On Nov. 1 Joomla! 1.6 Beta 13 was released. In this release 71 issues in the tracker have been fixed, and additionally 28 tracker issues have been closed. That leaves only 13 issues blocking the release of Joomla! 1.6 Release Candidate 1. There is a good chance those issues will be fixed in the current release cycle. If that happens, potentially we will see Joomla! 1.6 RC 1 as the next release, instead of Beta 14.
In the mean time, please download and test the current Beta 13 release at http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/frs/?action=FrsReleaseBrowse&frs_package_id=5496.