An easy check to see if transactions are being included in the default front end is to have a look at "Current Block Value", if it's 25BTC then no tx's are being included, if it's higher then they are....
http://minefast.coincadence.com:9332/static/Yup... Just grabbed this from the node:
Current block value: 25.29108692 BTC
I am not sure what caused this. Everything I check that could be of issue, seems okay.