Dear Working Group, RIPE Database release 1.98 has been deployed to the Release Candidate environment. We plan to deploy to production on Thursday 1st October. This release includes the following main changes: * NWI-11 Punycode Internationalized Domain Names in email addresses. * Return remark in RDAP response when abuse-mailbox validation has failed. * RDAP CORS changes * RDAP invalid syntax exception * A deleted object may be matched in the fulltextsearch index (fixed) In addition to other small improvements and bug fixes. The release notes are on the website: https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/db/release-notes/ripe-database-rele... More information on the Release Candidate environment can be found on our website: https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/db/release-notes/rc-release-candida... Please let us know if you find any issues with this release in the RC environment. Regards Ed Shryane RIPE NCC