diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index f0f23bf..73b54ba 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 Package: Rcpi
 Type: Package
-Version: 1.41.2
+Version: 1.41.3
 Title: Molecular Informatics Toolkit for Compound-Protein
     Interaction in Drug Discovery
 Authors@R: c(
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index d08a22c..550f460 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,3 +1,14 @@
+# Rcpi 1.41.3 (2024-09-09)
+
+## Improvements
+
+- Added early dependency checks for pwalign in functions that use
+  pairwise alignment. If certain dependency conditions can't be met,
+  the error is raised immediately, preventing unnecessary computation (#26).
+- Replaced rjson with jsonlite to maintain compatibility with R < 4.4.0.
+  The recent rjson update (v0.2.22 , 2024-08-20) requires R (>= 4.4.0),
+  which would break builds on r-oldrel (#28).
+
 # Rcpi 1.41.2 (2024-08-30)
 
 ## Improvements
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index d08a22c..550f460 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,3 +1,14 @@
+# Rcpi 1.41.3 (2024-09-09)
+
+## Improvements
+
+- Added early dependency checks for pwalign in functions that use
+  pairwise alignment. If certain dependency conditions can't be met,
+  the error is raised immediately, preventing unnecessary computation (#26).
+- Replaced rjson with jsonlite to maintain compatibility with R < 4.4.0.
+  The recent rjson update (v0.2.22 , 2024-08-20) requires R (>= 4.4.0),
+  which would break builds on r-oldrel (#28).
+
 # Rcpi 1.41.2 (2024-08-30)
 
 ## Improvements