HMBR and Co.

Adani Group, a conglomerate that underpins swathes of India’s economy, responded to a scathing report by Hindenburg Research, a New York investment firm. The report accused Adani Group of market manipulation and accounting fraud, sparking a $48bn stockmarket rout. In the 413-page retort, the conglomerate denied wrongdoing and claimed Hindenburg issued the report in order to book gains. Hindenburg said Adani’s response “largely confirmed our findings and ignored our key questions”.

Israel’s far-right government has responded to the worst terror attack against Israeli citizens in 15 years with collective punishment. The family of the Palestinian gunman who murdered seven passers-by in a shooting spree in Jerusalem on Friday night have already had their home sealed, as a prelude to its demolition. Similar steps are planned for the home of the 13-year-old who shot and wounded two Israelis on Saturday. Palestinians in Jerusalem found to be involved in terror activity will have their residency rights revoked.

Legal and moral qualms aside, these tactics have all been tried with only limited success in the past. But the ministers are playing to their nationalist audience. Likewise, with the incendiary decision by Israel’s security cabinet on Sunday to encourage more Israeli civilians to carry guns. Help is unlikely to come from America’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, when he visits on Monday. The last serious American initiative to solve the conflict ended, fruitlessly, in 2014.

On Monday, when Germany’s statistics office unveiled its final figure for GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2022, the number was slightly worse than expected. The country’s economy shrank by 0.2% compared with the third quarter. That followed a 0.5% rise in GDP between second and third quarters. Another contraction, as is predicted for the first quarter of 2023, would mean a recession, which it had previously seemed as though Germany might narrowly avoid.

War in Ukraine, lingering supply hiccups and surging inflation, especially in energy prices, has made Germany’s energy-hungry and export-reliant economy look especially wobbly. But after a relatively mild weather kept energy prices down, some optimism returned. In fact both production and demand have been hurt by high energy prices and rising interest rates. Now the German government is saying it expects a return to growth in the spring.

The de facto leader of India’s opposition party, Congress, finishes his near-3,500km “unite India March” on Monday. Rahul Gandhi has billed his country-spanning walk as a riposte to the strident Hindu-nationalism of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It is part of an effort to revive Congress’s electoral prospects before a general election next year. The former juggernaut of Indian politics has suffered successive humiliating defeats.

Such pilgrimages, yatras, have long been a feature of Indian politics. Marches in the 1990s were central to the BJP’s rise to prominence. Mr Gandhi has drawn crowds; he is planning more to galvanise local support. That is sorely needed: Congress controls just three of India’s 28 states and less than 10% of seats in the lower house of parliament. Polls say Narendra Modi, the BJP prime minister, is backed by twice as many Indians as Mr Gandhi. Mr Gandhi’s long walk may be over, but Congress still faces a daunting trek.

Turkey’s opposition parties are hopeful about their chances of unseating President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in May, when the country holds both presidential and parliamentary elections. On Monday they will unveil their manifesto, which includes bringing back the country’s old parliamentary system. Executive lawmaking powers were transferred to the president in 2018. Since then Mr Erdogan has expanded his grip over Turkey’s courts and electoral board. He is also eyeing more constitutional change, to enshrine the right of Muslim women to wear the headscarf and to protect family values against “perverted currents”.

To put a stop to that, the six opposition parties have formed a coalition which will field a single candidate. But they cannot agree on who that should be. The likely choice—Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the uncharismatic chairman of the CHP, the biggest party in the bloc—has led his party to four successive parliamentary election defeats since 2010. The coalition has two weeks left to squabble until a planned announcement.

Residents of America’s Gulf coast have several months yet before they batten down the hatches when hurricane season starts in June. But their property-insurance bills offer a constant reminder of the risk of disaster: firms charge homeowners in Florida and Louisiana some of the dearest premiums in the country. Still, insurers are struggling to stay afloat after a run of terrible storms. More than eight went bankrupt in Louisiana last year; 15 have gone under in Florida since 2020.

The result is that states are reluctantly playing an ever-larger role in propping up their insurance markets. On Monday Louisiana lawmakers will gather for a special legislative session and probably allocate money—officials have requested $45m—to induce firms to keep operating. They want to limit homeowners’ reliance on the state-backed insurer of last resort, lest that undermine the private market, while insisting that premiums stay affordable. But what is affordable for homeowners is not economic for firms.

Donald Trump will be in South Carolina on Saturday trying to stabilise his 2024 presidential bid after a rocky start. The former president announced his comeback campaign days after his party endured a humiliating setback in the midterm elections. Since then he has been plagued by scandal, including one over his dinner with a white nationalist. The growing appeal of rivals such as Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has left Mr Trump’s grip on the Republican Party in question.

Saturday’s event will not be one of the epic rallies he is known for, but a staid address at the statehouse for an audience of 500. It is proving difficult for the campaign to muster Republican grandees to appear behind Mr Trump because so many are holding their endorsements until other challengers arrive. That suggests that the king’s return may be a prelude not to a happy coronation but a bloody civil war.

On Saturday Libya’s National Oil Corporation will sign a giant gas deal with Eni, Italy’s oil major. The $8bn agreement—part of a broader plan by Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, to strengthen energy ties with Africa—will allow Eni to develop two of Libya’s offshore gasfields. NOC says the sites could ultimately produce a total of 24m cubic metres of gas a day, about an eighth of what Italy currently consumes.

By reducing its gas exports to Europe, Russia has triggered a hunt for alternative supplies. In 2022 the EU inked gas deals with Azerbaijan, Egypt and Israel, among others. Many countries in the bloc are pursuing agreements on their own. This one, though, looks trickier than most. Political instability and civil war have long prevented Libya from capitalising on its vast natural-energy reserves. Two rival factions still claim control of the country. The eastern-based parliament says the government in Tripoli, the capital, lacks the legitimacy to sign anything.

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Every January since 1988, World Wrestling Entertainment has gathered its elite wrestlers together for its Royal Rumble. Unlike other wrestling events, competitors enter the ring at fixed times rather than all at the start. The lycra-clad hall of fame includes Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and The Rock, who have each come out on top over the years.

This year’s event, held in San Antonio, Texas, on Saturday, also comes with plenty of drama outside the ring. Vince McMahon retired as WWE’s chief executive last year after an internal investigation found that he had paid $15m to settle sexual misconduct allegations by four women. However, he returned to the board of directors this month and has hired JPMorgan to explore selling WWE. With a market capitalisation of $6.3bn, the world’s largest wrestling institution has bidders circling. Decades after it was founded, its scripted theatrics continue to keep fans enthralled.

Jimmy Laird, the protagonist of “Shrinking”, a new series from Apple TV+, is a very bad therapist. Grieving for his dead wife and stupefied by drinking, drugs and self-pity, he ditches the guiding rules of his profession and decides to become a “psychological vigilante”. He tells one patient to leave her husband or he will stop treating her, and invites another to live in his spare room.

The number of Americans who report having been treated for mental health has almost doubled since 2002. That explains why portrayals of therapy are proliferating on screen, in shows such as “The Patient”, “Couples Therapy” and “Stutz”. Though few therapists want to be seen as vigilantes, they will understand the need for a compelling narrative arc. More concerning in their eyes would be to suggest that treatment makes no difference.

Last weekend Olga Tsukanova was heading to Moscow from her home in Samara, near the border with Kazakhstan, to deliver 700 letters written by disgruntled mothers of Russian soldiers to the prosecutor’s office. But at an airport in Samara she was detained, not for the first time, and warned she may be charged with “discrediting the army”. Ms Tsukanova has become the face of protests against Vladimir Putin’s mobilisation of Russian troops, though she is also uncomfortably close to peddlers of conspiracies about the war.

Ms Tsukanova is a 46-year-old mother who says her son, who joined the army in July, faced pressure to deploy to Ukraine despite earlier assurances that he would not have to. (An official says her son is serving inside Russia.)

After Mr Putin announced a “partial mobilisation” of recruits in September, Ms Tsukanova formed the Council of Mothers and Wives, which campaigns for better conditions for troops. Russian authorities have tolerated some criticism of the army’s incompetence in Ukraine. But there is little room for dissent in Mr Putin’s Russia: the government - opposition even before the invasion last February. Ms Tsukanova’s organisation has become a vehicle for broader anger over the military mobilisation—a stance that avoids a blatant anti-war message, but puts authorities in an awkward position.

To shut down the group would look bad, and Mr Putin clearly recognises the symbolic power of a soldier’s mother. In November he convened a televised meeting of women the Kremlin said were mothers of troops serving in Ukraine (all were sympathetic to the government). Ms Tsukanova rebuked Mr Putin for excluding her. The next month she was stopped by police. “They are afraid of us,” she declared.

This is not Ms Tsukanova’s first foray into politics. She once stood as a candidate for Volya, a party that was later banned. Its leader, Svetlana Lada-Rus, is a spiritual healer and noted conspiracy theorist who once ran for president of Russia. Now Ms Tsukanova’s activism is complicated by her ties to another organisation affiliated with Ms Lada-Rus. The National Union of the Revival of Russia calls for the restoration of the Soviet Union and peddles anti-Semitic lies about the war’s origins. Ms Tsukanova’s council distributes that group’s conspiracy theories about covid-19 vaccines.

To confront Mr Putin’s regime, you must be either courageous or crazy. Ms Tsukanova may be both.