diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 516b7f7ae..d2117493e 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,3 +1,18 @@
+Overview of changes leading to 1.2.4
+Thursday, March 17, 2016
+====================================
+
+- Synthesize GDEF glyph class for any glyph that does not have one in GDEF.
+  I really hope we don't discover broken fonts that shape badly with this
+  change.
+- Misc build and other minor fixes.
+- API changes:
+  - Added HB_NDEBUG.  It's fine for production systems to define this to
+    disable high-overhead debugging checks.  However, I also reduced the
+    overhead of those checks, so it's a non-issue right now.  You can
+    forget it.  Just not defining anything at all is fine.
+
+
 Overview of changes leading to 1.2.3
 Thursday, February 25, 2016
 ====================================
diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index a2559141f..596033113 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 AC_PREREQ([2.64])
 AC_INIT([HarfBuzz],
-        [1.2.3],
+        [1.2.4],
         [http://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=harfbuzz],
         [harfbuzz],
         [http://harfbuzz.org/])