Internet works but unable to send email!

I am using the Live CD version of Knoppix on my Intel based laptop; the web browsers are runnig fine and I am able to browse websites on the internet (such as this website). If I try to send out emails using a command line based program, such as mail, it fails to deliver the email to the outside world. It of course works for the "local" email.

This works:
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>mail myself
..
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I can see the email send to "myself" when I invoke mail to view my messages.

This does not work:
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> mails [email protected]
...
-----------------------------

I get long messages (when mail is invoked with -verbose option) -- it basically tries for quite a while to send the email (it is able to connect to the yahoo servers) but finally gives up. The following is a snippet of the log:
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tcpsmtp driver for transport smtp:
connect to host mx2.mail.yahoo.com[67.28.114.35]/smtp...
failed: connect: Connection timed out
unlocking retry/smtp/67.28.114.35 and storing error: transport smtp: connect: Connection timed out.
lock of retry/smtp/67.28.114.36 succeeded (will defer if delivery fails)
tcpsmtp driver for transport smtp:
connect to host mx2.mail.yahoo.com[67.28.114.36]/smtp...
failed: connect: Connection timed out
unlocking retry/smtp/67.28.114.36 and storing error: transport smtp: connect: Connection timed out.
lock of retry/smtp/4.79.181.13 succeeded (will defer if delivery fails)
tcpsmtp driver for transport smtp:
connect to host mx2.mail.yahoo.com[4.79.181.13]/smtp...
----------------------------------------------

Any clue on what's going on, and/or help on fixing this is very much appreciated.