5 stories you must read today, November 18: From Prashant Kishor taking full responsibility for the poll debacle to X down for users worldwide

Elon Musk-owned social media platform X faced global outage on Tuesday. According to Downdetector, over 11,500 users in the United States and many in India reported problems accessing the site. Reports of disruptions began around 5:20 pm IST (6:41 am ET). The outage affected several countries, with users unable to refresh feeds, post content, or log in before partial recovery was observed later in the evening. Some users further reported facing issues while using the web version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It is not immediately clear whether these disruptions are related. Read more

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Ramnath Goenka lecture. In a post on X, Tharoor recounted attending the sixth RNG lecture in Delhi, where the PM spoke about India’s “constructive impatience” for development and the need to shed a colonial mindset. Modi called India an “emerging model” and urged a 10-year mission to revive cultural pride and indigenous knowledge systems. Tharoor described the address as both “an economic outlook and cultural call to action”. Read more

Prashant Kishor on Tuesday took full responsibility for the Jan Suraaj Party’s defeat in the Bihar Assembly elections, saying the campaign failed to deliver the promised “systemic change”. Announcing a day-long fast on 20 November as “atonement”, he said the fault lay in his strategy, not in the intentions of the party. Rejecting talk of retirement, Kishor vowed to continue working in Bihar. He accused the state government of pre-poll “vote buying” through massive cash disbursals and challenged Nitish Kumar to deliver the promised Rs 2 lakh to women beneficiaries. He also questioned the EC’s conduct and warned of legal action against corrupt ministers. Read more

Gangster Anmol Bishnoi, accused of plotting the murder of NCP leader Baba Siddique in 2024, is set to be deported to India from the United States after the process was completed, officials said Tuesday. He is expected to land in Delhi within hours, though the Centre will decide which agency takes custody first. Siddique’s son Zeeshan said he was informed by US authorities that Anmol had been “removed from the US.” Brother of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, Anmol is wanted in several cases, including the Sidhu Moosewala murder and last year’s firing outside Salman Khan’s residence. Read more

India on Tuesday said that the world must display "zero tolerance" towards terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, asserting that there can be no justification, no looking away and "no whitewashing". "As India has demonstrated, we have the right to defend our people against terrorism, and will exercise it," External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said in his address at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Heads of Government meeting. Jaishankar said India believes that the SCO must "adapt to the changing global landscape, develop an expanded agenda, and reform its working methods". The statement came a week after a blast near Delhi's Red Fort area killed 12 people. Read more