Merge branch 'maint' into ng/master

Merge branch 'maint' into ng/master

* maint:
  am: prefer a shorter idiom where possible
  cosmetics: fix few typos, grammaros and missing whitespace
  fixup: remove an obsolete comment
  docs: we still don't have the promised better Java interface
  maint: re-run "make update-copyright" ...
  tests: avoid spurious failure with older flex (2.5.4)
  announcement: cater to more flexible NEWS format

Signed-off-by: Stefano Lattarini <stefano.lattarini@gmail.com>