Coverage Of Wars, Refugee Crisis Take Pulitzer Prizes

Coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Syria, the refugee crisis in Europe, and the rise of the Islamic State extremist group won a number of Pulitzer Prizes, the most prestigious awards in American journalism.

The winners in all 21 categories -- including awards for journalism, music, drama, and letters -- were announced at New York's Columbia University, which administers the awards, now in their 100th year.

The Pulitzers began in 1917 after a bequest from newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer.

Photographers from The New York Times and Thomson Reuters shared the breaking-news photography award for their coverage of the refugee crisis.

Alissa Rubin of The New York Times won the international reporting prize for her coverage of Afghan women.

The Los Angeles Times won the breaking-news category for the coverage of the killings in San Bernardino.

The prize for nonfiction was won by Joby Warrick for his book Black Flags: The Rise Of ISIS and its assessment of what the Pulitzer Board said was the "flawed rationale" of the Iraq war and the rise of the IS extremist group.

The U.S. Associated Press news agency won the coveted award for public-service journalism for investigating labor abuses tied to the supply of seafood in the United States, reporting that freed 2,000 slaves.

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters