PR checkers - getting server redirects

[newreality]

More and more lately I've been getting when checking pr:

"the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete."

On the last one, I did backlink checks of sites on the page which are coming up under Yahoo/Explorer. So how can I (a) determine if the site is safe and (b) what really causes such a page to not have pagerank displayed. - Going thru a third party pr checker.

What would be the benefit of these sites doing redirects on only certain pages - to maintain the proper % of wanted content?

Traceroutes seem to currently be down (though was checking pr's past couple days)

[deanpowel71]

Is that true!! Because i havent seen any thing like that and its quite strange if it has happened.