Quote by samstone: The only sure thing is somewhere between 1.3.9sr1 and 1.3.9sr2 that the problem started.
Looking at the (very short) list of changes for 1.3.9sr2, the only thing that comes to mind is that I had to edit the language files to remove the $topic variable.
Is it possible that the language files are somehow damaged / messed up?
bye, Dirk