A 20-year-old man was arrested for sexually exploiting a 12-year-old Class 5 girl student at Bawana Industrial Area in outer Delhi, police said on Saturday. Two other persons also joined in exploiting her.

Five months ago, they gang raped her at a factory owned by one of the accused. They continued to force themselves on her.

“We have arrested one of the accused, Deepak Shah, who was labourer at the factory,” said a senior police officer. His friends, Vicky and Lucky, both in their thirties, are still at large. 

Lucky was the owner of the factory. The incident came to light on Saturday morning when the minor, a student of a government school at Shahabad Dairy and resident of Bawana Industrial Area, was not feeling well. Her parents took her to hospital, where during treatment doctors found that she was four-month pregnant.

Then the parents heard everything. They went to Shahabad Dairy police station, where the girl told police that she has been sexually exploited for the last five months. 

She said a few months ago, she used to go to her father’s tea stall at the industrial area to help him, as her mother was unwell. “During that time, she also used to visit some factories to deliver tea to workers,” said a police officer.

When she went to a factory at C-106 in Sector 5 to give tea, the plant owner, Lucky, along with Deepak Shah and Vicky gang raped her. They threatened her that they would kill her parents if she complained to anyone.

Traumatised, she did not tell anyone and she was exploited repeatedly.

“We have filed a case of rape against the three. Deepak Shah has been nabbed, and we will find the rest soon,” said the officer.

Mumbai, Dec 17 Controversial Pakistani actress and model Veena Malik has gone missing in Mumbai since Friday morning, her manager said here Saturday.

Shooting for a Bollywood flick, 'Mumbai 125 kilometres', at Film City in Goregaon of northwest Mumbai, Malik left in a car after pack-up Friday morning and was not reachable since.

'Veena left after the pack-up yesterday (Friday) morning. In the afternoon, I received an SMS from her where she apologised for not being able to concentrate on the shooting, stating that she was disturbed,' the film's director Hemant Madhukar said.

'I called her immediately, but her number was not reachable. I have not been able to get in touch with her since,' he added.

Malik's manager Pratik Mehta also confirmed the development. 'I have been trying to reach her since yesterday, but have failed. I have approached the officials at Bandra police station and have sought help in finding the whereabouts of Veena.'

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However, the Bandra police denied they have registered a missing person's complaint for Veena Malik.

Malik came into limelight in 2010 after she testified against her boyfriend, Pakistani fast bowler Mohammed Asif alleging that he was involved in match fixing.

She then garnered more attention after she participated in the fourth season of reality show 'Bigg Boss'.

She has also been condemned by Islamic clerics for her nude photos in an Indian magazine.

The actress is set to have her 'swayamvar' on India's national television, through Imagine TV, which has earlier hosted swayamvars of Rakhi Sawant, Rahul Mahajan and Ratan Rajput.

 Also see

Pathanamthitta 12-12-2011: Kerala wishes an amicable solution to the Mullaperiyar issue as early as possible M blamed attempts of vested interests to create a rift between Kerala and Tamil Nadu citing the Mullaperiyar issue. These kinds of attempts are unfortunate..

Kerala is united in giving water to Tamil Nadu. There are no different opinions on this. Kerala is showing utmost restraint in these provocative situations.

Pathanamthitta 12-12-2011: CM has instructed to allot revenue land for construction of a Garbage Treatment Plant at Aranmula so that the waste from the Aranmula temple and that of the Aranmula Vallasadya can be effectively treated. The decision was taken at the Mass Contact Programme here.

CM has also decided to give sanction for the Upper Kuttanad Drinking Water Project thereby bring in a permanent solution to the scarcity of drinking water faced by the people of Kadapram, Niranam, Nedumbram and Peringara panchayaths.

CM also distributed financial aid to 15 SC/ST families residing at Adichipuzha colony for constructing houses under the Indira Aawas Yojana.

CM also gave title deeds for 18 SC/ST families. Financial aid of Rs 24.85 lakhs were given to 497 youths under the project of Agricultural Department. Rs 41 lakhs have been sanctioned for the project implemented at the Thottapuzhasseri Panchayath based on the Vadakancherry model project. Pampa labour group secretary received the amount form CM. Rs 9.44 lakhs has also been sanctioned for the paddy farmers of Niranathidam who incurred loss.

Earlier, Chief Minister met  Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

Yesterday, CM wrote to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, asking her to reduce the water level in the Mullaperiyar dam, mainly for safety reasons - the structure is more than 100 years old and the region where it is located has seen several tremors lately, since July.

Tamil Nadu, however, has been demanding that the dam's water level be increased to meet its growing irrigation needs.

Ms Jayalalitha sent an acerbic reply in which she referred to "unwarranted provocations from across the border" and "the fear psychosis generated in Kerala."

In the Supreme Court, Tamil Nadu argued that the Kerala government "is spreading panic among the public about the safety of the Mullaperiyar dam which is not true." Ms Jayalalithaa has asked the court to stop officials in Kerala from commenting on the possible construction of a new dam.

But CM today reiterated that building a new dam was one of the options which should be considered. "We are ready to give full assurance to Tamil Nadu on water" he said.

"There are two limitations for the Centre. The matter is with the Supreme Court and this is a dispute between two states," he said, adding that his government is ready for discussions on the issue .

The lengthy and bitter hostility between the two states has already seen the PM's intervention. In a letter written to Ms Jayalalithaa, Prime Minister said that "nothing should be said or done to create undue alarm" over the dam.

"I am sure that, given goodwill on both sides, an amicable and mutually acceptable solution can be found through a process of dialogue and communication. I have accordingly advised the Ministry of Water Resources to arrange an early meeting between the officials of the two sides to sort out outstanding issues and allay genuine concerns," he further added in the letter.

The Kerala Assembly has called a special session on December 9 to discuss the dispute.

Commitment: Every successful project I’ve ever worked on has involved a client whose team is enthusiastic and engaged. Whether you’re big or small, one uninterested department or person can sabotage everything.

Planning: Success in any pursuit begins with setting goals and developing a plan to achieve them — detailing the strategies and tactics you’ll use, the people and resources needed, and so forth. Search marketing is no different. Read: Planning an SEO Campaign

Product/Service: Although you can fool some people into buying crap for a while, real long-term success involves a product or service that people want or need. There’s no substitute for quality.

Education/Information: You’re a business owner; you don’t need to become an SEO expert. But you’ll succeed faster if you have access to great information. And as fast as the search marketing industry changes, ongoing access to intelligent information is critical.

Patience: True, there are exceptions every now and then, but for the vast majority of companies big or small, search marketing is a process that takes time to implement correctly. There are no short cuts, no quick fixes. Success almost always takes many months, if not a year or more.

Design & Usability: Yes, there are some ugly sites that make lots of money; but there are more that don’t. Your best bet is to have a web site that’s attractive and easy to use. Get out of your customers’ way and let them do what they came to your site to do.

Keyword Research: If you target the wrong keywords, you’re doomed to fail. You’ve heard that a million times, I hope. More than that, you also need to know what to do with your keywords.

Analytics: How will you know you’re successful if you have no way of measuring what you’ve done? Measure, analyze, adjust strategies and tactics as needed.

Tools: Having access to appropriate SEO tools can give you an advantage over the competition. Of course, more important than the tools is knowing how to interpret the data they provide.

Crawlability: A search engine cannot index pages that its spider cannot crawl. Be careful with the Flash movies, the complicated DHTML and javascript, the robots.txt file, etc. Here are 5 common crawlability mistakes you need to know about.

Content: This can take many forms: a blog, articles, videos, a FAQ page, or even user-generated content like product/service reviews. When you get this one right, you’ll have an easier time getting…

Links: Your great content isn’t going to rank well without links, preferably from relevant, quality sites. I brain-dumped (almost) everything I know about links early last year.

Social/Local Findability: Let me explain this since I might be inventing a new term. Social Media Marketing and Local Search are musts. The size and scope of your company may dictate which you emphasize more, but neither should be ignored. Local SEO is a must for most small businesses, but social media can work, too. Bigger companies that target an audience more than a location will find social media offers a lot of opportunities. In either case, the goal is findability. You want customers to be able to find you as easily as possible, and you can do this on social media sites that make local networking easier.

Reputation Management: It’s imperative to know what people are saying about your company. This isn’t just for Big Business, either: An old client of mine runs the only roller skating rink in our area, yet is probably losing business because they have a couple negative reviews on a certain Local Search site. Given the growing influence of user reviews, knowing how to manage your reputation is a must.

Trust: In my first post of 2007, I said trust is the No. 1 factor, and nothing has changed since then. Trusted domains are powerful domains. When you have trust, from users and search engines, you’re on the way to search marketing success. Don’t miss this more recent article: Why Trust Matters & How To Earn It.

As you climb the pyramid, you’ll find buzz/word-of-mouth marketing or maybe community helping you along. To a large degree, these are two sides of the same coin. It’s the people factor, the human element that often separates the winners and losers in search marketing. Get people talking positively about you, whether it be one-to-one conversation among friends or in the larger setting of an online community, and you’ll climb the pyramid that much faster.

We spend so much time talking about what your SEO provider should and shouldn’t do, what strategies and tactics the SEO provider may or may not employ on your SEO campaign, what makes a great SEO provider, and so forth. Let’s talk about the other side of the equation: What should the client do? If this were the 1960s, I might say, Ask not what your SEO provider can do for you; ask what you can do for your SEO provider! Okay, cheesiness aside, the question is this:

There are several things that make a great SEO client. The one I’m going to start with in this post is commitment.

In short, if you want to succeed with an SEO campaign, a PPC campaign, a social media marketing campaign, you name it … you must be fully involved in the entire process. That process goes from

A) planning, to
B) developing a strategy, to
C) implementing tactics, to
D) measuring what worked and what didn’t, to
E) repeating steps B, C, D, and E.

No shortcuts. No sitting out one of those steps. No deciding you’ll let the SEO company worry about measuring results because you don’t have time. That’s what I mean by commitment.

In my previous job, the best clients I had were sole proprietors — one man or one woman flying solo. What made them great? They already knew the value of commitment because they couldn’t get a business off the ground without it! Once we established a solid working relationship based on trust, it was never difficult to complete those five steps above, no matter how busy and overworked the client was.

Several years ago, I worked with a pair of very smart guys — partners in a business they were passionate about and excelled at. But they couldn’t agree on anything where their web site and search marketing was concerned. One dropped out of the picture every now and then and was hard to reach. The other would submit change requests without his partner knowing. The project as a whole stalled — “failed” as far as I was concerned — because they were not equally committed.

The Product Development team might be the ones pushing the idea of a search marketing campaign.

But the Owner/President might see it as a waste of time. Result: Project failure.

The Marketing gal — she’s more interested in print and television, not this SEO stuff. Result: Project failure.

Maybe the Tech/Web site guy isn’t interested in fixing those crawlability issues you have. Result: Project failure.

In both my current and previous jobs, the best clients were the ones who showed the greatest commitment. It’s not a coincidence that theirs were also the most successful projects.

It only takes one person in a company to undermine a search marketing campaign. Commitment is your first job; it’s the first trait of a great client.

I’ve been a bad blogger. I’m swamped at work and have been distracted outside of work, and I’ve been trying to get by here on SBS with list links and even some of my best Flickr photos. I can’t remember the last time I posted something helpful / educational. My bad….

Let me take a stab at making things better.

I often get asked to review a web site and give quick feedback on the site’s SEO. The issue: Is the site doing well, or in desperate need of SEO help? To answer those questions, I’ve developed a speedy system to go through a site and take a quick SEO snapshot. I’m going to give that system away here. On a smaller site, this should take about 20 minutes. Even on the biggest sites, it’s never taken me more than an hour.

B. Analyze robots.txt file. See what’s being blocked and what’s not. Make sure it’s written correctly.

C. Check for www and non-www domains — i.e., canonicalization issues. Only one should resolve; the other should redirect.

Repeat A1, A2, A3, A4, and A5 – this will be quicker since many objects (header, footer, menus) will be the same. In particular, look for unique page text, unique meta tags, correct use of H1s, H2s to structure content.

Check for appropriate PageRank flow. Also look at how they link back to home page. Is index.html or default.php appended on link? Shouldn’t be.

Same steps as E.

Also, if the site sells common products, find 2-3 other sites selling same exact items and compare product pages. Are all sites using the same product descriptions? Unique content is best.

Compare pages indexed between the three. Is pages indexed unusually high or low based on what you saw in the site map and site navigation? This may help identify crawlability issues. Is one engine showing substantially more or less pages than the others? Double-check robots.txt file if needed.

I. Use Aaron’s SEO for Firefox  extension to look at link counts in Yahoo and MSN. If not in a rush, do the actual link count searches manually on Yahoo Site Explorer and MSN to confirm.

…..END…..

That’s what I do when making a quick SEO site analysis. Important: This is for identifying problems, not fixing them. And it doesn’t replace a real and complete SEO analysis. (There are several shortcomings, for example. Here’s one: Steps E and F assume that all category pages across the site will be the same, and that all product pages will be the same. This is not always the case, so you may miss problems/issues that a real, deeper analysis would reveal.)

- What other flaws do you find with this?
- What other steps do you take when doing a quick SEO analysis?

Personal Finance debt, i.e. taking a loan, can be a great tool to build your wealth.

Loans can offer you many benefits, for example home and car loans help you achieve the financial goal of buying a home or a car (by making payments over a period of time) without having to wait and save enough to make an outright purchase.

However loans are often misconstrued as an instrument for the non-wealthy, when this is indeed not the case. Wealthy investors often use loans to help themselves get even wealthier. Where loans are concerned, you might find that you are one of two broad types of individuals. Each type has a unique viewpoint when it comes to taking a loan.

First, there are the emotional extremes - those individuals who either dislike loans so much that they will not borrow even a rupee, or those who like loans so much that they have over-leveraged themselves and might be now struggling under their EMI burden.

Second, there are the 'I'll Take It, But I Won't Like It' individuals. These are the ones that take a middle approach when dealing with their liability. Once they have taken the loan because they need it - the logical step, they then do their best to repay / prepay it as quickly as possible because of the mental or emotional discomfort caused by being 'in debt'. Most of us find ourselves in this second category.

The simple truth of the matter however, is a very factual truth.

A loan is simply the borrowing of funds, to be used for a particular purpose. Loans will simply give you the opportunity to incur the expenditure (for example, buy the house or the car) that you wish to incur, when you wish to incur it, and repay the amount a little at a time every month, over a specified tenure.

In this article, we will cover 2 aspects to personal finance debt.

Different Kinds of Loans Available and How to Ensure You Don't Over-Borrow

Unsecured Loans
An unsecured loan refers to any kind of loan that is not attached by a lien on any of your specific assets. This means that in case you default on the loan due to bankruptcy or any other reason, the unsecured debt lender does not have the right to claim any specific asset.
An example of this is credit card debt or perhaps a personal loan from a friend or relative.

Secured Loans
A secured loan is one where you, the borrower, pledge some asset of yours as collateral to the loan. This means that in case of bankruptcy or any other reason for defaulting on the loan, the lender of your secured debt has the right to take possession of the asset (known as repossession) , and sell it to recover some of his loss.
An example of this is your car loan and home loan.

There are many options of loans and different lenders (from banks to housing finance companies to your relatives), which can help you take a loan when you need one. You need to ensure however that you don't over-borrow and put a strain on your finances. There is a simple way to check whether you are over-leveraged or not.

It is the Debt to Income Ratio.

                                                 Total monthly outgoings on liabilities (EMIs)
Debt to Income Ratio =               Total monthly income from fixed sources

As discussed, this ratio is simply the sum of your monthly outgoings (EMIs) on your liabilities, divided by your total fixed monthly income. It ideally should not be more than 0.35 (or 35%), else you may be putting a strain on your income to service your debt.

Before taking a loan, assess your monthly income and expense, see how much additional outflow you can afford to have on an EMI, and accordingly decide how much loan you can comfortably handle.

Remember, if you take a higher loan, you have to pay a higher EMI. The broad thumb rule is, your EMI will be as many thousands per month, as every 1 lakh loan you take.
So, if you take a loan of Rs. 20 lakhs, your EMI will be (approximately) Rs. 20,000 per month.

Why It Is Sometimes NOT Better To Prepay Your Loan 

At PersonalFN we have come across many clients, who once they have taken a loan, prefer to prepay it as soon as possible because the idea of being 'in debt' is not comfortable for them.

This is a personal matter and while there is no question that these clients are genuinely feeling uncomfortable about the loan - it does not necessarily make financial sense to prepay as early as possible.

The reason is simply the opportunity cost of your money.

This means, if you have a loan which is charging you interest at 10% p.a., and you suddenly come into some surplus funds which you can either use to prepay all or part of your loan, or to invest, the first thing you need to do is check the opportunity cost of these surplus funds.

Would it make more sense to prepay the 10% interest loan, and thereby save yourself from paying the 10% interest? Or would it make more sense to invest the funds into an investment instrument that would earn you more than 10% - based on your risk appetite and time horizon?

For example, Mr. Shah (our favourite fictional character) has taken a home loan on which he is paying 10.50% interest currently. He has recently inherited Rs. 10 lakhs and wants to use it to partly prepay his loan. As there is no prepayment penalty any longer, he wants to prepay the loan up to Rs. 10 lakhs - the entire extent of the inheritance.

However, instead of prepaying the loan, if he invests the Rs. 10 lakh into a strong performing diversified equity mutual fund, then in the long term (3-5 years plus) he will likely earn a return of 15% per annum on this investment. So instead of saving 10.50%, he is earning 15%.

This is what we mean by opportunity cost. If he chooses to prepay the loan and save 10.50% interest, he is losing out on the potential earning of 15% return.

Remember, if there is an investment instrument which would give you a long term rate of return that is higher than the rate of interest you are paying on your loan, it would be financially more prudent to invest the funds and earn the higher rate of return, than to prepay the loan (in full or in part) and save yourself the lower rate of interest.

In addition, certain loans have tax benefits. For example, a home loan on a self occupied property helps you get a tax benefit of up to Rs. 1 lakh on principal repayment u/S 80C and interest repaid is deductible up to Rs. 1.50 lakhs. On a let out property, the interest deductible is not limited, you can claim full interest paid as a deduction from your annual taxable income.

So, remember - a loan can be a great tool to help build your wealth. Just remember to only take the amount of loan you are able to service without adding financial stress, and have a contingency fund set aside as well.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's annual food inflation eased to its lowest in nearly three-and-a-half years in late November, driven by a sharp fall in prices of vegetables and protein-rich food, bolstering the case for a pause in rates when the RBI reviews policy next week.

Food inflation sharply eased to 6.60 percent in the year to November 26, government data on Thursday showed, from an annual 8.00 percent in the previous week.

New crop arrivals in the market have broadly pushed down vegetable prices, with potatoes leading the fall with a more than 4 percent drop in the latest week. Prices of protein-rich items like eggs, meat and fish also fell by more than 1 percent.

The annual fuel inflation remained unchanged at 15.53 percent in the latest week, data showed.

"There are seasonal advantages in place which explains the declining trend in food inflation. This was expected, but the only issue is this could partly be offset by the impact of the weak rupee on core inflation," said Shubhda Rao, chief economist with Yes Bank.

"I still expect November (headline) inflation to come in at 9.04 percent," Rao said.

The government will release October's industrial output data and November's headline inflation data next week.

"I would still bet on a pause in the December review," Rao said, adding, if October's industrial output growth slumps, and if other macroeconomic indicators continue to disappoint, the Reserve Bank of India could cut rates as early as in January.

Others echo her views.

The headline inflation has stayed stubbornly above 9 percent for the 11th month in October, despite 13 rate increases by the RBI since March 2010.

"If food inflation is collapsing, it will feed into other inflation very soon. So my view is that we are in a position to cut rates today," said Surojit Bhalla, chairman of Oxus Investments, a Delhi-based consultancy firm, earlier.

"In my opinion, the past two rate hikes were unnecessary and applied because of the RBI's ludicrous obsession with the spot level of inflation. Worse still, they have barely started to feed through," said Patrick Perret-Green, head of forex and local markets strategy for Asia at Citigroup said in a note.

India's benchmark 10-year bond yield briefly fell as much as 3 basis points to 8.50 percent, following the weekly price data release.

In its October review, the central bank had said if inflationary pressures started to abate by December, more rate increases may not be needed.

The RBI had said that taming food inflation also needs supply-side responses and had indicated that the government needed to do more to smoothen supply-side responses.

India suspended on Wednesday plans to open its $450 billion supermarket sector to foreign firms such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc (NYSE:WMT - NewsWMT.N), backtracking from one of the government's boldest reforms in years in the face of a huge political backlash.

Various government officials had said that allowing foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail could have eased supply-side bottlenecks and tamped down on food inflation which is typically outside the purview of monetary policy.