Is there a new version of XML out? If so when was it released and what are the new features?
New features in the basic XML specification are extremely unlikely at this point. Of course there will continue to be developments in other standards in the XML family, but XML itself is very much stable. There are ‘editions’ of the standard (up to Fifth Edition so far) but these are merely corrections and clarifications to the document, not new functionality.
XML 1.1 was launched some years ago but the differences between it and XML 1.0 are small and unlikely to be noticeable to the regular user. Most people still use 1.0 (either explicitly or by simply omitting an XML declaration).