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tempts to reach her 62-year-old grandfather and nine other relatives in the Leyte region that was flattened when Typhoon Haiyan hit one week ago.
• Sending $21.4 billion back home last year alone, Filipino overseas workers are a major part of their country's economy, with their remittances equaling nearly 10 percent of gross domestic product. Spread out over more than 200 countries, they work as nurses in Europe, sugar cane laborers in Malaysia, housemaids in Hong Kong and construction workers in the oil-rich Middle East.
• Hong Kong alone has some 133,000 Filipinos, mostly domestic workers who tend to gather in local parks on Sundays, a day off. There are so many Filipinos in Hong Kong, that an entire shopping mall catering to them has developed -- to buy goods from home and, crucially, wire money back to families. Howard, 18, works in a remittance agency at the mall and says that days after the storm, her family is still ringing missing relatives' mobile phones 10 to 20 times a day with no luck. "Sometimes I lose hope. And sometimes I just carry on doing it."
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• LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Among the concerns surrounding the rollout of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul was that too few young, healthy people would sign up -- a problem that could undermine the financial viability of the federal law.
• The insurance industry has increasing cause for concern as early enrollment reports suggest a trend that could cause insurance premiums and deductibles to rise sharply. Along with the paltry enrollment numbers released this week, officials in a handful of states said those who had managed to sign up were generally older people with medical problems.
• Insurers have warned that they need a wide range of people signing up for coverage because premiums paid by adults in the younger and healthier group, between 18 and 35, are needed to offset the cost of carrying older and sicker customers who typically generate far more in medical bills than they contribute in premiums.
• The first set of enrollment data revealed that 106,000 people signed up for coverage nationwide, far short of the 500,000 initial sign-ups the Obama administration had expected. In states where officials discussed more detailed information, it also became apparent that the people who flocked to the exchanges after they opened Oct. 1 were those who were desperate for coverage.
• In California, the state with the largest uninsured population, most of those who

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