On 4 July 1957, an Italian icon hit the road as the first Fiat 500 rolled off the production line in Turin. Exactly fifty years later, another Fiat 500 is officially being launched.

Calls for Parliament to return early from its summer break are backed by Common Leader Jack Straw's aide.

As membership group Heyday is launched for people in their 50s and 60s in the UK, the BBC's Matthew Wells examines the influence of a similar group in the US.

Doctors warn that there are just two years left to save a universally free NHS.

In his weekly opinion column, A Point of View, Harold Evans writes of innovative attempts to improve the US's state schools.

Lord Hanson, one of the most successful and influential businessmen of the past 50 years, dies aged 82.

German opera star Anne Schwanewilms plays down reports she replaced another singer for being too fat in the Royal Opera's Ariadne auf Naxos.

Margaret Thatcher's legacy will be argued over for decades to come, but we are all, to some extent, her offspring, argues Nick Assinder.

Signs of a rapprochement on the Israel-Syria front as well as a possible improvement in ties between Egypt and Iran are discussed in the regional press

The United States has turned its attention, though not its guns, to Syria following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq.

Playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn warns he may boycott London's West End theatre because of its "obsession" with hiring Hollywood stars.

Education will be the winner when the government announces its spending plans for the next three years, the Chancellor says.

Ministers will only get through House of Lords reform if half of peers are elected, a leading democracy campaigner tells BBC News Online.

The European Union will need to streamline the way it makes decisions as it welcomes another 10 members by 2004, says Tony Blair.

Europe believes that the BSE and foot and mouth crisis demonstrates that the intensive practices typical of British farming are falling into disrepute

In a special report from Chinhoyi, the BBC's Grant Ferrett joins a young new Zanu-PF MP at a victory rally.

Tory and Labour politicians trade fresh accusations in the continuing row over university 'elitism'.

Chancellor Gordon Brown fires another salvo in the unrelenting war over elitism, saying "equality of opportunity" is an economic necessity.

The papers question how health managers are going to find the money to give nurses and doctors their above-inflation pay rises.

Anglo-Saxon history is to stay on the A level syllabus, following a public outcry at plans to remove it from the exam choices.