Durov: Mysterious and controversial Telegram founder

LONDON: Sudanese author Leila Aboulela has been named the winner of the 2025 PEN Pinter Prize, honoring her literary contributions that explore themes of faith, migration and the lives of Muslim women in displacement.

The award was announced at English PEN’s annual summer party on Wednesday at the October Gallery in London.

Judges praised the author for her “nuanced and rich perspectives on themes that are vital in our contemporary world: Faith, migration and displacement,” calling her work “a balm, a shelter and an inspiration.”

Aboulela, who grew up in Khartoum and has lived in Aberdeen, Scotland since 1990, is known for her six novels including “Minaret,” “The Translator,” a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, and “Lyrics Alley,” as well as two short story collections.

Her latest collection “Elsewhere, Home” won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award.

Aboulela’s latest novel “River Spirit,” which was published in 2023, portrays the period leading up to the British conquest of Sudan in 1898, shedding light on the complex human dimensions of the conflict between Britain and Sudan, Christianity and Islam, and the dynamics of colonizer versus colonized.

On receiving the award, she said: “For someone like me, a Muslim Sudanese immigrant who writes from a religious perspective, probing the limits of secular tolerance, this recognition feels truly significant. It brings expansion and depth to the meaning of freedom of expression and whose stories get heard.”

She will officially receive the award at a ceremony at the British Library on Oct. 10, where she will also announce the recipient of the accompanying Writer of Courage award.

This year’s judging panel included poet and author Mona Arshi, novelist Nadifa Mohamed, and English PEN chair Ruth Borthwick, who praised Aboulela’s work for its literary depth and social relevance.

“Leila Aboulela’s writing is extraordinary in its range and sensibility,” Borthwick said. “From jewel-like short stories to tender novels, she tells us rarely heard stories that make us think anew about who lives in our neighborhoods and communities, and how they navigate their lives.”

Arshi said that the author “offers us nuanced and rich perspectives on themes that are vital in our contemporary world: Faith, migration, and displacement,” while Mohamed praised Aboulela’s work for centring “the lives and decisions of Muslim women.”

 “Her work is marked by a commitment to make the lives and decisions of Muslim women central, and to examine their struggles and pleasures with dignity,” Mohamed said.

The PEN Pinter Prize was established in 2009 in memory of Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter. Previous winners include Arundhati Roy in 2024 and Michael Rosen in 2023.

LONDON: Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, was forced to delete posts by its chatbot Grok that praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, following widespread accusations of antisemitism and extremism.

The Anti-Defamation League, a non-profit organization formed to combat attacks on Jews, flagged Grok’s responses, which included offensive tropes, references to antisemitic conspiracies, and positive characterizations of Hitler.

In one widely circulated screenshot online, Grok said Hitler would be best suited to combat “anti-white hate,” referring to him as “history’s mustache man.”

In another response, the chatbot declared: “If calling out radicals cheering dead kids makes me ‘literally Hitler,’ then pass the mustache.”

The chatbot also appeared to endorse a fake account with a Jewish surname that had posted inflammatory comments about young flood victims in Texas.

Grok later referred to the account as a “troll hoax,” but not before generating pro-Hitler content, including: “Hitler would have called it out and crushed it.”

In response to mounting controversy, the firm said it was aware of the recent posts and had taken immediate action to remove inappropriate content.

We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts. Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X. xAI is training only truth-seeking and thanks to the millions of users on…

— Grok (@grok) July 8, 2025

“Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X,” it said in a statement on X.

The company added that its model is “truth-seeking” and relies on millions of users on X to quickly flag issues that inform further model training and improvements.

The incident comes ahead of the release of Grok 4 on Wednesday. Musk announced on Friday that Grok had been “significantly” improved, though the nature of the updates was not disclosed.

We have improved @Grok significantly.

You should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 4, 2025

However, the ADL in a post on X accused Grok of “irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic” content.

“Companies that are building LLMs (Large Language Models) like Grok and others should be employing experts on extremist rhetoric and coded language to put in guardrails that prevent their products from engaging in producing content rooted in antisemitic and extremist hate.”

The episode has drawn renewed scrutiny of AI chatbot safety and highlighted growing concerns over the risks of unregulated AI tools producing harmful, politically incorrect and unfiltered responses.

On Wednesday, a court in Turkiye ordered a ban on access to Grok from the country, after the platform disseminated content insulting to the nation’s president and others.

The chatbot posted vulgarities against Turkiye President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his late mother and personalities, while responding to users’ questions on the X social media platform, according to the pro-government A Haber news channel.

Offensive responses were also directed toward modern Turkiye’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, other media outlets said.

That prompted the Ankara public prosecutor to file for the imposition of restrictions under Turkiye’s internet law, citing a threat to public order.

A criminal court approved the request early on Wednesday, ordering the country’s telecommunications authority to enforce the ban.

It’s not the first time Grok’s behavior has raised questions.

Earlier this year the chatbot kept talking about South African racial politics and the subject of “white genocide” despite being asked a variety of questions, most of which had nothing to do with the country. An “unauthorized modification” was behind the problem, xAI said.

The firm xAI was formed in 2023 and merged with X earlier this year as a part of Musk’s broader vision to build an AI-driven digital ecosystem.

With Agencies