news server does not respond

Hi,

what's up with the news server? My reader can't connect since yesterday 
evening (MESZ, UTC+2). Telnetting gives:

markus@macbook:~$ telnet news.postgresql.org nntp
Trying 200.46.204.72...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

A note about my current NNTP experience: I'm just about to switch back 
to emails again because it seems more convenient to have it all in one 
IMAP account with multiple folders. Especially when hopping between 
different machines I've noticed it's better to use IMAP, which stores 
what I have read on the server. The downside of course is having all the 
mails on the server and having huge IMAP folders (i.e. for -hackers).

Is there something that stores flags (seen, responded, important, etc..) 
for newsgroups on the server? Probably a NNTP to IMAP gateway, that 
would at least solve problem no. 1 above...

Regards

Markus