cannot connect to yahoo with pidgin 2.7.0

[Hemal Pandya]

Today I installed Pidgin 2.7.0 on a new Windows XP machine and found
that it cannot connect to my yahoo account.

Here's what I have found so far:

1. The debug window reports that it is trying to connect to
vcs1.msg.yahoo.com which cannot be resolved to an ip address.

2. I could not find a place where the host to connect to can be
specified. I am pretty sure this was possible in earlier versions but
I haven't used pidgin for about 3 months

3. I changed the ..../etc/hosts file and gave an address for
vcs1.msg.yahoo.com that is same as scs.msg.yahoo.com

4. Now I found that pidgin is trying to connect to port 80 on that
server. Should it not be connecting to 5050? Port 80 is not reachable
on that server, 5050 is. Setting pager port has no affect.

Appreciate if someone can point me at a workaround. Thanks in advance