1. i recently realised that our mirror of macros/plain/base wasn't delivering the correct stuff (don's latest updates went into systems/knuth/dist/lib and not to the canonical place on ctan for the files).
i've therefore corrected that; macros/plain/base now contains don's latest release.
see http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/plain.html
2. version 3.0 of the amsfonts bundle has been released. this includes revised versions of the ams fonts, and an update of the long- established y&y and blue sky research versions of the computer modern fonts (for which the ams holds the copyright).
note that rather little of the amsfonts documentation has been updated for the new version; the ams are working on that.
see http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/amsfonts.html
that's quite enough excitement for one day. now i'll get back to _real_ work.
Robin Fairbairns
For the CTAN team