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The Philippines and the United States launched annual military exercises on Monday but the longtime allies scaled them down in line with President Rodrigo Duterte's pivot to China and Russia.


Duterte in his 10 months in office has sought to weaken ties with the US - the Philippines' mutual defense treaty partner and former colonial ruler - saying its role as a global superpower is diminishing.


The 12-day "Balikatan" war games that began on Monday will involve fewer than half the number of soldiers than in 2015 during the term of Duterte's pro-American predecessor Benigno Aquino.


There will also be no focus on strengthening the Philippines' maritime defense capabilities. In previous years this had been widely seen as a show of strength against Beijing over competing claims in the South China Sea.


Duterte has reversed Aquino's policy of challenging China forcefully over the maritime territorial row Air Max 97 Summit White Snakeskin UK Sale , choosing instead to pursue closer economic, political and military relations with Beijing.


Officials from both sides spoke in glowing terms at the opening ceremony for Balikatan (meaning "Shoulder-to-shoulder") about the upcoming exercise and their nations' military relations.


But the American co-director for Balikatan, Lieutenant-General Lawrence Nicholson, said the US hoped the exercises would expand again.


"If you look back on 33 years of Balikatan, they are all different. There are any number of ways it can change. It can be bigger air max thea womens sale , it can be smaller. We hope it gets bigger," Nicholson told reporters at Philippine military headquarters.


While on a trip to Beijing last year, Duterte, a self-described socialist, announced that he had moved into the "ideological flow" of China's communist rulers.


He said in the lead-up to that trip that military exercises with the United States were a "humiliation" for the Philippines air max thea uk sale , and threatened to sever defense ties completely.


Much of Duterte's criticism appeared to have been triggered by American criticism of his drug war, which has claimed thousands of lives and been condemned by rights groups as a possible crime against humanity.


Duterte responded to criticism from then-US president Barack Obama by repeatedly using personal slurs against him.


by Christian Edwards


SYDNEY, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The agonizing search for the vanished Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 and its equally confounding black box is now reaching into seemingly inaccessible depths, with the best technologies reaching their limit this week.


With the Southern Ocean throwing even more challenges in the now desperate race against hope, authorities have begun to acknowledge that the black box has reached its use by date and new nike air zoom 90 it white , desperate measures are now in place.


By mid-week, far off the coast of Western Australia, the latest roll of the dice for an international operation spanning more than 20 countries that have thrown everything in the search for the fateful Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 witnessed the "Bluefin-21" autonomous vehicle slide into the ocean.


At about the same time, experts around the world announced that in all likelihood, the final breaths of the Boeing's black box were being taken somewhere at the bottom of an ocean dotted with underwater volcanic activity and perilous topside conditions.


Several days later and it appears that the submersible bluefin may have already pushed beyond its own limits.


Problems lingered over both days of operation air max plus tn ultra uk , with the bluefin reaching its maximum operating depth of 4.5 kms and authorities declaring "no objects of interest" from its first, brief 7 hour search.


Authorities have little choice but to engage in a visual search in the area 2,087 km north west of Perth, that assumes the black box and any debris is languishing in depths beyond our best technology, in relentless dark and a quagmire of sediment.


Much debate has surrounded the shelf-life of the black box cheap air max tn uk , what Australian aviation expert John Faulkner calls an Australian invention. The black box recorder beacon batteries last a minimum of 30 days.


Flight MH370 vanished over the South China Sea some 40 days, and for many, a lifetime ago.


That leaves technology referred to as "side-scan" type sonars, in-built on the bluefin autonomous vehicle, in search now for the wreckage of the plane itself.


Although not as the name implies nike air max 97 womens rose gold , the actual black boxes are not necessarily black, but simply too small to find.


Faulkner said, "The first black boxes were initially produced in the UK with acknowledgment of its Australian origins but these acknowledgments soon disappeared.... In 1965, cockpit voice recorders were mandated in all commercial aircraft built in the US and the western world followed."


Faulkner, a Senior Visiting Fellow at UNSW mens nike air max 97 uk , has been at the heart of Australian aviation and his insights into the challenges facing MH370 searchers have provided some light - and sobriety - in an emotion charged month that has seen the largest maritime search in history launched off the coast of Perth.


Robin Robertson, a Senior Lecturer at ADFA (Australian Defence Force Academy) said that to locate underwater objects in an ocean, such as the location beacon "pingers" attached to the black boxes of MH370, sonars will now be the best "shot in the dark".


"If and when the search underwater resumes, there are a number of challenges. Since light only penetrates to about 200m deep even in the clearest water air max 97 metallic gold for sale , light is not so useful for searching in the ocean."


Robertson said multi-beam and side-scan sonars determine the depth of the ocean and the thickness of different types of sediment, such as mud or sand.


"But the depth of the ocean is not well known. We know the Moon and Mars better than we know the ocean floor."


Search coordination from the ADV Ocean Shield has limits in an area almost totally unmapped.


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