diff --git a/NEWS.txt b/NEWS.txt
index 4172486d5..0b7b59f92 100644
--- a/NEWS.txt
+++ b/NEWS.txt
@@ -1,14 +1,31 @@
 OSG News
 ========
 
-= !OpenSceneGraph 2.8 release adds osgAnimation and osgVolume libraries, DICOM support, LispSM shadowing and much more. =
+= !OpenSceneGraph 2.8.1 release - bug fix release =
 
-PERTHSHIRE, Scotland - 12th February 2009 - !OpenSceneGraph Professional Services announces the release of !OpenSceneGraph 2.8, the industry's leading open-source scene graph technology, designed to accelerate application development and improve 3D graphics performance. !OpenSceneGraph 2.8 written entirely in Standard C++ and built upon OpenGL, offers developers working in the visual simulation, game development, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling markets - a real-time visualization tool which eclipses commercial scene graph toolkits in functionality, stability and performance. !OpenSceneGraph 2.8 runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, Apple OS/X, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and FreeBSD operating systems.
+PERTHSHIRE, Scotland - 10th April 2009 - !OpenSceneGraph Professional Services announces the release of !OpenSceneGraph 2.8.1, the industry's leading open-source scene graph technology, designed to accelerate application development and improve 3D graphics performance. !OpenSceneGraph 2.8 written entirely in Standard C++ and built upon OpenGL, offers developers working in the visual simulation, game development, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling markets - a real-time visualization tool which eclipses commercial scene graph toolkits in functionality, stability and performance. !OpenSceneGraph 2.8 runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, Apple OS/X, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and FreeBSD operating systems.
 
 === Open-source development delivers industry-leading features and performance ===
-The !OpenSceneGraph 2.8 release is the culmination of 10 years of work by the lead developers and the open-source community that has grown up around the project. The real-time graphics industry and academia embraced it from the very beginning, deploying it in real-world applications, and actively participating in its development, testing and refinement. The end result is a high-quality library with a feature set relevant to application developers' needs. 
+The !OpenSceneGraph 2.8.1 release is the culmination of 10 years of work by the lead developers and the open-source community that has grown up around the project. The real-time graphics industry and academia embraced it from the very beginning, deploying it in real-world applications, and actively participating in its development, testing and refinement. The end result is a high-quality library with a feature set relevant to application developers' needs. 
 
-=== Updates include: ===
+=== Updates between 2.8.1 and 2.8.0 releases include: ===
+
+  * Build fixes under FreeBSD and IBM AIX
+  * Crash fixes in osg::State and osg::Geometry
+  * Bug fixes to :
+    * draw instanced support
+    * Optimizer - MergeGeometryVisitor, RemoveLoadedProxyNodesVisitor and SpatializeGroupsVistor
+    * hdr image loader
+    * handling of opacity maps in 3ds loader
+    * dxf loader
+    * frame buffer object
+    * cursor/event handling in windows
+    * windows threading
+    * memory leak in Collada loader
+    * fixes to display lists/vbo creation that prevent crash under ATI drivers
+    * osgconv --formats under OSX
+
+=== Updates between 2.8 and 2.6 include: ===
 
   * New osgVolume library for volume rendering, with support for:
     * High quality GPU based Ray tracing