New from Zend this week, there's the latest PHP Weekly Summary for this past week. There were quite a few larger happenings (including two new releases), so read on for more.

This past week, as was mentioned above, there were two new major PHP releases - PHP 5 Beta 2 and PHP 4.3.4 RC 3. Both new editions take us one step closer to PHP 5 and PHP 4.3.4 (respectively). To grab the PHP 5 beta, check out the PHP.net downloads page, and to get 4.3.4 RC 3, head on over to the QA site.

Also new this week, there is a new LZO [de]compression library created that is reportedly one of the fastest available. There is also mention of a new SAPI developed by the creator of the Continuity web server.

And, finally, there was developed a new, simple compatibility layer between the DOM and SimpleXML features by Robert Richards. This is a big step towards backwards XML interoperability, and as such has already been included in the official PHP 5.