Vitale to receive three awards over the year
by Doug Fernandes Dick Vitale will be busy later this year giving thanks and accepting waves of applause. The Lakewood Ranch resident and ESPN college basketball analyst will receive three awards, the biggest being the fifth annual Court of Honor Award from the National Association of Basketball Coaches Foundation. It's given...
Luigi Del Bianco Recognition as Chief Carver on Mount Rushmore
by Lou Del Bianco Get the National Park Service to formally recognize Luigi Del Bianco as the Chief Carver on Mount Rushmore. Luigi Del Bianco lived the American Dream by coming to America and becoming the Chief Carver on Mount Rushmore. Luigi's job was in carving the "refinement of expression" in the faces. When you look at those 4 presi...
NIAF Anniversary Gala 2014
Register online today for NIAF's 39th Anniversary Gala in Washington, D.C., October 24-25! This year's Gala calendar is already filling up fast with exciting celebrities and events, including a special preview screening of the highly anticipated documentary "The Italian Americans" scheduled for nationwide PBS release in early 2015. Plus, r...
From Italy With Love Show Set to Air on Cooking Channel on November 5 at 9:30 PM ET
"From Italy with Love" show starring Francesco Zonin, Vice President of Casa Vinicola Zonin S.p.A is set to air on Cooking Channel on Wednesday, November 5 (9:30 p.m., ET). Additional episodes are available for viewing on "From Italy with Love's" YouTube channel beginning Monday, October 20 and another on October 27. The new show will be a...
Liza Minnelli pays tribute to her father and Italian heritage
Academy Award-winner Liza Minnelli was honored at the Los Angeles-Italia Film Fest on the weekend. Minnelli, who won an Oscar in 1973 for "Cabaret" picked up the Jack Valenti Lifetime Achievement Award. Named after the longtime MPAA president, the award honors Italian-Americans who have made great contributions to cinema. "I am very gratef...
Liveright to Publish ‘The Complete Works of Primo Levi’ in Fall 2015
by Calvin Reid The noted Italian writer Primo Levi (1919–1987), an Auschwitz survivor and the author of such acclaimed works as If This Is a Man and The Periodic Table, is sometimes referred to as a Holocaust writer. But Liveright publisher Bob Weil, who is publishing the forthcoming Complete Works of Primo Levi, believes that's n...
TTIP: tra luci e ombre i negoziati procedono
Il negoziato sul Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)tra Stati Uniti ed Unione Europea procede e se dovesse andare in porto porterebbe alla creazione della più grande area di libero scambio esistente al mondo che coinvolgerebbe 850 milioni di persone, il 45% del PIL globale e 1/3 degli scambi commerciali mondiali. L'obiett...
Thanks to Pope Francis, the Fiat has truly arrived in America
by Max Ehrenfreund There's a black Fiat 500L sitting beside the highway outside Safford Fiat of Tyson's Corner with the doors open. It isn't the pope's, but Mark Cowdin, the general sales manager there, thinks he can sell it all the same. Pope Francis arrived in Washington in what appeared to be an identical car, and is also using a Jeep W...
Abe Vigoda dies at 94; actor was known for 'Barney Miller' and 'Godfather' roles
Abe Vigoda, best known for portraying a gangster in "The Godfather" films and the glum Det. Fish on TV's "Barney Miller," died Tuesday at his daughter's home in Woodland Park, N.J. He was 94. Vigoda's daughter, Carol Vigoda Fuchs, said he died in his sleep of natural causes. A veteran of New York theater, Vigoda was about 50 when he w...
Jon Polito, Character Actor and Coen Brothers Star, Dies at 65
by Katie Roberts Jon Polito, a ubiquitous character actor known on screens both big and small, especially for his work in Coen brothers films, has died. He was 65. Polito's wide-ranging career included a whopping 217 acting credits, per his IMDb page, highlighted by his appearance in Coen brothers classics like "The Big Lebowski," "Miller's C...
Dalla SF State University all'Università di Pavia grazie alla borsa del NIAF
by Roberto Natalini L'organizzazione italo-americana più importante a livello nazionale, ovvero il NIAF, National Italian American Foundation, ha di recente conferito una consistente borsa di studio ad Ariana Alva Ferrari, studente della San Francisco State University di origini italiane. Fondato nel lontano 1976, ogni anno il NIA...
Americans Love Pizza
Like football, pop music, and democracy itself, pizza follows in the long American tradition of things that began overseas before the United States imported, violently altered, and eventually defined the institution. Although the first pizza shops didn't open in the U.S. until the early 20th century, hundreds of years after the original Ne...