With this patch, the external provisioner can remove the finalizer in next reconcile loop. Unfortunately if the provious existing pv has the Failed state, this patch won't take effort. It requires users to remove finalizer. ([#126045](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/126045), [@carlory](https://github.com/carlory)) [SIG Apps and Storage]

- Finalizer Protection for Service LoadBalancers (ServiceLoadBalancerFinalizer) has been added as an Alpha feature, which is disabled by default. This feature ensures the Service resource is not fully deleted until the correlating load balancer resources are...

- kube-apiserver: the `StorageObjectInUseProtection` admission plugin added the `kubernetes.io/vac-protection` finalizer to the given VolumeAttributesClass object when it is created if the feature-gate `VolumeAttributesClass` is turned on and `storage.k8s.io/v1beta1` is enabled. ([#130553](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/130553), [@Phaow](https://github.com/Phaow))...

- Finalizer Protection for Service LoadBalancers is now in beta (enabled by default). This feature ensures the Service resource is not fully deleted until the correlating load balancer resources are deleted. ([#81691](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/81691),...

- Added field `.status.uncountedTerminatedPods` to the Job resource. This field is used by the job controller to keep track of finished pods before adding them to the Job status counters. Pods created by the job controller get the finalizer `batch.kubernetes.io/job-tracking`

- Volume snapshot e2e test to validate PVC and VolumeSnapshotContent finalizer ([#95863](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/95863), [@RaunakShah](https://github.com/RaunakShah)) [SIG Cloud Provider, Storage and Testing]

* In case StorageObjectInUse feature is disabled and Persistent Volume (PV) or Persistent Volume Claim (PVC) contains a finalizer and the PV or PVC is deleted it is not automatically removed from the system. Now, it is automatically removed. ([#62938](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/62938), [@pospispa](https://github.com/pospispa))

* Add support for adding/removing finalizer depending on PVC protection feature gate ([#61370](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/61370), [@gnufied](https://github.com/gnufied))

- Fixes a bug where Services using finalizers may hold onto ClusterIP and/or NodePort allocated resources for longer than expected if the finalizer is removed using the status subresource ([#120655](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/120655), [@aojea](https://github.com/aojea)) [SIG Network and Testing]

- Fixes a bug where Services using finalizers may hold onto ClusterIP and/or NodePort allocated resources for longer than expected if the finalizer is removed using the status subresource ([#120657](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/120657), [@aojea](https://github.com/aojea)) [SIG Network and Testing]