Three U.S. Marines were killed during a training exercise on a northern Australian island on Sunday after an American MV-22B Osprey aircraft carrying the troops crashed, wounding several others, according to officials. 

The tiltrotor aircraft was carrying 23 U.S. Marines when it crashed at roughly 9:30 a.m. local time on Melville Island, which is off the Northern Territory of mainland Australia in the Timor Sea. Twenty Marines were injured in the crash, and five in serious condition were flown to a town 50 miles away for treatment, according to a report from the Associated Press. 

“Marine Rotational Force – Darwin can confirm a U.S. Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey crash on Melville Island, north of Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, while transporting troops during a routine training exercise,” the Marine Rotational Force in Darwin (MRF-D) said in a press release. 

At least one of the injured Marines underwent surgery at a hospital in Darwin, according to Natasha Fyles, the chief minister of Australia’s Northern Territory. Recovery efforts were still ongoing, and the cause of the crash was under investigation, according to the MRF-D press release, which was issued early Sunday. 

There was a “significant fire in the vicinity of the crash site,” according to an audio recording of an American official’s report to Australian air traffic controllers following the incident, the AP reported. 

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The Osprey aircraft that crashed was one of two that left the Australian town of Darwin for the Tiwi Islands – where Melville Island is located – roughly 50 miles away. The “routine training exercise” was in support of Exercise Predators Run, a multi-nation military exercise comprised of the United States, Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and East Timor. 

“The initial reports suggest that the incident involves just U.S. defense force personnel,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said. “Our focus as a government and as the department of defense is very much on incident response and on making sure that every support and assistance is given at this difficult time.”

Roughly 2,500 people take part in Exercise Predators Run, including about 500 from the United States, according to Fox News. The exercise, set to end on September 7 after 12 days, has reportedly been paused following the tragic incident. 

Though it’s unclear what caused the incident, this isn’t the first time the Osprey aircraft has been involved in a fatal crash. Since 2012, there have been five fatal crashes involving Marine Osprey aircraft, according to the AP. In June 2022, a mechanical failure related to the aircraft’s clutch caused the deaths of five Marines in California after the Osprey crashed, according to a crash investigation report. Three months before that, four Marines were killed in an Osprey crash during a NATO exercise in Norway. 

Rock legend Alice Cooper lost a brand partnership with a cosmetics company after he slammed the transgender movement in an interview late this week.

Cooper had just signed a brand deal with Vampyre Cosmetics only a couple of weeks ago, but it has since been canceled after the rocker spoke out against “gender affirming care” for minors, according to the New York Post.

In an interview with Stereogum, Cooper was asked about other rock giants who have come out against transgenderism.

“I’m understanding that there are cases of transgender, but I’m afraid that it’s also a fad, and I’m afraid there’s a lot of people claiming to be this just because they want to be that,” he said. “I find it wrong when you’ve got a six-year-old kid who has no idea. He just wants to play, and you’re confusing him telling him, ‘Yeah, you’re a boy, but you could be a girl if you want to be.'”

“I think that’s so confusing to a kid. It’s even confusing to a teenager,” he continued. “You’re still trying to find your identity, and yet here’s this thing going on, saying, ‘Yeah, but you can be anything you want. You can be a cat if you want to be.’ I mean, if you identify as a tree. … And I’m going, ‘Come on! What are we in, a Kurt Vonnegut novel?’ It’s so absurd, that it’s gone now to the point of absurdity.”

Following Cooper’s remarks, Vampyre Cosmetics released a statement on Instagram: “In light of recent statements by Alice Cooper[,] we will no longer be doing a makeup collaboration. We stand with all members of the LGBTQIA+ community and believe everyone should have access to healthcare.”

The cosmetics company noted that all “pre-order sales will be refunded.”

In the same interview, Cooper slammed the “whole woke” movement and the restrictions that are placed around what is okay and not okay to say.

“Who’s making the rules? Is there a building somewhere in New York where people sit down every day and say, ‘Okay, we can’t say ‘mother’ now. We have to say ‘birthing person.’ Get that out on the wire right now’?” he continued. “Who is this person that’s making these rules? I don’t get it. I’m not being old school about it. I’m being logical about it.”

Cooper called the woke movement “laughable” at this point, noting that few people agree with the extreme ideas that woke people support.

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“So I say let somebody at least become sexually aware of who they are before they start thinking about if they’re a boy or a girl,” he said. “A lot of times, I look at it this way, the logical way: If you have these genitals, you’re a boy. If you have those genitals, you’re a girl. There’s a difference between ‘I am a male who is a female, or I’m a female that’s a male’ and wanting to be a female. You were born a male. Okay, so that’s a fact. You have these things here.”

Cooper said he believes that some might be taking advantage of the trans movement to get into women’s restrooms.

“Well, I can see somebody really taking advantage of this, though,” he said. “A guy can walk into a woman’s bathroom at any time and just say, ‘I just feel like I’m a woman today’ and have the time of his life in there, and he’s not in the least bit… He’s just taking advantage of that situation,” he said. “Well, that’s going to happen. Somebody’s going to get raped, and the guy’s going to say, ‘Well, I felt like a girl that day, and then I felt like a guy.’ Where do you draw this line?”

Cooper said that eventually things would get to the point where society started hitting the pause button on the trans issue because, like artificial intelligence, “it’s dangerous.”