- Fixed a regression in default 1.27 configurations in kube-apiserver: fixed the AggregatedDiscoveryEndpoint feature (beta in 1.27+) to successfully fetch discovery information from aggregated API servers that do not check `Accept` headers when serving the `/apis` endpoint ([#120360](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/120360), [@Jefftree](https://github.com/Jefftree)) [SIG API Machinery]

* Fix metrics API group name in audit configuration ([#53493](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/53493), [@piosz](https://github.com/piosz))
* Use separate client for leader election in scheduler to avoid starving leader election by regular scheduler operations. ([#53793](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/53793), [@wojtek-t](https://github.com/wojtek-t))

- Fixed a bug that unintentionally overrides custom Accept headers in http (live-/readiness)-probes if the header is in lowercase. ([#114606](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/114606), [@tuunit](https://github.com/tuunit))

- Client-go: Optimized leaders renewing leases by updating leader lock optimistically without getting the record from the API server first. Also, a new metric `leader_election_slowpath_total` was added to allow users to monitor how many leader elections are updated non-optimistically.

- 'Container `preStop` and `postStart` lifecycle handlers using `httpGet` now
  honor the specified `scheme` and `headers` fields. This enables setting custom
  headers and changing the scheme to `HTTPS`, consistent with container
  startup/readiness/liveness probe capabilities. Lifecycle handlers configured

- Fixed a regression in the kubelet's behavior while creating a container when the `EventedPLEG` feature...