Appears that the rare bug in mobs came up again and gave 40 mins downtime on the server.
Minecraft.net is known to be having issues right now, its almost a lottery to get into the server.
Bukkit updates will be provided to the server tonight, downtime should only be 10-15 minutes.
In reference to the last news post, we have updated bukkit and now are monitoring the server with mobs re-enabled.
Mobs have had to be disabled - it seems to hang the server.