A United States drone strike has killed more than 150 Al-Shabaab militants in Somalia, the Pentagon says.

The US attack was executed on March 5, a day before more than 2,000 weapons were seized on a Somalia-bound boat by the Australian Navy on Sunday, two blows likely to cripple the terror militia.

The Australian Navy suspected the weapons were for arming the Al-Shabaab terror group.

Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the strike hit Raso training camp where a "large-scale" attack was being planned against US and Amisom troops in the country.

"We know they were going to be departing the camp and they posed an imminent threat to US and [African Union] forces," Captain Davis said.

"Initial assessments are that more than 150 terrorist fighters were eliminated," he added.

Mr Davis said the strike, on Saturday, targeted a camp about 120 miles (195km) north of the capital, Mogadishu.

The camp had been under surveillance for some time ahead of the drone strike, according to Mr Davis.

"There was a sense that the operational phase was about to happen," he said.

He said the group had neared the completion of specialist training to conduct "offensive operations", but did not give any details about the alleged plot.

AUSTRALIAN NAVY

More than 2,000 weapons including assault rifles, rocket launchers and machine guns were found hidden under fishing nets in a Somalia-bound boat, Australian Navy officials said Monday.

The HMAS Darwin navy ship seized the weapons from the vessel during normal patrol of the Middle East-Eastern Africa coast waters.

Sunday’s recovery of the weapons could signal a continual but clandestine attempt by the Shabaab to keep their supply of arms despite a global operation against the terror group.

On Monday, Australia’s Vice Admiral David Johnston who is also the Chief of Joint Operations for the multi-nation patrol operation called Combined Maritime Forces, said the seizure of weapons could be significant even though there was no revelation of their origin.

KDF OPERATIONS

In February this year, the Kenya Defence Forces raided Al-Shabaab training camps in two attacks, killing 53 terrorists including the group's deputy leader in the first attack, and killing 20 other terrorists in the second attack at the Sidimo camp.

The first attack killed Al-Shabaab's deputy emir, the second in command and heat of its intelligence wing, the Amniyaat, Mahad Karate, also known as Abdirahim Mohamed Warsame.

The raid happened on February 8, but details of the attack at an Al-Shabaab base between Buale and Sukow were delayed to allow for forensic confirmation to ascertain its leader was among those killed.

The second attack was conducted on February 18. KDF ground troops raided an Al-Shabaab camp in Sidimo, killing 20 terrorists, among them explosives expert Maalim Sheriff.

They found 16 AK-47 rifles, six improvised explosives, two pistols, eight rocket propelled grenades and assorted ammunition.

Sustained operations have been ongoing since the attack at a KDF camp in El-Adde.

“Karate had gone to the camp to preside over the passing out of an estimated 80 Alamnyat recruits who had completed their training and were due for deployment to carry out terrorist attacks. It is confirmed that 42 recruits were killed and others sustained injuries,” said military spokesman David Obonyo.

Karate is believed to have played a key role in the El-Adde attack

Al-Shabab, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda, was pushed out of Mogadishu by African Union peacekeeping forces in 2011 but has continued to launch frequent attacks in its bid to overthrow the Western-backed government.

The group has said it carried out a string of recent attacks including a twin bombing at a busy restaurant in the Somali city of Baidoa last month.

At heart, politics is a war of words. And sometimes, the pithiest phrases make the biggest impact.

As Donald Trump's primary campaign has shown, snappy insults can boost a candidate's stature among supporters, a factor that may play out more strongly than ever in social-media echo chambers. Unfortunately, political one-liners may also lead voters to have less faith in the political process, and in politicians more generally, experts say.  

With another Republican primary debate coming tonight (Feb. 25) and on March 3, the candidates will likely strive to produce the most memorable quotes of the night. This sort of attention seeking is particularly important in a crowded field, like that of the Republican primary, said Jacob Neiheisel, a political scientist at the University of Buffalo in New York.

Political insults

The insults of this primary season have been particularly memorable, if not always mature. "You are the single biggest liar," Trump told Sen. Ted Cruz at the Feb. 13 debate. "Adults learn not to interrupt each other," Cruz snapped at Trump at another point in the evening. Trump, for his part, has made insulting people the central point of his campaign. In less than 48 hours in mid-February, Trump wrote on Twitter that Fox News host Megyn Kelly should "get a life," called Sen. Lindsey Graham a "dumb mouthpiece" and mocked Jeb Bush for wearing contacts instead of glasses.

There have been tense exchanges on the Democratic side, too. After Sen. Bernie Sanders criticized Hillary Clinton for turning to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for advice, she shot back that no one knows who Sanders listens to on foreign policy, a jab at his perceived lack of expertise. Sanders quickly responded, "Well, it ain't Henry Kissinger." 

Insults may drive morning-after headlines, but it's not entirely clear what role they play in swaying voters. No one has directly studied the effects of a really sick burn on people's perceptions of candidates, Neiheisel said. [10 Historically Significant Political Protests]

There are many studies on incivility in politics, which might overlap with the headline-worthy debate insult. That research generally finds that mudslinging campaigns aren't great for the democratic process. In a 2005 study published in the journal American Political Science Review, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University in California created mock television debates for participants to watch. In some versions of the debates, the politicians (played by actors) were polite and civil. They didn't interrupt, they listened patiently to their opponents, and they acknowledged their opponents' points before providing their own answers.

In other versions, the politicians made the same arguments using most of the same words, but tried to interrupt, huffed and rolled their eyes when their opponents talked, and prefaced their answers with phrases like "you're really missing the point."

Participants who had seen the uncivil debates subsequently reported less trust in politicians, in Congress and in the entire United States political system than people who'd watched civil versions of the debates. A follow-up experiment tested galvanic skin responses, which reveal tiny changes in perspiration that signal agitation, and found that just watching a heated back-and-forth gets people hyped up, physiologically speaking. [Oh Snap: 10 Memorable Political One-Liners]

Media translations

For an outsider candidate like Trump, fomenting distrust in the political process might be a positive side effect of slinging insults. Politicians aren't just seeking to sway new voters at debates, Neiheisel pointed out — they also want to firm up their supporters and ensure those people are excited enough to vote.

"Candidates might have different objectives other than changing minds," he told Live Science.

Another question is how much control politicians have over their messages. An analysis of primary debate content published in a political science textbook in 2002 found that 75 percent of utterances in debates were about policy; 25 percent were about candidate character. Ohio University communications researcher William Benoit, who conducted that analysis, said he also found that candidates are generally more positive and policy-focused than the media, which disproportionately reports negativity and underreports on policy. It's quite possible that a policy-filled debate can be reduced to verbal jabs and jousts in news reports, skewing the public's perception of what candidates are saying, according to Benoit's research.

The latest wrench in the machinery is social media, which amplifies direct communication — and in-your-face voices like Trump's. Political science research on social media indicates that tweets and Facebook posts do have some impact on elections, but the details of what kind of tweets and posts sway voter opinion remain murky. A 2012 study on Facebook's "I voted" feature found that a get-out-the-vote message sent to 61 million users influenced 340,000 people to cast ballots who otherwise would not have made it to the polls.

However, a 2015 report by the University of Oxford's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that in the United Kingdom, at least, traditional media remains more influential in securing voter engagement than does social media. That could change, though, if the growth in social media continues, the study noted.

To the extent that candidates are comfortable slinging insults online, their tone might influence the way everyday people talk to one another about politics, Neiheisel said.

"The things that elites talk about, the candidates, filter down," Neiheisel said. "I would have to imagine that the way in which they speak to each other would probably filter out into the electorate and serve as a model for how the electorate speaks about politics."

If bomb-throwing Twitter feeds like Trump's become more normal and do influence the overall political discourse, it would represent a shift. Despite stereotypes about dueling social media trolls, a Pew Research Center study from 2014 found that people's tendency to tiptoe around politics extends to the Internet. That research used the case of Edward Snowden, who revealed information about U.S. government surveillance, to ask people how likely they were to discuss a politically divisive topic on Facebook and Twitter.

Results showed that people were actually less likely to launch a discussion online than in person, with 86 percent of people saying they'd be willing to talk about U.S. surveillance face-to-face with someone, but only 42 percent saying they'd post about the topic on Facebook or Twitter. [The 7 Craziest Intelligence Leaks in U.S. History]

Notably, most people don't seem to relish a fight: Both online and in person, people said they were unlikely to talk about Snowden or surveillance in situations in which they thought their audience would disagree with them. So far, at least, it seems that the American public is less combative than the candidates they vote for.

A FORMER police officer, accused of 36 sex offences including four first-degree rape counts, forcible oral sodomy, sexual battery, procuring lewd exhibition and second-degree rape, has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

While Daniel Holtzclaw was freed on 18 count charges, he was found guilty in 18 others and was sentenced to 263 years.

Holtzclaw, who was convicted of raping and sexually victimizing women while carrying out his assignment at the low-income Oklahoma arena, carried out the illegal acts between 2013 and 2014.

The jury that listened to both the arguments of the prosecuting team and the defence last Thursday unanimously agreed that the police officer committed the offence.

The jurors – after their deliberations at the end of the case – said Holtzclaw went beyond his boundary and should be behind bars for the next 263 years.

The District Judge, Timothy Henderson concurred with the jury’s recommendations – in the trial which 13 women gave pieces of evidence against Holtzclaw – and said that the offender would serve the jail terms concurrently.

Though the former police officer rejected his right to stay in custody for 10 days, as allowed by the law, but said he would go straight to the prison.

His defence counsel, Scott Adams, however, said that his client would appeal the judgement.

“It is what it is.  It wasn’t a surprise,” Adams said, while Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater lambasted Holtzclaw on his behaviour.

After the pronouncement of judgment, a visibly angry Prater said: “I think people need to realize that this is not a law-enforcement officer that committed these crimes. This is a rapist who masqueraded as a law-enforcement officer.”

“If he was a true law enforcement officer he would have upheld his duty to protect those citizens rather than victimize them,” the District Attorney said.