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For the 17th consecutive year, the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) will sponsor its Ambassador Peter F. Secchia Voyage of Discovery program, an educational and cultural initiative that sends Italian American students enrolled in a college or university to Italy each year. This all-expenses-paid trip will take place in June 2016.

Breakthroughs From the First  PC to the First Space-Bound  Espresso Machine. "The first desktop computer in the world": this is how America welcomed the launch of Programma 101 (P101) in New York in 1965. Created by a small group of "crazy" young Italian engineers at Olivetti, P101's success was so huge, that the US space agency NASA bought it and used it for its mission to the moon.   Since then, Italy has continued to make significant contributions to progress in technology, up to the 2015 experiment of ISSpresso, the first ever system for brewing espresso coffee in the extreme conditions of outer space, made by Argotec and Lavazza.

After the disastrous year of 2014, olive production has returned to normal in Italy, up an estimated 30%, with a quality surge to boot. The harvest on our own little olive orchard is tiny, but provides us not only olive oil for the year, but also a window into the ancient art of tending olive trees, harvesting the olives and watching them cold-pressed.

Italy's youthful Premier Matteo Renzi and his more mature Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan are talking money. On the agenda: a pending law that cuts property taxes, raises the cash limit for money transfers, and offers part-time jobs to those waiting for pensions that don't come. But there are also quarrels about public income deriving from gambling.