[Reporting from Ibaan municipality, Batangas and Bacolod City, Negros Occidental. Some of the names were changed to protect against probable harm from persons scouring the news for potential victims]

Former overseas Filipino workers from rural Philippines, mostly women, seek advice with rural bankers during dialogues with officials and staff of Batangas-based Bangko Kabayan and Negros Occidental-headquartered Bank Victorias to determine how rural banks can be of service to OFWs’ economic needs.

MINGLANILLA, Cebu province — This noodle business is going to the dogs – all 20 of them, in fact.

Aside from a hobby, the dogs also serve as guardians of the childless couple Susana Jimenez and husband Leonides who learned there is more err, bite, to overseas work if money earned there goes into business.

Excerpts [edited] of a speech at the Annual Conference of the Philippine Historical Association (PHA)

18 September 2009—National Museum, Manila

THE topic comes as a surprise: A national conference about the historicity of Filipino heroism, and ordinary people are included.

This is not to denigrate overseas Filipinos, or even us ordinary Filipinos.

MANILA — Contracts for overseas work over a five-year period benefited more rehired land-based overseas Filipino workers, government data reveal.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) five-year data also revealed that last year, the number of re-hired land-based OFWs reached a five-year high of more than half-a-million (597,426) from less than that in 2004 (419,505).

MANILA — Newly-released data on Italy’s migrant population by that country’s census registry showed that the number of documented Filipinos grew by 8,011 more in 2008.

ISTAT (Istituto nazionale di statistica), Italy’s statistics office, said in its October 8 release that there are 113,686 documented Filipinos living in Italy in 2008. This is compared to the 105,675 number ISTAT estimated in 2007.