Your essential daily update: Current Affairs Today. Analysis on the Cloudflare crisis, Middle East peace plans, and India’s security and economic headlines.
📰 Current Affairs Today: November 18, 2025
Today’s major headlines are dominated by a massive global internet disruption, a volatile security situation in the Middle East, and a robust economic forecast in India driven by fiscal reforms.
🌐 Global Tech Disruption: Cloudflare Outage Hits Major Platforms
A significant internet infrastructure failure has caused widespread disruption globally after the web-infrastructure firm Cloudflare was hit by a major outage.
- Impact: The glitch rendered numerous popular platforms, including X (formerly Twitter) and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, inaccessible for many users around the world.
- Context: This marks the second major internet disruption this year, raising concerns over the fragility of global web services and the reliance on a few key infrastructure providers.
🌍 International Security and Diplomacy
Middle East: UN Approves Gaza Peace Plan
The United Nations Security Council has adopted a U.S.-backed resolution endorsing President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza and authorizing an international stabilization force.
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- Details: The plan outlines a path for securing and governing the region, though Hamas has reportedly rejected the approval.
- Security Flare-Up: Separately, violence flared in the West Bank, where an Israeli was killed and three were wounded in a ramming and stabbing attack.
India-Russia Ties & SCO Summit
External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar addressed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Heads of Government meeting in Moscow.
- Economic Focus: He stressed that the growing global economic turbulence calls for cooperation, de-risking, and diversification of supply chains.
- Terrorism: Jaishankar reiterated India’s demand for “zero tolerance towards terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” a strong statement following recent domestic security incidents.
Bangladesh: Sheikh Hasina Sentenced to Death
Ousted Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been sentenced to death by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) in a decades-old case linked to deaths during a student-led crackdown. The ruling is expected to generate significant political and diplomatic fallout.
🇮🇳 India: National Updates
Security: Key Accused Deported & Naxal Commander Killed
- Anmol Bishnoi Deportation: In a major move against organized crime, the U.S. has reportedly begun the process to deport Anmol Bishnoi, a key accused in the recent murder case of Baba Siddique, to India.
- Naxalite Elimination: Security forces killed one of the country’s most wanted Naxal commanders, Madvi Hidma, in an encounter in the Papikonda National Park area of Andhra Pradesh.
Economy: Robust GDP Forecast & Reforms
The economic outlook for India remains strong, with the State Bank of India (SBI) releasing an optimistic forecast for the second quarter of the current fiscal year.
- Q2 GDP Projection: SBI predicts India’s GDP growth will likely surpass 7.5% for the July-September quarter, significantly higher than the RBI’s forecast of 7%.
- Growth Drivers: The surge is attributed to strong festive-season demand, improving rural consumption, and the positive impact of the GST rationalization announced in September, which lowered tax rates on several household items.
Technology & Commerce
- New Industrial Classification: The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has released the National Industrial Classification (NIC) 2025, its first revision since 2008, to better capture new and emerging sectors like digital and green technologies.
Here are the detailed updates on the Cloudflare Global Internet Outage and the India GDP Forecast:
1. 🌐 Cloudflare Outage: Cause, Impact, and Recovery
A major global internet disruption occurred today after Cloudflare, one of the internet’s most critical infrastructure providers, experienced a widespread network failure.
Key Details of the Incident:
- Impacted Services: The outage caused “widespread 500 errors” and connection failures across countless websites globally, including major platforms like X (formerly Twitter), OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Spotify, Canva, Microsoft Teams, and retail sites.
- Cause Identified: Cloudflare later stated that the root cause was an issue with a “configuration file” that manages threat traffic. This file unexpectedly grew beyond its limit, triggering a crash in the software system responsible for traffic handling across several Cloudflare services. The company confirmed there was no evidence of a cyber-attack or malicious activity.
- The ‘Gatekeeper’ Role: The incident underscores the deep reliance of the modern internet on a handful of key Content Delivery Network (CDN) providers like Cloudflare, which handle roughly one-fifth of all web traffic. Their services are essential for website security (DDoS protection) and speed.
- Resolution: Cloudflare implemented a fix and declared the core incident resolved approximately three hours after it began, though some customers continued to experience higher-than-normal error rates during the recovery phase. The company apologized for the disruption.
2. 🇮🇳 India GDP Forecast: Strong Q2 Growth Expected
India’s economic outlook remains highly optimistic, with new data suggesting a strong acceleration in the second quarter of the current fiscal year (Q2 FY26).
Key Economic Highlights:
- Optimistic Forecast: A research report by the State Bank of India (SBI) nowcasts that India’s Real GDP growth for the July–September quarter (Q2) will likely be around 7.5%, with a possibility of an upside surprise. This is notably higher than the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) official forecast of 7% for the quarter.
- Drivers of Growth: The surge is primarily attributed to four key factors:
- Festive-Season Demand: Strong consumption, fueled by the recent festive season, which the report described as a “triumph of hope over hype.”
- GST Rationalization: The structural reforms, particularly the GST rate reduction implemented in September, lowered taxes on several household items, further boosting consumer spending.
- Investment Activity: A continued pick-up in investment by both the public and private sectors.
- Broad-Based Momentum: High-frequency indicators show acceleration across agriculture, industry, and services, with the share of leading consumption indicators rising from 70% in Q1 to 83% in Q2.
- GST Collections: Gross domestic GST collections for November 2025 (reflecting October returns) are projected to be around ₹1.49 lakh crore, with total GST receipts (including imports) expected to cross ₹2 lakh crore for the month, driven by festive demand and improved compliance.
