  We discuss recent progress made studies of bulk thermodynamics of strongly
interacting matter through lattice simulations of QCD with an almost physical
light and strange quark mass spectrum. We present results on the QCD equation
of state at vanishing and non-vanishing quark chemical potential and show first
results on baryon number and strangeness fluctuations, which might be measured
in event-by-event fluctuations in low energy runs at RHIC as well as at FAIR.
