Apology: Information Brokers apologizes for any inconvenience our Ask-the-Media list e-mail loop caused you. We accept 100% responsibility for the situation. National Public Radio(R) ( NPR(R) ) had nothing to do with the problem. We did not contact NPR prior to putting them on the list nor did they have any knowledge of the list. On Wednesday, 1996/09/25, we were testing the Ask-the-Media list. NPR's program, Weekend Edition Sunday, was one of the e-mail addresses on the list. Our list did not know how to handle Weekend Edition Sunday's auto-response which replies automatically to the "resent from" field of a mail message. Our program was asking for a reply to a different line. Because the NPR program's mail message was automatically sent to its "resent from" address, all of the members of the list got it. This included, Weekend Edition Sunday whose automatic response went out again. This started the loop, exacerbating the lack of compatibility between our mail program and NPR's. NPR was not contacted by Information Brokers about being included on the list nor did the company make any attempt to gain NPR's permission. NPR had no knowledge of Information Brokers, our service or the list prior to the loop incident. Please accept our most sincere apology.