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Through the coming week, five commanding international broadcasters are each presenting an edition of Newshour, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service's award-winning current affairs programme.

Jeremy Paxman sowed the seeds of the idea, though he didn't realise it at the time. "My hero: the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service", .

He went on: "I don't suppose there are many heroes who wear a cardigan and cords. But that's how I imagine the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service, an ageing uncle who's seen it all."

His heroes at Bush House wanted Jeremy to stop by and say hello - and see for himself that while we're not (all) fashionistas, the cardies and cords have long since been discarded. With a younger audience profile than, say, Radio 4 or Newsnight, we're more like the cutting edge cousin than a snoozing uncle.

And from that came the idea of getting Jeremy Paxman and other eminent news broadcasters to present our flagship programme. A statement of our ambition and success - an expression of the World Service's rude health in spite of Foreign Office cuts in our budget - and a bit of sparkle for our millions of listeners around the world.

Newshour has a fantastic team of regular presenters, of course. Two among them, Lyse Doucet and Owen Bennett Jones, have won Sony gold awards for news journalist of the year. Editor Lucy Walker's talented team of producers and anchors, along with the best studio managers in the business, have taken Newshour to two Sony radio gold awards for best news and current affairs programme in the past four years. An unrivalled achievement.

That's helped to deliver a growing global audience to the network. Last year, the English World Service gained a 10% jump in listeners to 43 million, with the biggest numbers in North America and West Africa. In Britain, a spate of big foreign stories and the increasing reach of DAB digital radio has led to even more rapid growth in audience - up to around 1.7 million weekly World Service listeners.

So our guest presenters could well be reaching a much bigger audience than they are accustomed to - they will have to find a tone and touch for live current affairs which works equally well in Lagos and Los Angeles - we are sure they will enjoy the experience, and convey that enjoyment.

And the line up, all live at 14:00 BST (13:00 GMT):

• Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman gets the ball rolling on Monday 26 September as our first guest presenter.
• On Tuesday 27 September, Christine Ockrent, one of France's most respected news broadcasters, will be in our Bush House studio.
• We come from Johannesburg on Wednesday 28 September, with Redi Tlhabi of Talk Radio 702.
• Christiane Amanpour, ABC's hugely experienced foreign correspondent, presents from New York on Thursday 29 September.
• And on Friday 30 September, Today's Evan Davis takes the helm.

As well as pursuing the day's news agenda, Newshour's guest presenters will be conducting interviews and exploring themes which reflect their own interests and expertise. And some are using their personal contacts book to get big name guests on to the programme.

Do tune in.

Andrew Whitehead is the editor of ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service News.

For anyone interested in trying out a new beta version of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ homepage, or reading about it, James Thornett who is in charge of this for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Future Media has written a blog post here.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ News website.

A year ago we launched a North American edition of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ News site, run from our bureau in Washington DC. As well as strengthening our coverage of US issues, it meant we could offer a front page of the website targeted directly at our millions of readers in the US and Canada.

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Two weeks ago, we introduced an extra element to the website, following a further expansion in Washington - an international edition of the Magazine index. This is great news for readers of the website outside the UK, and also for the Magazine's regular followers at home, who will be able to access all the new content too. As was the case with the launch of the North American edition, the international Magazine is done with the backing of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Worldwide, the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s commercial arm, which funds our services internationally.

Since we started the Magazine in the UK in 2003 it has grown to become a focus for original features, such as our piece looking at 50 years of Private Eye covers, as well as regular items like 7 days 7questions, Who What Why, and Paper Monitor. Until now, however, it has never had a high prominence on our international site. It has also been largely text and still images.
The new edition means we can bring to the international site the same focus on some of our most popular content from around the world, such as this tale about the restoration of Hitler's sea defences.

And it's particularly pleasing that a central part of this new approach will be in video. Four new video strands - First Person, Altered States, Living Online and Picture This - have joined the Magazine and will, each week, bring fresh perspectives on stories of changing lives in the US.

By far the most frequent request from Magazine readers, when they have replied to surveys over the past few years, is that they would simply like the Magazine to have more stories in it. This new edition brings exactly that, and there will be other improvements to come in the next few weeks too.

Following the changes, all readers of the website, wherever they are, can find the Magazine displayed prominently on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ News front page, or by going directly to bbc.co.uk/magazine. You can also follow it or , and I'd be very happy to hear your thoughts on our new venture.

Update 12:00, 29 September: Thanks for your comments, and for making the point that the Magazine's long-standing readers outside the UK still want access to some of the features, like Paper Monitor, which are primarily of interest to a UK audience. Following your comments we introduced a new box on the right hand side of the index on the internation edition, labelledÌý "From Magazine in the UK" as a home for exactly this kind of content. So thank you for the thought.Ìý This process isn't finished - I'll post some more details when we have them.

Giles Wilson is features editor of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ News website

For anyone interested in how technology can help newsrooms organise themselves, my colleague Peter Coles has posted an informative paper about the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Journalism Portal - part of a project to develop a shared set of tools for multiplatform production for journalists working across the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ News website.

Earlier today I gave a talk at the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam about how social media has changed the way newsrooms work. The full transcript of the speech is below.

Read the rest of this entry

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There is hardly a piece of news that is more perishable than data from financial markets, and market data are an essential element for understanding today's business and economics news.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ has met this information need for decades: first on Ceefax and since the late 1990s online and on digital text.

But when you are on the move, using our market data service has been awkward at best. The website was simply not built to work well on the small screens of mobile devices.

I'm very pleased to say that we have now launched our market data pages optimised for mobile phones. Whether you look at them on a small phone or the big screen of a modern smartphone, the pages will change to suit your device.

Bookmark this link on your mobile.

There you will find the top market indexes, the winners and losers, and all other share prices from London, Frankfurt, Paris and Wall Street. We also have the prices of key commodities like oil, gold and silver, and exchange rates for pound sterling, euro and US dollar against more than 20 currencies.

You do not have to register on the site and the service is free, although - depending on your mobile phone contract - you may have to pay call or internet connection charges.

Tim Weber is business and technlogy editor of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ News website