting cells and offered data that could help in the interpretation of the Thai results. And a new analysis of the stopped STEP trial, published online Monday in Proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences, provides a warning that the very vectors (adenoviruses, which are also employed in other vaccine development) used to distribute the inactive HIV strains can actually prime the immune system to be infected by recruiting susceptible T cells to mucous membranes, where they are more likely to be infected during sexual activity.

Finding a vaccine has become an increasingly urgent undertaking. Despite advances in therapies, HIV/AIDS is still incurable. Some 7,000 people worldwide contract HIV every day, and in the U.S. about 66,000 new cases are reported every year. Preventing people from getting the virus would save millions of lives as well as greatly reduce health care costs associated with treatment. "It’s really the only optimal method of control for this dreadful pandemic," Raphael Dolin, of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston who also wrote an editorial accompanying the October paper, says of a vaccine.

Vaccines work by priming the immune system to recognize the target pathogen and attack it when detected. To fend off HIV, researchers introduced one vaccine (ALVAC-HIV) to induce a T cell response—thereby alerting the immune system—and another (AIDSVAX B/E) later to spur an antibody response. In a previous phase III trial in intravenous drug users, AIDSVAX did not work. ALVAC, from Sanofi Pasteur, had not been tested alone.

Using these two drugs together raised eyebrows in the vaccine community. Burton, along with 21 other researchers, co-authored a 2004 paper in Science criticizing the choice to proceed to phase III with two vaccines that had never demonstrated any effectiveness alone. The trial collaborators, however, based their decision on previous research that a combined approach can boost helper T cell response better than a single vaccine.

Despite his earlier doubts, Burton has been inspired by the trial results. "I feel more optimistic than I have in some time," he says. Researchers are now embarking on a host of new experiments to put the Thai findings to work. Volunteers from the trial will now be examined for immune responses—particularly neutralizing antibodies as well as cellular immunity in T cells—and some will get subsequent booster shots to see if protection can be sustained. In the lab, researchers will try to re-create the Thai results in monkeys to validate a new animal using multiple low doses. Other recent research has shown that the number of antibodies needed to provide protection is lower than previously believed, possibly making a vaccine easier to create.

Indeed, entirely new and promising candidates are now in animal trials, including those by the U.S. military to address subtypes A, C and E (rather than the Thai subtype B). Other organizations—including the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), the Karolinska Institute and the Swiss nonprofit EuroVacc—and manufacturers also have other vaccines in the works. "The science is really moving," says Seth Berkley, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and who is also president of IAVI. All those confronting the epidemic hope that the momentum leads to a payoff sooner rather than later.

Apakah Xenia 1000 cc Akan Dilengkapi Gearbox Automatic?

Toyota dengan agresif bakal membuat versi matik di semua varian Avanza-nya. Dimulai dari Avanza tipe S 1.500cc yang sudah ada sejak 2005, kemudian ada Avanza G 1.300cc yang baru diluncukan beberapa waktu lalu dan yang terendah Avanza E 1.300cc matik yang akan diluncurkan tahun depan.

Meski angka penjualan mobil matik tidak terlalu tinggi namun bicara trend, angkanya terus meningkat.

“Bila melihat trend di Eropa, komposisi pasar mobil matik dan manual sudah 50:50. Saya rasa Indonesia juga akan mengikuti perkembangan tersebut,” prediksi Jhonny Darmawan, Presiden Director PT Toyota Astra Motor (TAM) disela sela peluncuran Avanza G 1.300cc matik.

Lalu bagaimana dengan Daihatsu Xenia, sama-sama memiliki tiga varian apakah berniat untuk melakukan hal serupa? Berarti dua varian bermesin EJ-VE DOHC VVTi 1000cc nya juga akan dipasangi gearbox automatic. Apa jadinya bila mesin 1000cc bertenaga 63 ps dan torsi 9,2 kg-m ini dikombinasikan dengan transmisi automatic.

“Sepertinya tidak, kita belum lakukan pengujian karena untuk membuat varian tertentu harus melalui riset panjang,” buka Sudirman MR, Vice President PT Astra Daihatsu Motor (ADM).

“Xenia ini adalah kendaraan 7 seater, rasanya mesin 1000cc performanya kurang bagus bila jadi matik,” lanjutnya.

Untuk mesin 1.300cc saja, meski memiliki gear box dengan ratio gigi yang sama dengan mesin 1.500cc namun final gearnya dibuat sangat ringan agar tetap kuat berakselerasi saat membawa beban berat. Gimana yang 1000cc?

Beda Avanza dan Xenia Matik

Satu kandungan tapi tak sama. Kalimat itulah yang saat ini cocok untuk Avanza 1.300 cc G matik dan Daihatsu 1.300 cc Xi matik. Nah, apa saja sih perbedaan kedua produk tersebut meski lahir dalam satu rahim. Apakah ada yang pantas dibanggakan. Sebelum mobil tersebut sampai ke tangan Anda sebaiknya Anda simak ulasan yang satu ini.

PT Astra Daihatsu Motor (ADM) memang meluncurkan Xenia 1.300 cc standar yang dibanderol sekitar Rp 138-139 juta.

Namun bila Anda merogoh kocek sejumlah Rp 5,9 juta, Anda sudah bisa menikmati Xenia 1.300 cc Xi matik dengan aksesoris lengkap, seperti velg alloy 14 inci, palang air pada sisi mobil, electric mirror, front grille yang sudah full chrome dan fog lamp serta logo deluxe pada sisi kanan dan kiri sehingga membuat tampilan luar Xenia lebih bergaya.

Dengan kelengkapan itu Daihatsu Xenia 1.300 cc Xi matik dibandrol seharga Rp145,6 juta. Setelah detikOto pantau Xenia full aksesoris, tidak terdapat perbedaan yang signifikan pada bagian eksterior kedua produk tersebut. Yang membembedakan hanya letak emblem. Dimana tipe yang terdapat pada produk Toyota terletak pada kanan belakang mobil, sedangkan tipe Daihatsu sebaliknya.

Secara keseluruhan bagian eksterior hampir sama, sebut saja mengadobsi chrome pada grill serta fog lamp yang diaplikasikan pada sudut yang sama di bagian bumper mobil. Sedangkan stop lamp sama persis posisi dan bentuknya.

"Over all bagian luar semua sama antara kedua produk tersebut. Sampai panjang, lebar, tinggi pun sama," ungkap Product Development PT Astra Daihatsu Motor (ADM), Pradipto S. kepada detikOto, Rabu (18/11/2009).

"Kalau diganti emblemnya orang tidak banyak tahu kalau itu Xenia atau Avanza," tambahnya.

Sedangkan untuk bagian interior kedua produk terutama headunit tidak ada perbedaan secara menyeluruh sebut saja aliran AC, letak pengatur AC, serta tempat menyimpan kartu, letaknya hampir sama. Terlebih posisi tuas transmisi.

Tidak hanya itu bagian sama, bentuk doortrim pun sama persis dengan sang kakak. "Ya iya lah wong satu cetakan," ucapnya.

Namun ada berbeda yakni GPS pada Xenia. Fitur itu diakui Pradipto memang menjadi fitur optional dari Astra International khusus untuk Daihatsu Xenia matik.

Tidak hanya itu, setelah mengamati keseluruhan bentuk interior Xenia, tenyata ada sisi yang membedakannya pula. Dimana Avanza 1.300 cc G matik menggunakan double blower sedangkan Xenia 1.300 cc Xi matik tidak mengaplikasi alat pendingin itu.

Ketidaksamaan itu ternyata cukup membuat pertanyaan. Mengapa sih tidak disematkan saja ?

Dalam hal itu, Direktur Marketing PT Astra Daihatsu Motor (ADM) Amelia Tjandra mengatakan ketidaksamaan itu sengaja karena kedua perusahaan mempunyai segmen berbeda. Oleh karena itu PT ADM pun tidak berniat menyamakan sang kakak untuk meraup pangsa di tanah air.

"Kita semua menyediakan pilihan. Kita tidak ingin win dan lose. Ada yang menang ada yang kalah. Kita maunya win dan win, dan bekerjasama," tandas Amelia.

Nah, sudah cukup jelas kan. Daihatsu Xenia 1.300 cc Xi matik dibandrol seharga Rp 145,6 juta plus full aksesoris sedangkan Toyota Avanza 1.300 cc G matik dibadrol Rp 156,55 juta, dan sebaiknya Anda jangan salah pilih ya.

Scientists Find New Drug That Can Destroy Leukaemia Cells

People diagnosed with the most common form of leukaemia were given new hope yesterday after a team of Irish researchers announced a breakthrough in treatment of the disease.

A new drug is capable of killing leukaemia cells including those in patients who have a poor prognosis and have shown resistance to current therapies.

The discovery -- developed in a partnership between Trinity College Dublin and the University of Sienna in Italy -- showed the drug PBOX-15 is specifically active in cancerous cells and works by interfering with the structure or architecture of the cancer cell.

There are 114 new cases of the disease diagnosed here every year and it will take another three to four years before the treatment is developed by pharmaceutical companies and available for patients with the disease.

Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL), a type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow, is the most common leukaemia in the west and normally progresses more slowly than other forms of the disease.

Professor Mark Lawler, of the School of Medicine in Trinity and lead investigator, said the study showed that PBOX-15 "activates key targets in leukaemia cells that triggers the cells to die. Cancer cells become resistant to chemotherapy by evading or avoiding cell death. The TCD researchers demonstrated that PBOX-15 can overcome this resistance and kill these cancer cells."

The research, published in the renowned international journal 'Cancer Research', was conducted using CLL cells isolated from 55 CLL patients. PBOX-15 was more effective than the front-line therapy, fludarabine, in killing CLL cells.

"The most exciting result was that PBOX-15 also killed CLL cells that were resistant to the existing treatment. The ability of PBOX-15 to kill leukaemia cells while sparing normal blood cells suggests that the PBOX drug may pave the way for new approaches for the treatment of this incurable cancer," Prof Lawler added.

"Its activity in malignant cells isolated from patients with this common form of leukaemia emphasises the potential of this approach," said Dr Elizabeth Vandenberghe, a consultant haematologist at St James's Hospital who collaborated in the study.

Potential

John McCormack, chief executive of the Irish Cancer Society, which donated €400,000 towards the research, said the findings emphasised the potential for basic science discoveries to translate to clinical benefit.

"These findings now need to be brought from the laboratory to the bedside so that they will ultimately benefit patients with this common form of leukaemia." Funding was also provided by Enterprise Ireland and the Higher Education Authorities Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI).