According to Matt Cutts, there have been a few small updates in the recent past (which of course everyone already knew), and there should be a visible PR and Backlink update within the next few days. Matt says there were some changes on September 22 (yes, that coincides with a bunch of forum threads) as well as this weekend (yes, see my post from yesterday), as well as some changes for CJK and Europeans on October 5 and 7, respectively. Apparently, the Chinese and European updates had nothing to do with spam, but he implies that the September 22 and past weekend updates were an effort to reduce spam. So, now that is cleared up. Oh, you can read it all for yourself at www.mattcutts.com/blog/more-info-on-updates/.