Todd Benjamin was featured on CNN International yesterday as a "Financial Analyst" on Business Interrnational at 2 PM ET and World News Europe at 5 PM ET. Benjamin left the network earlier this year.

Instead of updating pages for shows that still have the old CNN.com Show Page look, pages for World News, Your World Today, World Business Today and Business International all head back to the CNN International main page and are no longer listed under the shows menu.

* Adrian Finighan, usually of CNN Today and Business International from London, is in Atlanta this week and has been co-hosting Your World Today. CNN/I's London anchors are occasionally seen in Atlanta, with recent examples being Max Foster and Richard Quest. However, it would appear to have been much longer since a Hong Kong-based anchor was anchoring from Atlanta.

* Sanjay Gupta's new series Project Life premiered on CNN/I on Wednesday evening. This is another 15-minute programme, following on from Becky Anderson's "The Spirit Of…". Project Life is on each Wednesday at 1815 gmt, in place of the last 15 minutes of Your World Today. It also repeats at the weekend. It would appear that this series is exclusive to CNN/I, unless anyone can tell me otherwise

At 0844 gmt this morning, CNN/I came out of a commerical break and into breaking news, interrupting World Sport which was live in progress from London.

Max Foster was live outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster with news of Tony Blair's impending announcement of his retirement as leader of the Labour Party, and as Prime Minister. Live footage was shown of Blair's vehicle convoy heading for RAF Northolt, from where he was to fly to his constituency of Sedgefield in north-east England.

CNN stayed with live shots of Blair entering his jet, the jet journeying to the runaway, and the plane taking off.

Regular programming resumed at 0905 gmt, with Larry King Replay in progress.

During Business International at 1000gmt, CNN/I went back to live coverage of Blair as he arrived in Sedgefield, and travelled to the Labour Club there. Adrian Finighan was anchoring from the London studio, with Max Foster at Parliament and Robin Oakley in Downing Street.

CNN/I brought live coverage of Blair's speech, when he announced he will step aside on 27 June.

Continuing live coverage from Max Foster in Westminster replaced World News Asia at 1100 gmt and part of World News at 1200 gmt. This then continued with Michael Holmes in Atlanta, with more on the story.

As an aside, the CNN/I digital downlink on the Astra 19.2ºE satellite is having some problems today. For a couple of hours, the signal has broken up intermittantly, sometimes disappearing completely with a "bad signal" message appearing. This is transmitted, and is not a local reception problem. It suggests a reception problem at the site of uplink to the satellite.

from a friend:

A serious fire has forced live programming from CNN's London HQ, Turner House, to be suspended until further notice. The fire, above a clothing department store on the adjacent Oxford Road - London's busiest shopping district - started just before 1900 bst (1800 gmt) Thursday. Half an hour later, World Business Today went on-air from the adjacent Turner House. However, this was quickly pulled off air as Atlanta took over live programming for the rest of the evening. Jim Clancy and Colleen McEdwards took turns with World Business Today, World News Europe and the evening edition of Business International.

Thirteen hours on, and fire crews are still on the scene tackling the blaze. All morning programming from Turner House in London has been suspended. CNN Today came from CNN Center this morning, with Michael Holmes and Jonathan Mann hosting. Mann also hosted Business International at 0700 gmt.

A large part of West-Central London has been cordoned off, with a quarter-mile exclusion zone in place until Saturday morning, according to Westminster City authorities. This area generally attracts between 250,000 to 500,000 shoppers a day. If the exclusion zone is a quarter-mile in each direction, then a large portion of Great Marlborough Street, where CNN London is based, is also included. Therefore, there is a chance that Turner House is currently empty. It is not known if the other networks to broadcast from Turner House, including the Cartoon Network and TCM, are affected.

There are fears that the building on fire may collapse. So far, there have been no reports of any injuries.

More here on CNN Observations as soon as it is available.

Update: I'm also hearing that the CNN London newsroom starting filling with smoke shortly after the fire started last night, and was therefore evacuated. I would imagine they'd have to turn off the air-conditioning/distribution in there to stop the smoke from coming in.

Additionally, Jonathan Mann is putting in quite a shift! He was live on Your World Today yesterday at around 12pm Eastern (1600 gmt). And then he was doing CNN Today at 12am Eastern (0400 gmt) this morning! He's still on right now, doing Business International until 7am Eastern (1100 gmt)!! I wonder if he's slept...