Category: News

Hamas informed negotiators on Monday that not all of the 33 hostages who would be freed in the first phase of a possible cease-fire deal with Israel are still living and that the remains of those who have died would be among the initial releases, according to two people familiar with the talks.

The disclosure came as part of Hamas’s counteroffer to Israel’s latest proposal, which envisions a first-phase, six-week cease-fire in exchange for the return of some of the hostages taken during the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. It was not clear whether Hamas revealed how many of the 33 are still alive and how many are dead.

The first group of hostages meant to be freed in the initial phase of the proposed agreement is supposed to include women, older men and the sick and wounded who are among the more than 100 believed still to be held captive. The Israelis initially wanted 40 to be released in the first phase but came to understand that Hamas did not hold that many who fit the criteria. Israeli and American officials have long assumed that some of the hostages may be dead.

The news that the first group of hostages to be released would include the remains of some taken seven months ago will surely upset families who have been pressing the Israeli government to do more to free their loved ones. The fate of the hostages has become a major issue with the Israeli public as thousands of demonstrators have poured into the streets to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to make a deal. Protesters blocked major roads in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv late Monday after Hamas’s counteroffer.

Israeli officials said that the Hamas counteroffer was not acceptable, but they have agreed to keep negotiating. Officials from various countries serving as intermediaries will gather again in Cairo this week to go over the counteroffer and see if further progress can be made. Israel has agreed to send a delegation to review the proposal and contemplate further concessions.

By Monday morning, the answer to one of the biggest questions looming over the Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York had emerged.

Would members of the union representing employees of Vogue and other Condé Nast publications proceed with threatened disruptions to the gala orchestrated by Vogue editor Anna Wintour? No: A tentative contract agreement between Condé Nast and union leaders was reached hours before the event.

But other questions — What celebrities would show up? How would guests interpret the “Garden of Time” dress code? — were only answered as attendees started stepping out of Sprinter vans to make their way into the gala, known formally as the Costume Institute Benefit.

As stars like Emily Ratajkowski, Pamela Anderson and Dan Levy hit the carpet, some sartorial themes became clear. Among them: Floral prints and embellishments, elaborate headpieces and skin-revealing outfits that skewed more Garden of Eden.

At an event where fashion is the focus, it can be harder to stand out on a red carpet (or a greenish one, as was the case at this year’s Met Gala). But these 20 ensembles — for reasons good and not-so-good — will be hard to forget.

Reporting contributed by Anthony Rotunno and Callie Holtermann.

When Kris Hallenga was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer — the most advanced form — at 23, questions swirled through her head: “Why didn’t anyone tell me to check my boobs? Why didn’t I know I could get breast cancer at 23?”

If she hadn’t known that she could have breast cancer so young, there was a very good chance that others were equally uninformed, she said in a 2021 interview with The Guardian. She spent the next 15 years educating young people about early detection through her nonprofit organization, CoppaFeel, and in a 2021 memoir, “Glittering a Turd.”

On Monday, CoppaFeel announced that Ms. Hallenga had died at 38. A spokesman for the organization said she had died at home in Cornwall, England, and that the cause was breast cancer.

“Survival was never enough,” she said during a publicity tour in 2021. “I don’t just want to survive, I want to be able to really look at my life and go, ‘I’m glad to still be here, and I’m getting the most of what I want from life.’”

Kristen Hallenga was born on Nov. 11, 1985, in Norden, a small town in northern Germany, to a German father and an English mother, both of whom were teachers, according to The Times of London. When she was 9, she moved to Daventry in central England with her mother, Jane Hallenga; her twin sister, Maren Hallenga; and their older sister Maike Hallenga, all three of whom survive her. Her father, Reiner Hallenga, died of a heart attack when she was 20.

Ms. Hallenga first felt a lump in 2009 when she was in Beijing working for a travel company and teaching on the side. During a visit back home in the Midlands in central England, Ms. Hallenga went to her internist. She told The Guardian that her doctor had blamed the lump on hormonal changes associated with her birth control pill.

But the lump grew more painful, and bloody discharge developed. Another internist gave her a diagnosis similar to the first — hormones and the pill. But because Ms. Hallenga didn’t know what would be considered normal, she didn’t have anything to judge by.

“I wasn’t touching my boobs at all,” Ms. Hallenga said in 2021. “I didn’t know anything about them.”

But Ms. Hallenga’s mother, whose own mother had breast cancer at an early age, insisted that her daughter obtain a referral to a breast clinic. By the time she was diagnosed, eight months after finding the lump, Ms. Hallenga’s diagnosis was terminal. It had also spread to her spine.

After an aggressive round of chemotherapy, a mastectomy and hormone therapy, tests in 2011 revealed that the cancer had spread to her liver, she later told The Huffington Post. A year later, doctors found that the cancer had spread to her brain, and she underwent intense radiotherapy to remove a tumor.

But she continued to work through her illness. She wrote about her cancer diagnosis and her advocacy work in a column for her local newspaper, The Northampton Chronicle and Echo, and The Sun. But it was her work with CoppaFeel that reached her target audience: young people.

The organization has sent thousands of reminders for breast self-exams via text message, organized a group of women known as the Boobettes who go into schools to talk about their experience with breast cancer at a young age, helped add cancer awareness to the education curriculum in Britain and aired what was believed to be the first nipple in a daytime television advertisement that encouraged people to get to know their chests.

All of it was done in the hopes that others could avoid a diagnosis like the one Ms. Hallenga was navigating.

“Cancer so often comes with a package of terms — survivor, thriver, warrior — and it’s great if someone wants to hang their existence on those words if it helps them get through the day — if it helps them get perspective, great,” Ms. Hallenga said when her memoir was released. “But for me, I couldn’t really resonate with those words ever. Because I say, unless I’m happy being alive, then what is the point in surviving?”

In 2017, Ms. Hallenga stepped down as chief executive of CoppaFeel to move to Cornwall and spend more time with her sister Maren. Last June, she threw herself a living funeral at the Truro Cathedral in Cornwall. The dress code was YODO — you only die once. Dawn French, who played a village priest in the BBC sitcom “The Vicar of Dibley,” led the celebration of life.

“I’ve never felt love like it,” Ms. Hallenga wrote on Instagram after the event. “I’ve never felt joy like it. I’ve never felt such kinship with mortality. I’ve never felt so alive.”

While stars, celebrities and Anna Wintour ascended the steps at the Met Gala on Monday night, protesters began assembling on the streets just surrounding the museum.

In Central Park, a small group of protesters, accompanied by an A.C.L.U. observer in a blue vest, gathered with cardboard signs reading “No Met Gala While Bombs Drop in Gaza” and “No Celebration Without Liberation,” mixed in among signs that mostly dealt directly with the war in Gaza. Representatives of the group declined to answer questions or say how many protesters they were expecting.

Another larger group made its way along Fifth Avenue, with many participants waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Gaza! Gaza!” as they clapped and banged drums.

The New York Police Department, trying to create space between the protesters and the event, assembled barricades at various intersections surrounding the area, but around 6:30 p.m., as the glitz and glamour of the event’s red carpet arrivals were in full swing, the police began making arrests just a block away on Madison Avenue, drawing complaints from some of the protesters that the police had worn riot gear while arresting people who were assembling peacefully.

Nearby, Mark J. Levy, a 19-year-old student at Yeshiva University, stood on the sidewalk draped in an Israeli flag in counterprotest.

The influx of people in the area, and the large police presence — at least one helicopter could be heard circling the area and officers on Madison Avenue had zip-tie handcuffs hanging from their waists as they maneuvered around city buses in the street — had protesters and commuters jockeying for sidewalk space.

Some passers-by along Fifth Avenue were heard referring to the protests as “antisemitic” and “anti-American.”

But like many other protesters, Alice Farley, 73, held her ground on Madison Avenue, carrying a sign that read “Ceasefire Now” with an American flag draped over it. Ms. Farley, a performance artist, said she joined the protesters earlier in the evening at Hunter College and made her way north with the group.

“I’ve been protesting since I was 10, but this in on another level,” Ms. Farley said of recent campus protests at Columbia University and elsewhere, many of which have led to changes or cancellations of commencement ceremonies.

Showing the wide mix of people in the area, a man wearing a kaffiyeh and riding a Citi Bike paused at the East 82nd Street police barricade and shouted, “Stop sending bombs to kill civilians,” at a group of people craning for a glimpse of the celebrities.

“Let’s go, Knicks,” one of the men in the crowd yelled in response. “That’s not funny,” the biker yelled back.

At the Milken Institute Global Conference, the annual gathering of billionaires and business leaders in California, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York was given a spotlight on Monday to expound on her new artificial intelligence initiative.

But as she explained her desire to make technology more widely accessible, especially in low-income communities, the governor made an extemporaneous comment suggesting that Black children from the Bronx were unfamiliar with computers.

In an exchange with the moderator, Jonathan Capehart, Ms. Hochul said that “right now we have young Black kids growing up in the Bronx who don’t even know what the word ‘computer’ is.”

Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, did not immediately correct her gaffe. Instead, she went on to explain that her goal of providing more access to technology would spur innovation and help address societal inequity.

The governor on Monday evening expressed contrition over her word choice, saying that she “misspoke and I regret it,” adding that her focus was on increasing economic opportunity.

“Of course Black children in the Bronx know what computers are,” she said in a statement. “The problem is that they too often lack access to the technology needed to get on track to high-paying jobs in emerging industries like A.I.”

This is not the first time this year the governor’s rhetorical style has led to unwelcome attention. In February, Ms. Hochul referred to a hypothetical destruction of Canada to imply that Israel had a right to destroy Gaza in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attacks.

“If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I’m sorry, my friends, there would be no Canada the next day,” she said then. She quickly apologized for her “poor choice of words,” and said she regretted her “inappropriate analogy.”

Her remark at the Milken conference, which was held at the stately Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, seemed consistent with her blunt, folksy style, which can occasionally veer into caricature.

But it also risked casting Ms. Hochul, a centrist Democrat from Buffalo, as out of touch with Black New Yorkers — an image that some critics immediately seized upon.

“Of course Black kids in the Bronx know the word ‘computer,’” State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, a Democrat who represents Queens, Manhattan and Brooklyn, wrote on X, the social media site. She noted that the governor’s A.I. initiative failed to include funding for education and work force development in underserved communities.

Assemblywoman Amanda Septimo, a Democrat who represents the South Bronx, said the governor’s comments were “harmful, deeply misinformed, and genuinely appalling.”

“Repeating harmful stereotypes about one of our most underserved communities, while failing to acknowledge the state’s consistent institutional neglect, only perpetuates systems of abuse,” she said.

But others, including the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Assembly speaker, Carl E. Heastie, viewed the governor’s comment as an unintentional misstatement and praised her for her actions and larger message.

“While the governor’s words were inartful and hurtful, I don’t believe that is where her heart is,” Mr. Heastie said in a statement. “I firmly believe she wants to see all of our students excel. Working with Governor Hochul, I hope we can redouble our efforts to bring greater access to technology to our kids in the Bronx.”

Mr. Sharpton agreed that the governor “might have not said it artfully, but a lot of our community is robbed of using social media because we are racially excluded from access. That’s a good point for her to raise.”

Jeffery C. Mays contributed reporting.

Curiosity around how guests would interpret this year’s “Garden of Time” theme was quickly answered with a flurry of florals, vintage, leather, fascinators and classic tuxedoes at this year’s Met Gala, fashion’s biggest night held on the first Monday in May.

Celebrities, executives, musicians, politicians and more showed off every angle of every look for photographers and fans. Guests sashayed down an off-white carpet dotted with teal borders and posed in front of backdrops of vegetation and flora, creating an ethereal quality to the evening’s festivities

The financial health of Social Security and Medicare, two of the nation’s most crucial safety net programs, improved this year as a stronger-than-expected economy attracted more workers to the labor market. But the overall financial outlook of the popular programs remained grim.

Annual reports released on Monday by trustees of the old-age and retirement programs showed that both still faced long-term shortfalls that could ultimately result in reduced retirement and medical benefits. The reports showed that the Social Security and disability insurance programs, if combined, would not have enough money to pay all of their obligations in 2035. Medicare will be unable to pay all its medical claims starting in 2036.

About 70 million people receive Social Security benefits, and more than 66 million participate in Medicare.

The fate of the popular programs continues to be a contentious political issue, one that is expected to intensify as the November presidential election draws near.

President Biden has pledged to block any cuts to Social Security and Medicare and has called for shoring up the programs with higher taxes on the rich. Former President Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, suggested this year that he was open to scaling back the programs when he said there was “a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting.” He later walked back those comments and pledged to protect the programs.

In a statement on Monday, Mr. Biden highlighted Republican proposals that would cut Social Security funding and raise the retirement age to qualify for benefits. He promised that he would be a bulwark against such policies.

“I will always fight for America’s seniors and prevent Republicans from cutting Social Security and Medicare,” Mr. Biden said.

Biden administration officials said the upgraded outlook for the programs was a sign that Mr. Biden’s economic agenda was working and insisted that they would resist any proposed cuts.

“Seniors spent a lifetime working to earn the benefits they receive, and the Biden-Harris administration will continue to oppose cuts to either program,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a statement. “We are committed to steps that would protect and strengthen these programs that Americans rely on for a secure retirement.”

Martin O’Malley, the commissioner of Social Security, said that as long as Americans continued to work, the retirement program would be able to keep paying benefits, and he called on Congress to provide more money for the trust fund to ensure its long-term solvency.

“More people are contributing to Social Security, thanks to strong economic policies that have yielded impressive wage growth, historic job creation and a steady, low unemployment rate,” Mr. O’Malley said.

The reports said that the combined Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, which pays retiree benefits, and the Disability Insurance Trust Fund would be depleted in 2035, a year later than previously projected. At that point, 83 percent of the scheduled benefits would be available to be paid out.

The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund alone is projected to run short of money in 2033, the same year as previously forecast.

The Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, which covers hospital care for Medicare patients, will be unable to pay all its bills beginning in 2036, five years later than the trustees had estimated last year. The improving forecast of Medicare’s finances reflects the stronger-than-expected payroll taxes that help fund the program. It also benefits from some recent technical policy changes that will affect Medicare’s spending over the next decade.

Medicare’s spending has historically grown much faster than the economy, so shortfalls have been perpetually looming. But the difference between economic growth and growth in Medicare’s spending has narrowed in the last 15 years, a trend that has taken some pressure off the program’s finances.

But even with the improved forecast, the trustees warned that making the program financially healthy in the long term would mean either immediately raising Medicare taxes to 3.25 percent of wages from 2.9 percent or reducing Medicare’s hospital benefits by 8 percent, or adopting larger changes if they took longer to kick in.

The report also included a slightly improved forecast for Medicare’s spending on drugs and outpatient medical care in the next few decades, though those parts of Medicare are financed through general tax revenues, not dedicated sources of revenue.

Budget experts warned on Monday that despite a modest improvement in the finances of the programs, their long-term fiscal trajectory remained a concern.

“Too few politicians are willing to propose serious reforms and make the difficult choices needed to strengthen and save the program,” said Jason Fichtner, chief economist at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Instead, leading voices on both sides of the aisle have buried their heads in the sand, proposing purely partisan policies or vowing not to touch the program.”

Preserving the programs without reducing benefits continues to be a challenge for lawmakers. However, the lobbying group representing retirees urged lawmakers to find a way to ensure that they remain solvent.

“For long-term sustainability, Congress owes it to the American people to reach a bipartisan solution, ensuring people’s hard-earned Social Security benefits will be there in full for the decades ahead,” said Jo Ann Jenkins, chief executive of AARP. “Older Americans make up the nation’s largest voting bloc and will hold leaders in Washington accountable if they fail to protect these programs.”

PUBLIC SERVICE

ProPublica

The Pulitzer committee honored ProPublica for the work of Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Alex Mierjeski and Kirsten Berg, citing their “groundbreaking and ambitious reporting that pierced the thick wall of secrecy surrounding the Supreme Court.”

Finalists KFF Health News and Cox Media Group; The Washington Post

BREAKING NEWS

Staff of Lookout Santa Cruz

Lookout Santa Cruz won for “its detailed and nimble community-focused coverage, over a holiday weekend, of catastrophic flooding and mudslides that displaced thousands of residents and destroyed more than 1,000 homes and businesses.”

Finalists Staff of Honolulu Civil Beat; Staff of The Los Angeles Times

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

Hannah Dreier of The New York Times

Ms. Dreier was honored for “a deeply reported series of stories revealing the stunning reach of migrant child labor across the United States — and the corporate and governmental failures that perpetuate it.”

Finalists Staff of Bloomberg; Casey Ross and Robert Herman of Stat

EXPLANATORY REPORTING

Sarah Stillman of The New Yorker

Ms. Stillman’s work was a “searing indictment of our legal system’s reliance on the felony murder charge and its disparate consequences, often devastating for communities of color,” the committee said.

Finalists Staff of Bloomberg; Staffs of The Texas Tribune, ProPublica and Frontline

LOCAL REPORTING

Sarah Conway of City Bureau and Trina Reynolds-Tyler of the Invisible Institute

Ms. Conway and Ms. Reynolds-Tyler were honored for “their investigative series on missing Black girls and women in Chicago that revealed how systemic racism and police department neglect contributed to the crisis.”

Finalists Jerry Mitchell, Ilyssa Daly, Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield of Mississippi Today and The New York Times; Staff of The Villages Daily Sun

NATIONAL REPORTING

Staff of Reuters and Staff of The Washington Post

This year’s national reporting category had two winners. The staff of Reuters won for “an eye-opening series of accountability stories” focused on the automobile and aerospace businesses helmed by the billionaire Elon Musk. The staff of The Washington Post won for “its sobering examination of the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.”

Finalists Bianca Vázquez Toness and Sharon Lurye of The Associated Press; Dave Philipps of The New York Times

INTERNATIONAL REPORTING

Staff of The New York Times

The New York Times won for its “wide-ranging and revelatory coverage of Hamas’ lethal attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, Israel’s intelligence failures and the Israeli military’s sweeping, deadly response in Gaza,” the committee said.

Finalists Julie Turkewitz and Federico Rios of The New York Times; Staff of The Washington Post

Feature writing

Katie Engelhart, contributing writer, The New York Times

Ms. Engelhart was honored “for her fair-minded portrait of a family’s legal and emotional struggles during a matriarch’s progressive dementia.” Her article “sensitively probes the mystery of a person’s essential self,” the committee said.

Finalists Keri Blakinger of The Marshall Project, co-published with The New York Times Magazine; Jennifer Senior of The Atlantic

COMMENTARY

Vladimir Kara-Murza, contributor, The Washington Post

The committee highlighted Mr. Kara-Murza’s “passionate columns written at great personal risk from his prison cell, warning of the consequences of dissent in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and insisting on a democratic future for his country.”

Finalists Brian Lyman of The Alabama Reflector; Jay Caspian Kang of The New Yorker

CRITICISM

Justin Chang of The Los Angeles Times

Mr. Chang’s film criticism “reflects on the contemporary moviegoing experience,” the commitee said, praising it as “richly evocative and genre-spanning.”

Finalists Zadie Smith, contributor, The New York Review of Books; Vinson Cunningham of The New Yorker

EDITORIAL WRITING

David E. Hoffman of The Washington Post

Mr. Hoffman was honored for his “compelling and well-researched series on new technologies and the tactics authoritarian regimes use to repress dissent in the digital age and how they can be fought.”

Finalists Isadora Rangel of The Miami Herald; Brandon McGinley and Rebecca Spiess of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Illustrated Reporting and Commentary

Medar de la Cruz, contributor, The New Yorker

Mr. de la Cruz was honored for “his visually driven story set inside Rikers Island jail using bold black-and-white images that humanize the prisoners and staff through their hunger for books.”

Finalists Clay Bennett of The Chattanooga Times Free Press; Angie Wang, contributor, The New Yorker; Claire Healy, Nicole Dungca and Ren Galeno, contributor, of The Washington Post

BREAKING NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography Staff of Reuters

The photography staff won for “raw and urgent photographs documenting the Oct. 7 deadly attack in Israel by Hamas and the first weeks of Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza.”

Finalists Adem Altan of Agence France Presse; Nicole S. Hester of The Tennessean

FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography Staff of The Associated Press

The journalists were honored for “poignant photographs chronicling unprecedented masses of migrants and their arduous journey north from Colombia to the border of the United States.”

Finalists Nanna Heitmann, contributor, The New York Times; Hannah Reyes Morales, contributor, The New York Times

AUDIO REPORTING

Staffs of the Invisible Institute and USG Audio

The two newsrooms won for a “powerful series that revisits a Chicago hate crime from the 1990s, a fluid amalgam of memoir, community history and journalism.”

Finalists Dan Slepian and Preeti Varathan, contributor, of NBC News; Lauren Chooljian, Alison Macadam, Jason Moon, Daniel Barrick and Katie Colaneri of New Hampshire Public Radio

FICTION

“Night Watch,” by Jayne Anne Phillips

Ms. Phillips won for her “beautifully rendered novel set in West Virginia’s Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in the aftermath of the Civil War where a severely wounded Union veteran, a 12-year-old girl and her mother, long abused by a Confederate soldier, struggle to heal.”

Finalists “Wednesday’s Child,” by Yiyun Li; “Same Bed Different Dreams,” by Ed Park

DRAMA

“Primary Trust,” by Eboni Booth

The committee described Ms. Booth’s play “Primary Trust” as a “simple and elegantly crafted story of an emotionally damaged man who finds a new job, new friends and a new sense of worth, illustrating how small acts of kindness can change a person’s life and enrich an entire community.”

Finalists “Here There Are Blueberries,” by Moises Kaufman and Amanda Gronich; “Public Obscenities,” by Shayok Misha Chowdhury

HISTORY

“No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era,” by Jacqueline Jones

Ms. Jones was awarded for her “original reconstruction of free Black life in Boston that profoundly reshapes our understanding of the city’s abolitionist legacy and the challenging reality for its Black residents.”

Finalists “Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion,” by Elliott West; “American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle Between Immigrant Radicals and the U.S. Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century,” by Michael Willrich

Two awards were given in this category. Mr. Eig was honored for “a revelatory portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. that draws on new sources to enrich our understanding of each stage of the civil rights leader’s life.”

Ms. Woo was honored for her narrative of the Crafts, “an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her manservant.”

Finalists “Larry McMurtry: A Life,” by Tracy Daugherty

MEMOIR OR AUTOBIOGRAPHy

“Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice,” by Cristina Rivera Garza

The committee called Ms. Rivera Garza’s work “a genre-bending account of the author’s 20-year-old sister,” who was murdered by a former boyfriend. It “mixes memoir, feminist investigative journalism and poetic biography stitched together with a determination born of loss,” the committee said.

Finalists “The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight,” by Andrew Leland; “The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness and the Tragedy of Good Intentions,” by Jonathan Rosen

Mr. Som’s work is “a collection that deeply engages with the complexities of the poet’s dual Mexican and Chinese heritage, highlighting the dignity of his family’s working lives, creating community rather than conflict,” the committee wrote.

Finalists “To 2040,” by Jorie Graham; “Information Desk: An Epic,” by Robyn Schiff

GENERAL NONFICTION

“A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy,” by Nathan Thrall

The committee honored Mr. Thrall for his “finely reported and intimate account of life under Israeli occupation of the West Bank, told through a portrait of a Palestinian father whose five-year-old son dies in a fiery school bus crash when Israeli and Palestinian rescue teams are delayed by security regulations.”

Finalists “Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives,” by Siddharth Kara; “Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World,” by John Vaillant

MUSIC

“Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith),” by Tyshawn Sorey

Mr. Sorey’s saxophone concerto has “a wide range of textures presented in a slow tempo, a beautiful homage that’s quietly intense, treasuring intimacy rather than spectacle,” the committee said.

Finalists “Paper Pianos,” by Mary Kouyoumdjian; “Double Concerto for esperanza spalding, Claire Chase and large orchestra,” by Felipe Lara

Special citations

Greg Tate

The writer and critic Greg Tate was honored posthumously for his influence in shaping public thought and language around hip-hop and street art. “His aesthetic, innovations and intellectual originality, particularly in his pioneering hip-hop criticism, continue to influence subsequent generations, especially writers and critics of color,” the committee wrote.

Journalists and Media Workers Covering the War in Gaza

“Under horrific conditions, an extraordinary number of journalists have died in the effort to tell the stories of Palestinians and others in Gaza,” the committee wrote. “This war has also claimed the lives of poets and writers among the casualties. As the Pulitzer Prizes honor categories of journalism, arts and letters, we mark the loss of invaluable records of the human experience.”