Admin page loads suddenly very slow, phplist.org appears to be down

Hello,
The admin interface page loads on an install of phplist on my server are suddenly very slow…
i’ve noticed that phplist.org appears to be down…
Maybe my install of phplist is looking for news/updates/etc, and therefore slowing the whole thing down…
is that possible?

Note: each page load is taking about 44 seconds…
nothing has changed recently on my install, and i’ve been running phplist for many years, usually always up to date…
i’ve tried disabling all the plugins, but it makes no difference…

is it possible to temporarily prevent phplist from ‘calling home’?

Edit: the phplist.org site is up again, and page loads on my phplist are fine again…
it would be nice to be able to turn off the calls to external servers when they are misbehaving…

@petersphilo See this earlier topic Is 3.2.5 much slower than 2.10.18?