I am in Cape Town and found that I could log in early this morning (Saturday) my time. Worked fine for a half hour and then said that there was a problem with the Earth server and I was being disconnected and I should try later. Definitely seems to be a problem where the GE cannot seem to handle high traffic loads, which is pretty ridiculous considering its popularity.

My previous post about this has been deleted for some unknown reason, without explaination.