If I were to guess, I would say Pool had a technical issue today and CIRA decided to screw all the other registrars in return.
Here's why:
1) Back in January 2009, many registrars had an unusually great day when pool server crashed just before TBR. The numbers reported by sibername today are a mirror image of what happened on january 2009.
2) Pool is one of many companies owned by CIRA insiders.
Today, all registrars I spoke with, with the exception of Pool, have reported all operations to be normal TBR wise.
Baremetal, Sibername, Burmac, myid, Canspace, and everyone else had no issue. The only silent party here is Pool.
It seems that Pool, despite in unlimited resources, had a clueless programmer who failed to understand how to carry a TBR session. But under what stretch of imagination is this not the exclusive responsibility of Pool, and only pool? With CIRA system being fine and all other registrars succeeding in carrying a TBR session, if the person in charge of TBR at Pool decided to take a long lunch or skip the day for some booze, does that mean that CIRA cancels the TBR?
What kind of a perverse joke is this?
So the Burmac guy slaves to make a system that works with his extremely limited resources and now he must pay the price of Pool screwing up?
As Namefox said, there is the potential of some very serious legal ramifications here.