I am pleased to announce the release of NumPy 1.12.0rc1.  This release supports  Python 2.7 and 3.4 - 3.6 and is the result of 406 pull requests submitted by 139 contributors and comprises a large number of fixes and improvements. Among the many improvements it is difficult to  pick out just a few as standing above the others, but the following may be of particular interest or indicate areas likely to have future consequences.

* Order of operations in ``np.einsum`` can now be optimized for large speed improvements.
* New ``signature`` argument to ``np.vectorize`` for vectorizing with core dimensions.
* The ``keepdims`` argument was added to many functions.
* New context manager for testing warnings
* Support for BLIS in numpy.distutils
* Much improved support for PyPy (not yet finished)

The release notes are quite sizable and rather than put them inline I've attached them as a file. They may also be viewed at Github. Zip files and tarballs may also be found the Github link. Wheels and a zip archive are available from PyPI, which is the recommended method of installation.