The Coroner’s Report: Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old woman who went missing on a cross-country adventure with her fiancé and was later found dead, was strangled, according to the Teton County Coroner in Wyoming.

  The circumstances keep pointing to Petito’s 23-year-old fiancé, Brian Laundrie, who’s gone off the radar.

  Petitio’s body was found out in the open on September 19th in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming and may have been there for weeks. She was last heard from on August 27^th.

  Her death has been fodder for the tabloids that love a missing or dead blonde. But the story has unusual elements. There’s police bodycam video of officers responding to a domestic dispute and speaking with the couple. Not long after, Laundrie, returned home to Florida alone in Petito’s van and refused to cooperate with investigators before disappearing himself. Domestic murders are common, but rarely surrounded by such mystery.

Covid Nation: The Biden administration says it will open the borders in November for fully vaccinated travelers coming from Canada and Mexico, reopening the borders for tourism and families separated by the pandemic.

  The US closed its borders to what were described as “nonessential travelers” 19 months ago. The administration says it will soon drop similar restrictions for travelers coming from overseas, although those people will have to show proof of vaccination and  a recent negative Covid test.

  Across the country, new cases of Covid-19 are down 21 percent over the past two weeks, but the battle over vaccination is making it difficult to stamp out the disease. Thirty states are lagging in vaccinations. Idaho and Wyoming are less that 50 percent vaccinated.

  Intensive care units in Minnesota are nearing capacity. New cases have risen by 29 percent in the last two weeks and hospitalizations by 17 percent.

  Some governors are actually hindering efforts to get people vaccinated. American and Southwest airlines both say they will defy the executive order of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott banning companies from imposing Covid vaccine mandates on their employees.  

 And then there are the individual holdouts. Brooklyn Nets All-Star point guard Kyrie Irving won’t be allowed to play because he refuses to get a Covid vaccine, the team announced.

The End Zone: John Gruden, the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders football team who resigned after the revelation of racist and gay-hating emails will likely never work in the world of football again. But that doesn’t mean that the National Football league is actually dealing with its problems.

  The Gruden emails came to light during an exhaustive league investigation of Bruce Allen, the former president of the Washington Football team, which used to be known as the Redskins. The damning Gruden emails had been sent to Allen, who didn’t object to their tone and content.

  The NFL spent 10 months investigating the toxic culture of the WFT after dozens of women came forward with complaints of sexual harassment and mistreatment. It interviewed hundreds of witnesses and collected 650,000 documents. 

  The result of that is nothing public. The NFL instructed the lawyer in charge of the investigation not to create a written report that might embarrass professional football. They spiked the ball.

The Obit Page: Paddy Moloney, a co-founder of The Chieftains and a legend in Irish folk music, has died at age 83. No cause was given. 

  Moloney travelled the world with the Chieftains for 50 years, creating an international following for the traditional pipes and fiddles of Irish music. He told National Public Radio that he taught himself music after his mother gave him a tin whistle at age 6.

   The band at times mixed with other forms of music. They collaborated with Mick Jagger, Roger Daltrey, Emmylou Harris, and Luciano Pavarotti. Their last show was in Philadelphia last year before the pandemic forced them to cancel their tour. 

The Spin Rack: California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that would outlaw sales of new gas-powered lawn equipment by 2024. Those little engines on mowers and blowers are big polluters. — Doctors for years have advised older patients to take daily low-dose aspirin to ward off heart disease. New rules. Research now says that’s not necessary for people who have no diagnosed risks for heart attack and disease. — The Rolling Stones have cut the song “Brown Sugar” from their concert repertoire. It’s about a master forcing sex on a female slave. Keith Richards told The NY Post, “So sometimes you think, ‘We’ll take that one out for now and see how it goes.’ We might put it back in.”

 The Speech Bubble: The comic hero Superman has been leaping tall buildings at a single bound since 1938, but now he’s jumping into the culture wars.

  The new Superman is 17-year-old Jon Kent, son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Yeah, if you haven’t been keeping up, they got married. And their son Jon will be coming out as bisexual in the November 9th issue of Superman: Son of Kal-El. He’s the man for the moment. Since the series was released in July, Jon has fought wildfires caused by climate change, stopped a school shooting, and protested the deportation of refugees in Metropolis.

  One person put off by all this is Dean Cain, the 55-year-old actor who starred as Superman back in the 90’s on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Cain said on Fox & Friends that comic books are just “band wagoning” on social change.

  “Robin just came out as bi — who’s really shocked about that one?” Cain said. “The new Captain America is gay.” 

  Wait, what? Batman’s sidekick is bi?

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