Sasha Ingber

The selections were winnowed down from 1,637 books.

On Wednesday, the National Book Foundation announced the 25 books that remain in the running for the National Book Awards, now in its 69th year.

The writers come from such places as Pittsburgh, Norway, Iran and Poland, and many of them have delved into some of the most pressing conversations of our time: racism, masculinity, addiction, the destruction of indigenous culture, class divides and corporations.

And for the first time since the 1980s, the judges will also honor a work in translation.

Lara Alqasem, a 22-year-old Florida native, landed at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport last Tuesday, expecting to start her studies in human rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Instead, she has spent the past week detained.

Alqasem, whose father is of Palestinian heritage, was barred from entering the country and accused of supporting a boycott of Israel that was started by Palestinian leaders.

Updated at 12:28 a.m. ET Monday

To celebrate her upcoming 30th birthday, Amy Steenburg and more than a dozen close friends and relatives packed into a stretch limousine for an afternoon of wine- and beer-tasting around upstate New York.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrapped up his fourth visit to North Korea on Sunday, describing his talks with leader Kim Jong Un as productive.

Pompeo met with Kim for about two hours, according to a pool report from CBS' Kylie Atwood, the only U.S. journalist who accompanied the secretary on his trip. The visit comes after President Trump's historic summit with Kim in June, which resulted in a vague commitment from Pyongyang to denuclearize.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has moved to seize former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's condo in Trump Tower in New York.

According to a court filing from Friday, the seizure is expected take place on or after Oct. 20.

The prosecutors said the federal government would "take full and exclusive custody and control" as part of a broader forfeiture, and Manafort signed the document.

A German state official apologized Friday for an incident of mistaken identity that left a Syrian man imprisoned and then dead.

In July, the 26-year-old man was arrested for failing to pay a fine for theft. But police officers did not thoroughly check his identity, said Herbert Reul, interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state in western Germany, according to the Associated Press.

In 2014, Nadia Murad, a member of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq, was taken captive by ISIS members and sexually enslaved for three months before escaping. In 2016, at the age of 23, she was named the U.N.'s first Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking. Today, she became the co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Dr. Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who treats victims of rape.

The disappearance of an outspoken Saudi critic, who was last seen walking into a Saudi consulate in Turkey, has left activists, foreign officials and friends fearing for his safety.

Jamal Khashoggi's fiancée told media outlets that she waited hours for Khashoggi to emerge from the consulate in Istanbul. He was there to fill out paperwork so that the two could be married.

The mayor of Osaka, Japan, is ending its "sister city" relationship with San Francisco this week, following a dispute over a statue that honors women and girls who were sexually enslaved by Japan's Imperial Army during World War II.

The Column of Strength memorial consists of three women in bronze who are holding hands in a circle as they look into the distance. An older woman stands to the side.

The statue commemorates "comfort women," a euphemism for thousands who were forced, coerced and deceived into serving men at brothels near the front lines.

Updated Thursday at 1 p.m. ET

Seven law enforcement officers were shot — one fatally — in Florence, S. C., Wednesday evening, city police and sheriff's officials said. A city spokesman identified him as Officer Terrence Carraway.

Deputies on Thursday identified the alleged shooter as 74-year-old Frederick Hopkins, a military veteran who received disability payment. He was also a lawyer who had been disbarred.

The shooting occurred just outside Florence, a city two hours north of Charleston.

Women seeking abortions in Missouri have just one clinic to turn to, after another Planned Parenthood facility that performed the procedure couldn't meet newly imposed state requirements.

It comes at a time when abortion rights activists fear the 1973 landmark ruling Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion, could be nullified if President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, is confirmed.

Chicago Public Schools will lose millions of dollars in grant money for what federal officials say is a failure to protect students from sexual abuse.

Some physicians who examined immigrants while working for the federal government had histories of diluting vaccinations, exploiting women and hiring a hit man to kill a dissatisfied patient, according to a scathing report released by the Department of Homeland Security's internal watchdog.

Archaeologists have uncovered what they say is a 'huge' ancient building in what was once Egypt's capital city, the country's Antiquities Ministry announced Tuesday.

The city of Memphis was founded circa 2925 B.C. by Menes, a king who is said to have united the prehistoric kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt. The city was originally called the White Walls, a term that may have come from the king's palace of whitewashed brick.

Cody Wilson, who stands accused of sexually assaulting a minor, walked out of the Harris County Jail in Houston on Sunday with a smile.

The 30-year-old, who founded a company that produces designs for 3D printed guns, was arrested at a hotel in Taipei, Taiwan, on Friday and flown to Texas overnight, according to KHOU.

Opposition candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Solih unseated the president in the Maldives election, a surprise victory at a time when the archipelago nation was feared to be backsliding into authoritarianism and getting closer to China.

On the tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, voter turnout was nearly 90 percent, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. Solih, a member of parliament, got 134,616 votes to the incumbent's 96,132.

Nearly a third of households in the United States have struggled to pay their energy bills, the Energy Information Administration said in a report released Wednesday. The differences were minor in terms of geography, but Hispanics and racial minorities were hit hardest.

India's government decreed punishments of arrest and jail time on Wednesday for Muslim men who terminate their marriages by simply uttering three words.

The practice of instant divorce, called "triple talaq," happens in person, over the phone, by text and in email. Men can end their marriages by repeating the word "talaq," Arabic for "divorce," three times – and his wife has no say in the matter.

Tesla said on Tuesday it was complying with a Justice Department request for documents, in connection with Chief Executive Elon Musk's announcement that he was taking the publicly traded company private.

Updated at 8:15 p.m. ET on Wednesday

Facebook became embroiled in another controversy Tuesday, after the American Civil Liberties Union accused the company of giving employers a powerful tool to discriminate against women seeking work.