5 THINGS FIRST PM Modi to launch India Post Payments Bank; 3-year & 5-year insurance for new vehicles mandatory from today; Results of the Karnataka elections to 105 urban local bodies to be announced; Tobacco products to have new pictorial warnings; Railways to stop offering free travel insurance from today

1. $2 million a year and a jail term, perks FB's India head could get At the outset, it's the job every executive would fight for: High profile, handsomely paid ($2 million a year), and with a surety of being among the most influential people in the country. But read the offer document — rather the legislative documents — carefully before you apply. We are talking about Facebook's hunt for an India head — a post that has been vacant since its previous India MD quit last October. And for a good reason. A government panel — headed by Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba — appointed after the spate of lynchings has suggested, among other measures, to hold the heads of social media companies responsible for fake news on their platforms and be made to face criminal proceedings. The report has been submitted to a Group of Ministers headed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, which in turn will submit it to the PMO after deliberation. India's IT minister has been pressuring WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, to provide a provision to trace the original source of "sinister" messages — a request that would break the end-to-end encryption of the platform that ensures the privacy of its users. The panel's suggestion, if implemented, would be an ultimatum for the social media companies: Comply (and thus forgo user privacy) or be ready to face the wrath. Read the full story here

2. As politics enters slog overs, GDP says Happy New Financial Year Recovery in the 'death': In what may be a political booster shot for the government ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the first quarter GDP recorded a growth of 8.2% — the country's highest in two years, since Q1 2016-17, when the GDP grew at 8.27%. The good news: The economy seems to be out of the slowdown it had slipped into when growth rate fell to 5.6% in the first quarter of last year (2017-18). Since it's powered by a near double digit rise in private consumption and over two-digit increase in investments, the growth momentum in the coming quarters is likely to be positive. The moderation: While the Modi government will certainly get some bragging rights, especially after the flak over a falling rupee and rising fuel prices, some economists also predict a comparatively slower growth in the next three quarters — with even the RBI expecting the full year GDP growth at 7.4%, which means that the next three quarters are likely to see a growth at a little over 7% on an average. Fast forward: In comparison to India, China's GDP in the April-June quarter — which is the country's second quarter as it follows a January-December fiscal year — stood at 6.7%, making India the fastest growing major economy, ranked 6th in the world ahead of France. Read the full story here

3. Should India codify community service as a form of punishment? Since the Kerala floods, courts across the country have ordered donation to the CM relief fund as a form of penalty: Supreme Court recently ordered a lawyer to deposit a fine of Rs 5 lakh to the relief fund for "judge-bashing"; in Gujarat, sessions courts of Vadodara and Ahmedabad ordered litigantsthe same in separate cases; on Friday, Bombay HC ordered Galpha Laboratories to deposit Rs 1.50 crore for trademark infringement. Perhaps now India can take it further and formally consider community service as a form of punishment for minor crimes — the Indian Penal Code does not explicitly state community service as a form of punishment for a crime (the Juvenile Justice Act, 2000 has a provision, though). But various courts have ordered them in the past; last year in Mumbai, for instance, a lower court ordered community service for three accused of rioting, instead of jail time. Here’s why community service would serve India good: India's prisons are overcrowded by 115%, and its prison budget is ballooning; the National Crime Record Bureau says the sanctioned budget for 2015-16 was Rs 5,157.6 crore. Most of India's inmates are undertrials and not hardened convicts, and many in minor cases. A fast track penalty of community service for minor crimes will not only help improve India's prisons — and thus improve focus on hardened criminals — it will also reduce the burden on courts (there are more than 3 crore pending cases in India's courts). European nations such as Spain, Hungary, England and Wales, Scotland, Latvia, and all Nordic countries, have various forms of community service — and the consensus is that it has been successful.

4. You'll pay more for your car, thanks to bad & careless drivers Pay more: Buyers of new vehicles will have to shell out more from today. It is now mandatory for companies to offer at least three-year policies for new cars and five-year policies for two-wheelers instead of the one-year policies they offered earlier. How much: The initial cover on a new car of over 1500 cc engine capacity will be at least Rs 24,300, up from Rs 7,890 now. For bikes of over 350 cc, it will be Rs 13,024 against Rs 2,323 now. Why: Many road accident victims cannot claim compensation from insurance companies because the vehicles involved in the accident are often uninsured. Bad drivers: Fault of the driver accounts for 84% of all road accidents in India. Speaking on the phone while driving is not just careless, it resulted in 4,976 accidents, 2,138 deaths and 4,746 injuries in 2016. Only six crore out of 18 crore vehicles running on the roads are insured. Good drivers: A five-year policy means saying goodbye to the no-claim bonus (discount on future premium) at the time of annual renewals if you have been a good driver. Good drivers pay the price of bad drivers on roads. There is high level of compliance by cars with up to 90% renewing policies regularly but that's not the case with commercial vehicles and two-wheelers. So diligent drivers will pay for careless drivers.

NEWS IN CLUES 5. Which is the second-most understood term in the world? Clue 1: It started as a drug-infused wine in the 19th century. Its founder though, had originally set out to create a pain reliever. Clue 2: A bottle of this drink has a pH scale of 2.8, and could dissolve a nail in just 4 days. Clue 3: It boasts of 1.9 billion servings per day on an average globally. Scroll below for answer

6. A wink, a secret, a leak, a divorce, a contest and a day in SC A 'wink' in the picturisation of a popular folk song in a film cannot be construed to be 'blasphemous' or hurting the religious sentiments of Islam, ruled the SC as it quashed two FIRs lodged against Kerala actor Priya Varrier. A secret: SC asked Election Commission why it was reluctant to provide electoral rolls of Madhya Pradesh to the Congress Party, which alleged existence of more than 60 lakh duplicate and fake voters in the list. A leak: SC stayed declaration of 2017 SSC exam result saying that entire examination process seemed to be tainted as people within the Commission were involved for leaking the question paper. Around 19 lakh candidates appeared for nearly 9,372 vacancies under the SSC Tier II exam that were held between February 17 and February 22. A divorce: Telangana has made a case for bifurcation of the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh High Court, saying judiciary must also be divided between the states as has been done with the executive and legislature. A contest: SC gave in to the joint demand of J&K and the Centre for deferment of hearing on petitions challenging the constitutional validity of Article 35A that confers special rights on residents of J&K and deprives property, education and job rights to Indians who are not natural residents of the state. The reason: the panchayat polls from September to December.

X-PLAINED 7. India's biggest bank in the making What: The India Posts Payment Bank (IPPB) is a public sector company under the Department of Posts and Ministry of Communication with a 100% equity of the Government of India, and governed by the Reserve Bank of India. How: It will focus on providing banking and financial services to people in rural areas, by linking all the 1.55 lakh post office branches (that's nearly 2.5 times the bank network) with India Post Payments Bank services by the end of 2018. Around 11,000 postmen both in rural and urban areas will provide doorstep banking services. This will create the country's largest banking network with a direct presence at the village level. IPPB has been allowed to link around 17 crore postal savings bank accounts with its accounts. Why: IPPB offers three types of savings accounts: regular savings accounts, digital savings accounts and basic savings accounts. The annual interest rates on all three are fixed at 4%. IPPB can also accept deposits up to Rs 1 lakh per account from individuals and small businesses, and facilitate money transfer to other bank accounts, among other services. In addition, you can also pay for services of around 100 firms (including phone and DTH recharges) that are present on the Bharat Bill payments system of the National Payments Corporation of India. When: IPPB will be launched today by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and will go live with 650 branches in addition to 3,250 access points co-located at post offices. Two pilot IPPB branches were inaugurated on Jan. 30, 2017 at Raipur and Ranchi. Who: Suresh Sethi is the MD & CEO of IPPB.

8. Will Trump sanction China over this Muslim community? The UN has called on China to shut down its internment camps that, it says, illegally hold Uighurs against their will in the pretext of countering terrorism. 17 US politicians, from the Republican and Democratic parties, have sent Trump a signed letter urging him to impose sanctions including asset freezes and visa bans on Chinese officials and companies. Who: Uighurs (also spelt Uyghurs) are a Turkic-speaking ethnic group, mostly residing in Xinjiang in northwestern China. Almost all Uighurs are Muslims, and most are oasis farmers, small-time traders, or craftsmen. China distrusts Uighurs as they are ethnically, culturally and linguistically different from the majority Han Chinese, exercising strict control over their lives. Some Uighurs have turned to violence — and terrorism — in response. This made China exert more control over them. The UN says Uighurs are held incommunicado for long periods, without being charged or tried. Former detainees say Muslims are forced to disavow their religious beliefs, criticise themselves and their loved ones and give thanks to the ruling Communist party. But Trump's record on matters regarding Islam has been patchy: His travel ban targeted immigrants from Muslim-majority nations, as a Presidential candidate he said "I think Islam hates us"; he has criticised Germany for welcoming "criminals"; and following the London Bridge attack in June 2017, he attacked the city mayor Sadiq Khan, a Muslim of Pakistani ancestry. Also, Trump needs China's support to pressure North Korea. This week he lashed out at China, saying "we know that China is providing North Korea with considerable aid, including money, fuel, fertilizer and various other commodities. This is not helpful!". Will Trump see sanctions as a tool to strengthen his trade war with China? Meanwhile, Trump on Friday threatened to pull the US out of WTO — the world trade body through which the US has imposed its economic will over other nations for decades — if it doesn’t “shape up” and treat America better.

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9. On quakes, trust luck; on aftershocks, trust AI Second strike: What natural intelligence has not been able to accomplish — predicting when an earthquake will occur — artificial intelligence (AI) may just accomplish, with scientists at Harvard University and Google using an AI system to analyse a database of earthquakes from around the world to predict where aftershocks might occur. Why it's important: The initial temblor, known as "mainshock", is often followed by a few weaker aftershocks, which hamper recovery efforts. While the timing and size of aftershocks have been understood and explained by established empirical laws, forecasting the locations of these events has proven more challenging. How they did it: Researchers fed the data from 131,000 mainshock-aftershock events around the world to an AI system, which analysed the relationships between static stress changes caused by the mainshocks and aftershock locations and learned to predict.

10. Need for speed in billionaire donations Rich getting richer: A booming stock market and a resilient US economy have ensured that many billionaires, especially those who had pledged to give away a majority of their wealth during their lifetime, have gotten richer several times — as a result they are unable to donate fast enough to see any significant depletion of their wealth. Keeping pace: The US stock market has, on an average, given a return of 7-8% annually, whereas the annual donation by the world's wealthiest isn't anywhere close to that figure, which means it is impossible for the world's wealthiest philanthropists to donate even half of their total wealth during their lifetime. Pledge givers: Five of the signatories to The Giving Pledge — Warren Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan — have seen their combined wealth increase by $139 billion since the time the pledge was formed in 2010. Buffett's wealth alone has increased 86% since 2010 — he's currently worth $87.1 billion, despite having given away $30 billion since the time he wrote the pledge letter.

PLUS Joshna stuns the queen of squash Joshna Chinappa, India's best and World No. 16, scored an upset win over Nicol David — an eight-time world champion — to help India beat Malaysia 2-0 to reach the Asian Games women's team squash final. David is to squash what Serena Williams is to tennis — though at the age of 35 is on the last legs of her magnificent career. Dipika Pallikal (who beat Low Wee Wern), Sunayna Kuruvilla and Tanvi Khanna complete the India team. India's women's hockey team could not cap their first appearance in the Asiad final in 20 years with a gold, losing 1-2 to Japan to settle for silver. India men's team face Pakistan for a bronze medal today. Amit Panghal reached the final of the light-flyweight boxing final, and is ensured of at least a silver. He will face Rio Olympics gold medallist Hasanboy Dusmatov of Uzbekistan today. India did not win any gold yesterday. Watch out also for tonight's Japan vs South Korea football final, where star forward Son Heung-min (of Tottenham Hotspur) is battling not just for a gold but an exemption from a mandatory military service in Korea.

3 CURATED WEEKEND READS 1. How to battle from idea to launch and surviveThe most difficult thing about inventing a product is not inventing the product... it's everything that happens next, if anything happens at all. 2. Why kids want things Because they learn pretty quickly that materialism can help them navigate everyday life. 3. When is teamwork really necessary? Teaming is now seen as the workplace equivalent of motherhood and apple pie — invariably good. The problem is when leaders try to drive the wrong kind of collaboration on their particular teams.

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Answer To NEWS IN CLUES Coca-Cola. On Friday, the beverage major, whose formula was created by John Pemberton in 1886, said it had agreed to buy global coffee chain Costa from its UK owner Whitbread for $5.1 billion. The deal comes amid eroding consumer demand for conventional carbonated drinks owing to health and obesity concerns in the US and other markets.