My b2evolution Version: 4.1.x

I have a number of pieces of code that build pages from HTML, php and also inserted blog entries from b2e. Because some parts had to be run before stream output was started, I used a no_skin blog and a call ( shown below) grabbing the content

ob_start () ;
include dirname(__FILE__).'/../blogs/newsfeed_excerpt.php.inc';
$announcetext = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

and then echoed the $announcement text elsewhere in the page.

This worked fine until upgrading to 4.1.2, now the blog content appears at the start of the page and NOT where I echo $announcetext. It's as if the new b2e code is forcing a flush.

Any advice?, I can't find anything in the fourums or manual to help.