Ankara - Turkey's prime minister apologized Wednesday for the first time for the killings of nearly 14,000 people in a bombing and strafing campaign to crush a Kurdish rebellion in the 1930s.

The apology by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was no big change of heart but a political tactic to tarnish the reputation of the opposition party, which was in power at that time. Still, comes at a tense time for relations between Turkey and its minority Kurds, and it sparked calls for Turkey to face another dark chapter of its history, the mass killings of Armenians in 1915.

Erdogan's government is currently fighting against autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels and despite efforts to seek peace, says it is determined to crush the rebels if they don't lay down their arms.

The fighting has killed tens of thousands since it began in 1984, but it is only the latest of several uprisings by Kurds in Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast.

Erdogan on Wednesday offered his apology for the killings of 13,806 people in the southeastern town of Dersim - now known as Tunceli - between 1936 and 1939. The apology came after a war of words between Erdogan and the leader of the main opposition party.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed Wednesday to step down after a long-running uprising to oust him from 33 years in power.

Saleh, seated beside Saudi King Abdullah in the Saudi capital Riyadh, signed a U.S.-backed deal hammered out by his country's powerful Gulf Arab neighbors to transfer his power within 30 days to his vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. That will be followed by early presidential elections within 90 days.

Dressed smartly in a dark business suit with a matching striped tie and handkerchief, he smiled as he signed the deal and then clapped his hands a few times. He then spoke for a few minutes to members of the Saudi royal families and international diplomats, promising to cooperate with the new Yemeni government.

"This disagreement for the last 10 months has had a big impact on Yemen in the realms of culture, development, politics, which led to a threat to national unity and destroyed what has been built in past years," he said.

Dismissed as a "nobody" by Japan's nuclear industry, seismologist Katsuhiko Ishibashi spent two decades watching his predictions of disaster come true: First in the 1995 Kobe earthquake and then at Fukushima. He says the government still doesn't get it.

The 67-year-old scientist recalled in an interview how his boss marched him to the Construction Ministry to apologize for writing a 1994 book suggesting Japan's building codes put its cities at risk. Five months later, thousands were killed when a quake devastated Kobe city. The book, "A Seismologist Warns," became a bestseller.

That didn't stop Haruki Madarame, now head of Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission, from dismissing Ishibashi as an amateur when he warned of a "nuclear earthquake disaster," a phrase the Kobe University professor coined in 1997. Ishibashi says Japan still underestimates the risk of operating reactors in a country that has about 10 percent of the world's quakes.

50 shoplifters hit 7-Eleven at once


Montgomery County is dealing with another flash mob robbery and it was all caught on tape. Dozens of kids raided a 7-Eleven in Silver Spring over the weekend. Police are searching for all the teens that were involved.

At least 70 people simultaneously shoplifted from a Silver Spring, Md., 7-Eleven Saturday night.

Officers arriving at the store in the 12200 block of Tech Road after 11:20 p.m. saw several people gathered in surrounding parking lots and on side streets, police said. They began to disperse when police arrived.

The shoplifters -- described as teens and young adults -- took items including snacks and drinks, police said.

A Transportation Security Administration employee is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in Manassas, Virginia.

TSA won't say where or what suspect does for agency

The suspect, Harold Glen Rodman, 52, allegedly was wearing his uniform and displayed a badge to the victim, a 37-year-old woman.

Police arrested Rodman on Nov. 20. He is charged with aggravated sexual battery, object sexual penetration, forcible sodomy and abduction with intent to defile.

A TSA spokesperson confirmed that Rodman works for the agency but wouldn't say in what capacity or where.

The online "hacktivist" group Anonymous published the personal contact details on Monday of a California university policeman who used pepper spray on protesters, and it urged supporters to flood him with phone calls and emails.

YouTube videos of Friday's incident on the campus of the University of California, Davis have gone viral and led to the suspension of the college police chief, two police officers and calls for the chancellor to step down.

In the YouTube videos, one of which has received 1.44 million views, two university police officers in riot gear are seen spraying an orange mist on protesters sitting peacefully on the ground.

Following the spraying, the crowd begins chanting "Shame on you!"

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gather in Tahrir Square to demand immediate exit of Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi

Last night, Fox News hosts Megyn Kelly and Bill O'Reilly attempted to defend a UC Davis police officer's use of pepper spray against nonviolent protesters. "I don't think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police," O'Reilly said, "particularly at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus." He didn't explain why the abuse of violent force might be more necessary or justified against liberal students. Kelly went even further in dismissing the suffering of students attacked by the pepper spray, speculating that it's not that harmful because "it's like a derivative of actual pepper. It's a food product, essentially."

Watch it:

Restricted mobility is one of the main obstacles experienced by Palestinians living under occupation. A couple of months ago, a Palestinian friend told me how she overcame this obstacle when she had to go to Jerusalem on an urgent matter, without having the Israeli permit usually required. She simply did what many of the settlers in the West Bank do when they want to go to Jerusalem; she took the "public" bus. Because the settler buses travel on Israeli-controlled roads and through settlements where Palestinians are not allowed to enter, these buses and their passengers are not inspected in the same way as Palestinian buses are at checkpoints entering Jerusalem. This - and not least of all her incredible courage - got my friend all the way to Jerusalem. She told me how she simply pretended like she belonged there, even though her heart was in her throat the entire ride. When she got in, one of the male settlers yelled at her. Apparently she had sat down in the wrong seat, so she got up and sat somewhere else. When the bus was boarded by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint she put on her sunglasses, acted a little snobbish and gave them the impression that she had all the right in the world to be there.

Even though it required a great deal of courage and acting from her side, my friend was not wrong; she does have all the right in the world to be there. The segregation of the Israeli road and bus system discriminates against the Palestinians who have far from the same mobility as Israeli settlers living in the West Bank. By only serving Israeli settlements and not Palestinian areas in the West Bank, the bus companies are discriminating against the Palestinians. Parallels can be drawn between this apartheid-like system and the segregation policies in the United States in the 1960s, which is exactly what six Palestinian activists did on November 15, as they boarded Israeli public bus number 148, connecting the illegal Israeli settlement of Ariel to Jerusalem.

Taking a quick look at part of a recent Newsnight discussion about the Occupy movement. Journalist Laurie Penny and former partner with Goldman Sachs Richard Sharp (recently recruited as an adviser by the Conservative Party) speaking with BBC Newsnight's Emily Maitlis, 17 November 2011.