diff --git a/NEWS.rst b/NEWS.rst
index 2a00702ab..5e2edf2fa 100644
--- a/NEWS.rst
+++ b/NEWS.rst
@@ -1,3 +1,15 @@
+- NOTE: The v4.x version series only supports Python 3.6 or greater. You can keep
+  using fonttools 3.x if you need support for Python 2.
+- [py23] Removed all the python2-only code since it is no longer reachable, thus
+  unused; only the Python3 symbols were kept, but these are no-op. The module is now
+  DEPRECATED and will removed in the future.
+- [ttLib] Fixed UnboundLocalError for empty loca/glyph tables (#1680). Also, allow
+  the glyf table to be incomplete when dumping to XML (#1681).
+- [varLib.models] Fixed KeyError while sorting masters and there are no on-axis for
+  a given axis (38a8eb0e).
+- [cffLib] Make sure glyph names are unique (#1699).
+- [feaLib] Fix feature parser to correctly handle octal numbers (#1700).
+
 3.44.0 (released 2019-08-02)
 ----------------------------