Reforms to the spelling of Portuguese were officially adopted in Brazil yesterday and will be adopted by Portugal and Cape Verde and the other lusophone countries eventually, according to this report. The reforms have not been welcomed by all in Portugal as many of them are existing Brazilian spellings and thousands of people have signed petitions against them. There are more details of the opposition to the reforms here.

The reforms include the removal of silent letters, such as p in optimo (great) and of unnecessary diacritics. The letters k, w and y, which are already used, are being officially added to the Portuguese alphabet The idea is the make written Portuguese uniform globally, which will make things like internet searches easier.