Prepare for release (#2200)

* Recommenders 1.2.1

Signed-off-by: miguelgfierro <[email protected]>

* update readmes

Signed-off-by: miguelgfierro <[email protected]>

* updating the date

---------

Signed-off-by: miguelgfierro <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: miguelgfierro <[email protected]>

Author: miguelgfierro

NEWS.md

@@ -5,6 +5,12 @@ Licensed under the MIT License.
 
 # What's New
 
+## Update December 23, 2024
+
+We have a new release [Recommenders 1.2.1](https://github.com/recommenders-team/recommenders/releases/tag/1.2.1)!
+
+We fixed a lot of bugs due to dependencies, improved security, reviewed the notebooks and the libraries.
+
 ## Update May 2, 2024
 
 We have a new release [Recommenders 1.2.0](https://github.com/microsoft/recommenders/releases/tag/1.2.0)!

README.md

@@ -15,11 +15,11 @@ Licensed under the MIT License.
 
 <br>
 
-## What's New (May, 2024)
+## What's New (Dec, 2024)
 
-We have a new release [Recommenders 1.2.0](https://github.com/recommenders-team/recommenders/releases/tag/1.2.0)!
+We have a new release [Recommenders 1.2.1](https://github.com/recommenders-team/recommenders/releases/tag/1.2.1)!
 
-So many changes since our last release. We have full tests on Python 3.8 to 3.11 (around 1800 tests), upgraded performance in many algorithms, reviewed notebooks, and many more improvements.
+We fixed a lot of bugs due to dependencies, improved security, reviewed the notebooks and the libraries.
 
 ## Introduction
 

recommenders/__init__.py

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 # Licensed under the MIT License.
 
 __title__ = "Recommenders"
-__version__ = "1.2.0"
+__version__ = "1.2.1"
 __author__ = "Recommenders contributors"
 __license__ = "MIT"
 __copyright__ = "Copyright 2018-present Recommenders contributors."