Friends of the St. Paul Public Library on Wednesday announced finalists for the 2026 Minnesota Book Awards, presented this year by sponsor Education Minnesota.

The finalists (* denotes titles from Minnesota presses):

Children’s Literature, sponsored by Beret Publishing:

“All the Stars in the Sky” by Art Coulson; illustrated by Winona Nelson (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster)
“Dear Acorn (Love, Oak)” by Joyce Sidman; illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Clarion Books/HarperCollins)
“Revolutions Are Made of Love: The Story of James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs” by Mélina Mangal and Sun Yung Shin; illustrated by Leslie Barlow (Carolrhoda Books/Lerner Publishing)*
“Saturday Morning at the Shop” by Keenan Jones; illustrated by Ken Daley (Beach Lane Books/Simon & Schuster)

General Nonfiction

“Enchanted Plants: A Treasury of Botanical Folklore and Magic” by Varla Ventura (Weiser Books/Red Wheel Weiser)
“Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack” by Willa Hammitt Brown (University of Minnesota Press)*
“It’s Their World: Teens, Screens, and the Science of Adolescence” by Erin Walsh (Free Spirit Publishing)
“Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie” by David Hage and Josephine Marcotty (Random House/Penguin Random House)

Genre Fiction, sponsored by Macalester College

“Apostle’s Cove” by William Kent Krueger (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster)
“Broken Fields” by Marcie Rendon (Soho Press/Penguin Random House)
“The Codebreaker’s Daughter” by Amy Lynn Green (Bethany House Publishers/Baker Publishing Group)
“The Quiet Librarian” by Allen Eskens (Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company/Hachette Book Group)

Memoir/Creative Nonfiction

“Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage” by Kelly Foster Lundquist (Eerdmans/Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.)
“The Book of Kin” by Jennifer Eli Bowen (Milkweed Editions)*
“The Lonely Veteran’s Guide to Companionship by Bronson Lemer (University of Wisconsin Press)
“What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To: A Memoir” by Mary Lucia (University of Minnesota Press)*

Middle-Grade Literature, sponsored by Education Minnesota:

“The House on Rondo by Debra J. Stone (University of Minnesota Press)*
“Scattergood” by H.M. Bouwman (Neal Porter Books/Holiday House)
“Weird Sad and Silent” by Alison McGhee (Rocky Pond Books/Penguin Random House)
“What Happened Then” by Erin Soderberg Downing (Scholastic Press)

Emilie Buchwald Award for Minnesota Nonfiction, sponsored by Annette and John Whaley:

“Enmity and Empathy: Japanese Americans in Minnesota During World War II by Ka F. Wong (Minnesota Historical Society Press)*
“Held Over: Harold and Maude at The Westgate Theater” by John Gaspard (self-published)
“Her Place in the Woods: The Life of Helen Hoover” by David Hakensen (University of Minnesota Press)*
“The War at Home: Minnesota During the Great War, 1914 – 1920” by Greg Gaut (Minnesota Historical Society Press)*

Novel/Short Story, sponsored by Minnesota Humanities Center

“Ashes to Ashes” by Thomas Maltman (Soho Press/Penguin Random House)
“If the Dead Belong Here” by Carson Faust (Viking/Penguin Random House)
“Lucky Tomorrow: Stories” by Deborah Jiang-Stein (University of Minnesota Press)*
“The Many Mothers of Dolores Moore” by Anika Fajardo (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster)

Poetry, sponsored by Wellington Management

“The Becoming Game” by Paula Cisewski (Hanging Loose Press)
“Enter” by Jim Moore (Graywolf Press)*
“I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always” by Douglas Kearney (Wave Books)
“Terminal Maladies” by Okwudili Nebeolisa (Autumn House Press)

Young Adult Literature

“Alice in Evermoor” by Karen Huss (self-published)
“The Flip Side” by Jason Walz (Rocky Pond Books/Penguin Random House)
“Seven for a Secret” by Mary E. Roach (Disney Hyperion/Penguin Random House)
“Worthy of Trust: That Word Honor Book 1” by Erin Makela (Beaver’s Pond Press)*

Winners will be announced at the Minnesota Book Awards ceremony May 6 at Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul. The Kay Sexton and Hognander awards will also be presented at the event. Tickets are $27 available at thefriends.org/mnba.

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St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her met with the White House border czar Wednesday and said she looks “forward to seeing concrete next steps as” he “meets with local officials to de-escalate the situation in St. Paul.”

President Donald Trump announced he was placing Tom Homan in charge of the mission in Minnesota and Homan is reporting directly to the White House. He replaced Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino in the Twin Cities after federal officers fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday.

Her said she met with Homan and his team Wednesday “to discuss the ongoing ICE surge in Minnesota. I appreciated the opportunity to share with them the harm this surge is having in our city. I reinforced the importance of immigrants and refugees to the fabric of our community.

“Changing leadership and opening lines of communication with leaders in Minnesota are promising steps toward building trust, ensuring accountability to federal actions, and finding a meaningful resolution to end this surge,” she said in a statement.

Homan met with Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Tuesday.

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In his meeting Walz “reiterated Minnesota’s priorities: impartial investigations into the Minneapolis shootings involving federal agents, a swift, significant reduction in the number of federal forces in Minnesota, and an end to the campaign of retribution against Minnesota,” the governor’s office announced.

By SAM METZ and JULIA FRANKEL, Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — For Palestinians in Gaza, the Rafah border crossing to Egypt is their gateway to the world. But since Israel seized it in May 2024, it has been largely shut.

Now Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the crossing will reopen soon, as the U.S.-brokered Israel-Hamas ceasefire plan moves into its second phase.

That raises hopes for thousands of war-wounded Palestinians seeking travel abroad for medical care, and for tens of thousands of people outside Gaza seeking to return home.

But they face tight controls. Under conditions Netanyahu stipulates, only dozens of Palestinians will be allowed through the crossing each day, and no goods will cross for now. All other Gaza border crossings are with Israel.

Here’s what to know.

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Crossing might open in the coming days

An Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with policy said the Rafah crossing would open in the coming days. A person familiar with discussions on the reopening said they had been told it could come as early as Thursday.

Ali Shaath, newly appointed to head the Palestinian administrative committee governing Gaza’s daily affairs, said on Jan. 22 that the crossing would “open next week in both directions.”

“Opening Rafah signals Gaza is no longer closed to the future and to the world,” he said in a video the White House posted on X last week.

The U.S. has pressed Israel and Hamas to enter the ceasefire’s second phase. The remains of the final hostage in Gaza were recovered this week, completing a key part of the first phase.

Shaath and the new Palestinian committee remain in Cairo, without Israeli authorization to enter Gaza through Rafah.

Netanyahu says people to cross, not goods

Preparations are underway to let a limited number of medical evacuees leave Gaza first. That’s a significant shift from before the war, when most exited through Israel, according to World Health Organization data.

There are conflicting reports on how many people can cross each day. The Israeli official said 50 Palestinians will be allowed in and 50 out daily. The person familiar with discussions said 50 would be allowed in daily and 150 out.

That means a long wait for many of the estimated 20,000 sick and wounded that the territory’s health ministry says need treatment outside Gaza. At a rate of 50 evacuations a day, it would take more than a year for everyone to leave.

In the past, those prioritized for evacuation have been mostly children, cancer patients and people suffering from physical trauma. Most received treatment in Egypt.

Medical evacuees typically exit Gaza with escorts. The person familiar with the discussions said two escorts likely would be allowed for each evacuee.

Meanwhile, at least 30,000 Palestinians have registered with the Palestinian Embassy in Cairo for return to Gaza, according to an embassy official, speaking on condition of anonymity because details of the reopening remain under discussion.

Israel will control who enters and leaves

A complex web of countries and institutions will oversee the Rafah crossing, including Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and a European Union mission, but Israel has control over who enters or exits.

Egypt will provide Israel with a list of names daily to vet and decide on, the Israeli official said.

Under the ceasefire terms, Israel’s military controls the area between the Rafah crossing and the zone where most Palestinians live. COGAT, Israel’s military body in charge of coordinating aid to Gaza, will bus Palestinians to and from the crossing, the official said.

There will be no Israeli soldiers at the crossing, the official said, but Palestinians exiting and entering would undergo Israeli security screening inside Gaza. In the past, such screenings have been conducted by Israeli soldiers and private U.S. contractors.

“Anyone entering or exiting undergoes our inspection, a full inspection,” Netanyahu said Tuesday.

Officers from the EU Border Assistance Mission and the Palestinian Authority will run the crossing. Plainclothes officers with the Palestinian Authority will stamp passports, as they did during a brief ceasefire at the start of 2025 and before Hamas wrested control of Gaza in 2007, Palestinian officials told the AP.

Netanyahu seemed to acknowledge that members of Palestinian factions that historically have governed Gaza may play a role, noting that the majority of bureaucrats have a history of working for Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.

How Rafah functioned before the war

Even before the war, Palestinians faced heavy restrictions.

In 2022, the United Nations recorded more than 133,000 entries and 144,000 exits through Rafah, though many involved the same people crossing multiple times. Egyptian authorities allowed imports on 150 days of the year, and more than 32,000 trucks of goods entered.

Restrictions have tracked the region’s politics. Egypt, alongside Israel, imposed a blockade after Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007. It reopened the crossing after Egypt’s 2011 revolution but closed it in 2013 after the military ousted President Mohammed Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement from which Hamas emerged.

Egypt gradually allowed the Rafah crossing to reopen in the years that followed, but the on-and-off restrictions led to a massive tunnel economy that sprung up beneath it. Tunnels served as an economic lifeline for Gaza and a conduit for weapons and cash, according to Israeli and Egyptian officials. Hamas collected tens of millions of dollars a month in taxes and customs on goods passing through the crossing.

Other details remain unclear

It is not clear when trucks will be allowed to pass through the Rafah crossing, what Palestinians will be permitted to bring and for how long daily entries and exits will be capped at or below 200.

That’s a big uncertainty for humanitarian organizations seeking to further surge aid into devastated Gaza, where groups have long reported vast shortages of medical supplies, fuel and other essential needs.

Netanyahu said his focus is on disarming Hamas, a challenging part of the ceasefire’s second phase, and destroying its remaining tunnels. He said there would be no reconstruction in Gaza without demilitarization, a stance that could make Israel’s control over the Rafah crossing a key point of leverage.

Associated Press writer Samy Magdy contributed from Cairo.

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, Associated Press

Google is empowering its Chrome browser with the ability to alter imagery and a virtual assistant to help with online tasks as part of its push to turbocharge its digital services with more artificial intelligence technology.

The features rolling out include making Google’s AI image generator and editing tool, Nano Banana, available to Chrome’s logged-in users on desktop computers in the United States. The expanded access to Nano Banana through the leading web browser may further blur the lines between real-life pictures and fabricated images.

The browser’s expansion will also offer an option for Chrome’s U.S. users to open a side panel so an AI-powered assistant can help with an assortment of chores while a user remains engaged with other online tasks.

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Subscribers to Google’s AI Pro and Ultra services will also be able to activate an “auto browse” function that will log into websites, shop for merchandise on command and prepare posts on social media. Users will still have to manually complete purchases from the shopping carts prepared by AI and approve drafted social media posts.

The AI in Chrome relies on the Gemini 3 model that Google released late last year and is now being baked into many of the services that helped its corporate parent, Alphabet, recently surpass a market value of $4 trillion.

Earlier this month, Google tapped into Gemini to bring more AI features to Gmail as part of an effort to make that service behave more like a personal assistant and then funneled more of the technology into its search engine. in hopes of providing more relevant answers tailored to users’ individual tastes and habits.

The upgrades to Google’s search engine plug into the company’s “Personal Intelligence” technology that leverages AI to learn more about people’s lives. Google is promising to roll out a Personal Intelligence option in Chrome at some point later this year.

Chrome’s AI makeover is rolling out just a few months after a federal judge rejected the U.S. Department of Justice’s push to force Google to sell the browser as part of the penalty for running an illegal monopoly in search. The judge rebuffed the proposed breakup partly because he believes AI already is reshaping the competitive landscape as smaller rivals such as OpenAI and Perplexity deploy the technology in chatbots and their own web browsers.

Before releasing its AI browser Atlas last October, OpenAI had expressed interest in buying Chrome if the breakup had been ordered. Perplexity, which offers an AI browser called Comet, even submitted a $34.5 billion bid for Chrome before the judge opted against a sale mandate.