diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 1cc6bd19bb..967734784c 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -77,6 +77,7 @@ Authors@R: c(
     person("Niels Richard", "Hansen", role = "ctb"),
     person("Noam", "Ross", role = "ctb"),
     person("Obada", "Mahdi", role = "ctb"),
+    person("Pavel N.", "Krivitsky", role = "ctb", comment=c(ORCID = "0000-0002-9101-3362")),
     person("Qiang", "Li", role = "ctb"),
     person("Ramnath", "Vaidyanathan", role = "ctb"),
     person("Richard", "Cotton", role = "ctb"),
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 0f51918c58..980a41de98 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -14,6 +14,8 @@
 
 - Added a new engine `cc` to compile C++ code via `R CMD SHILIB` like the `c` and `fortran` engines (thanks, @kingaa, #1832).
 
+- `kable()` operating in LaTeX mode now typesets numeric columns in math mode for improved rendering of minus signs; decimal and thousands separator commas are wrapped in braces (`{}`) to preserve spacing (thanks, @krivit, #1709).
+
 ## BUG FIXES
 
 - For non-R code chunks that generate plots and use the chunk option `fig.cap`, the `plot` hook in **knitr** stopped working in v1.27 and v1.28 (thanks, @XiangyunHuang, https://d.cosx.org/d/421249).