No, on purpose. That was like a year and a half ago, I
think.
...because?
To stop abusing semantic markup (such abuse renders the semantics meaningless).
Well, maybe you can point me to a previous discussion so we don't have
to have the same discussion again, but I think it would be superior to
use semantic markup. I'm sure everyone's aware of this already, but
using visual formatting tags to represent emphasis is discouraged:
"The proper HTML elements should be used to mark up emphasis: EM and
STRONG. The B and I elements should not be used; they are used to
create a visual presentation effect. The EM and STRONG elements were
designed to indicate structural emphasis that may be rendered in a
variety of ways (font style changes, speech inflection changes, etc.)"