There have been serious delays in  the BITNET core while the UIUCVM42 and
UICVM regions  were consolidated into  a single region, known  as UICBIT.
This turned  out to be  too much traffic after  all, so the  regions were
split again into UICBIT and  UICBIT2, yesterday afternoon I think. Things
seem to be settling down now and hopefully the queues will clear over the
weekend and  the problem  will be  gone. I  should perhaps  clarify that,
while I am aware of all this because I also run a core site and am on the
corresponding lists, I am not involved  in the management of the US core,
and I am not a spokesman for the  people who do manage the core. I'm just
answering your question :-)
 
  Eric