On behalf of the Python development team and the Python community, I'm happy to announce the release candidate 1 of Python 2.5.5. This is a source-only release that only includes security fixes. The last full bug-fix release of Python 2.5 was Python 2.5.4. Users are encouraged to upgrade to the latest release of Python 2.6 (which is 2.6.4 at this point). This releases fixes issues with the logging and tarfile modules, and with thread-local variables. See the detailed release notes at the website (also available as Misc/NEWS in the source distribution) for details of bugs fixed. For more information on Python 2.5.5, including download links for various platforms, release notes, and known issues, please see: http://www.python.org/2.5.5 Highlights of the previous major Python releases are available from the Python 2.5 page, at http://www.python.org/2.5/highlights.html Enjoy this release, Martin Martin v. Loewis martin@v.loewis.de Python Release Manager (on behalf of the entire python-dev team)