10 things you need to know today: October 22, 2013

(Image credit: (David Calvert/Getty Images))

last updated 8 January 2015

1. Obama vows to fix health care website

President Obama acknowledged Monday that glitches on HealthCare.gov have hampered the rollout of his signature health care law's insurance exchanges. "No one is madder than me," he said. Republicans have called the problems with the website evidence of basic flaws with ObamaCare, but the president urged Americans to be patient and call toll-free numbers for health insurance if they can't enroll online. [New York Times]

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A 12-year-old shot and killed a math teacher with a semi-automatic pistol, and wounded two fellow students at a Nevada middle school on Monday, police said. The child with the gun then reportedly shot himself and died. Police called the teacher, identified as former Marine Michael Landsberry, a hero, saying he died trying to protect his students. "He could have ducked and hid, but he didn't," a relative said. "That's not who he is." [Reuters, Reno Gazette-Journal]

The Labor Department is releasing the September jobs report on Tuesday after a two-week delay caused by the government shutdown, and economists expect it to show that the economy added 185,000 jobs, leaving the unemployment rate unchanged at 7.3 percent. Analysts will be watching the report closely to see if the economy gained steam in September; recent economic data have been inconclusive. (UPDATE, 8:40 a.m.: The numbers are out, and the economy added 148,000 jobs; unemployment remained basically the same at 7.2 percent.) [New York Times, MarketWatch]

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch will officially release a report Tuesday saying that drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen are killing more civilians than the U.S. admits. Human Rights Watch selected six airstrikes to investigate in Yemen, and found that 57 of the 82 people killed were civilians. The United Nations estimated Friday that 2,200 people have died in drones strikes in Pakistan over the last decade. The White House declined to comment. [Washington Post]

Netflix announced Monday evening that it reached 30 million domestic subscribers in the third quarter, putting it ahead of HBO — which had just under 29 million at last count — for the first time. A year ago, Netflix had 25 million subscribers. Its executives attributed the growth to the cable movie rental and streaming video company's original programming, such as the Emmy-winning House of Cards and the popular Orange is the New Black. [Engadget]

Apple is expected to unveil new versions of its iPad tablet on Tuesday, in what is becoming a pre-holiday-shopping tradition. Tech experts anticipate an iPad Mini with the high-resolution retina display of last year's full-size iPads. The fifth-generation iPad is expected to be getting a design makeover that will make it slimmer and a tad lighter, and both devices should have faster processors. [CNN]

At least six people were killed Monday when a suicide bomber attacked a bus in the Russian city of Volgograd. The bombing appeared to have been carried out by a 30-year-old woman, Naida Asiyalova, from Russia's republic of Dagestan, in the North Caucasus, the scene of two decades of unrest. The blast came despite government efforts to eliminate terrorist threats ahead of next year's Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi. [Ria Novosti]

Commuter trains are scheduled to start running again Tuesday morning in and around San Francisco, after Bay Area Rapid Transit management and union leaders reached a deal to end a four-day strike. The unexpected compromise, which increases pay and ends a travel nightmare for 400,000 commuters, came hours after investigators said that an out-of-service train that struck and killed two BART workers on Saturday was driven by an "operator trainee." [Los Angeles Times]

Former child star Corey Feldman says in his new book, Coreyography, that he and his late friend and co-star, Corey Haim, were molested by older men in Hollywood. A man convinced Haim "it was perfectly normal for older men and younger boys in the business to have sexual relations" while on the set of the 1986 film Lucas. Feldman says one of his healthiest relationships was his strictly platonic friendship with Michael Jackson. [Cinemablend]

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.

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