Confusion about python versions

[Aseem Bansal]

Python 2.7.6 release candidate 1 and 3.3.3 release candidate 1 was released yesterday. Also Python 3.4.0 alpha 4 was released a week ago.

I thought as Python 3.4.0 alpha was released 3.3 branch was done. The 3.3.3 release candidate fixes many bugs as per the changelog so would they be included in 3.4.0?

For how long do the older versions get supported in case of Python? Do bugfix releases for older versions keeps on happening even when new branch is released? Isn't that a lot of work to manage so many versions?

How do the Python versions work? For how long is Python 2 going to be supported?