Police & Courts

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An American Marine who drunkenly groped a woman in a Territory nightclub has promised to hold his mates to account and prevent future seedy assaults.

Kymani Powell appeared in Darwin Local Court on Friday to plead guilty to unlawfully assaulting a woman at the Landmark Hotel on Roystonea Ave, on April 30.

Prosecutor Marty Aust said the Connecticut man “forcefully groped” his victim, who was unable to defend herself in the popular nightclub. 

“This was an uninvited, unwanted intrusion on an intimate area of her body by a stranger,” Mr Aust said.

Defence barrister Mary Chalmers said 21-year-old  Powell had struggled with being separated from his family, and was appalled by his own actions.

“It was … an ill-advised lapse in his otherwise exemplary character.”

Chief Judge Elizabeth Morris found him guilty, but did not record a conviction. Powell was also fined $150.

Major construction, funded by the U.S. and Australian governments, is underway in Australia’s Northern Territory for facilities that will be used by the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

The facilities will support U.S. and Australian forces training to defend chains of small islands that would likely be an arena for any future conflict with China, according to former Australian assistant defense secretary Ross Babbage.

The allies are learning to conduct dispersed operations and deploy anti-ship missiles to island chains in the Western Pacific “to make it extremely difficult and dangerous for Chinese operations in a crisis,” including a conflict over Taiwan, he said by phone Wednesday.

The Australian government will likely announce more initiatives in the northern Australia before the year is over, Babbage said.

A US Marine boasted about being a “trained killer” in the minutes before he was allegedly knocked unconscious by a Darwin bouncer last year, a court has heard.

On Tuesday, venue manager Matthew Hutcheon told jurors in Summers’ trial he had told police on the night that “Hayden slapped the shit out of him” following “multiple threats of physical harm”.

In an incident report annexed to Mr Hutcheon’s police statement, the court heard he also noted Thomason was “threatening his military training and ability to kill”.

“I believe he uttered that he could kill and that he was a trained killer,” he told Crown prosecutor Ian Rowbottom.

the situation went for multiple minutes, there were multiple threats of physical violence

Following the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal, a senior US official reportedly said recently that the US would consider providing Australia with nuclear-capable B-21 bombers, the in-development successor to the B-2 stealth bomber that experts said on Wednesday would enable Australia to launch long-range strikes against China, thus posing serious threats to China.

US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall made the remark at a media briefing after meeting with newly minted Royal Australian Air Force chief Air Marshal Robert Chipman on August 22 in Canberra, The Strategist, a website affiliated with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, reported on Tuesday.

Kendall again hyped the "China threat" theory, claiming the US and its allies were "concerned about Chinese behavior" in the South China Sea as well as China's military modernization program.

Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, said if Australia obtains the B-21, the country would essentially become an overseas bomber base of the US,

US Marines of the Marine Rotational Force-Darwin (MRF-D) and members of the Australian Defence Force from Australian Army’s 1st and 13th Brigade, and Royal Australian Air Force’s 36th, 37th and 75th Squadrons have commenced Exercise Koolendong this week across the Top End.

The three week warfighting exercise is being held at Defence training areas in the Northern Territory and for the first time, in Western Australia to simulate a response to a regional security crisis.

“We are deploying significant forces by land, air and sea to training areas in both WA and the NT including Mount Bundy Training Area, RAAF Base Curtin & Yampi Sound Training Area,” Colonel Steele said.