THE Philippines might buy two squadrons of military jets for as much as $1.6 billion to modern­ize its defenses, President Benigno Aquino said Wednesday as the Philippines and China declared a fishing ban on the disputed Scar­borough Shoal in the South China Sea. The government could buy new training jets for between $400 mil­lion and $800 million per squadron and upgrade the planes to fighters, Mr. Aquino told Bombo Radyo. The seller would be a “progres­sive nation” and not the US, the Philippines’ main ally, he said. A squadron is made up of between 16 and 24 jets. “It may be from Europe, or somewhere nearer,” Mr. Aquino said.
“That’s what the Armed Forces of the Philippines is studying tomake it more economical.”

PRESIDENT Benigno Aquino III sent a lot of tongues wagging about his relationship with Korean television host Grace Lee with a terse statement that many people have described as “pregnant with meaning.” Mr. Aquino, who has been dating Lee for the past five months, told a radio interview: “We are friends.”

Filipino children who are five years old will have to enter kin­dergarten and attend 12 years of basic elementary and secondary education before they could en­ter college starting this coming school year, The Philippine Star reports. President Aquino led the for­mal launching of the K+ 12 re­formed basic education program at Malacañang yesterday, which makes mandatory kindergarten education for five-year-old chil­dren and two additional two years of senior high school for all stu­dents.

The Philippines leads the world in the number of people who believe in God, while the elderly across all countries tend to be the most religious, according to a US study released recently. Belief in God tends to be stron­gest in the United States and Catholic countries and lowest in Scandinavia and former Soviet states, according to the survey carried out by the NORC research group at the University of Chi­cago. The study was based on data from 30 countries - nearly all with Christian majorities - in which surveys about belief in God have been taken since 1991.