The Crime Beat: Some possessions and human remains that might belong to the man wanted for questioning in the murder of his fiancée have been found in a swampy area not far from his parents’ South Florida home.

  Investigators say Brian Laundrie’s father took part in a search and found a backpack and a notebook linked to his 23-year-old son in an area that had previously been flooded. The human remains will have to be officially identified.

  “This is the very area of the park that we initially informed law enforcement on, I believe it was Sept. 17, that Brian would be most likely in the preserve in this particular area,” the Laundrie family’s lawyer told CNN’s Chris Cuomo.

  Laundrie has been what’s called “a person of interest” in the disappearance and death of Gabby Petito, whose body was found September 19th on the edge of Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. The couple had been on a cross country trip in Petito’s van, but Laundrie returned home without her and without explaining where she was.

  Laundrie was reported missing after telling his parents on September 14th that he was going for a hike in the Carlton Reserve, a nature preserve in Sarasota County.

Cutting Back Better: President Joe Biden spoke in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania yesterday trying to sell his “Build Back Better” plan even as fellow Democrats were trimming his programs in an effort to get the whole deal passed.

  Polling shows that most Americans don’t know what’s in the bill, only that it’s very expensive. 

  Gone from Biden’s $3.5 trillion bill now is free community college. Housing assistance is reduced, and paid family leave is reduced from 12 weeks to four.

  Biden and Democratic leaders say they are encouraged that the defining legislation of this administration is going to get done. “I think we’re going to surprise them,” Biden said in Scranton during a speech laced with nostalgia about his upbringing. “Because I think people are beginning to figure out what is at stake.”

  Biden appears in a “town hall” meeting with Anderson Cooper tonight on CNN. 

Covid Nation: The Food and Drug Administration approved Covid booster shots  for millions of recipients of Moderna’s two-dose vaccine and those who got Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose shot. They also said you can get a booster made by a different company than your original shot.

  On the vaccination mandate front, New York City has ordered that all its employees must be vaccinated with no option for regular testing. New York has the biggest municipal workforce in the country and at least 46,000 police officers, firefighters, and other city workers have yet to get vaccinated.

Guilty on all Counts: The former student who killed 17 people at Florida’s Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 pleaded guilty yesterday to 34 counts of murder and attempted murder, exposing himself to the death penalty without going to trial.  A jury will be empaneled  to decide whether to sentence him to death or life without parole.

  Nikolas Cruz, now 23, used an assault rifle to massacre 14 students and three faculty members at the school in Parkland, Florida.

  Judge Elizabeth Scherer asked Cruz, “Do you understand that you are facing a minimum, best-case scenario of life in prison?” He said he did.

  As the families of the dead sat in court, some of them weeping, Cruz delivered a rambling apology saying, “I am very sorry for what I did” and that “I have to live with it every day. … It brings me nightmares, and I can’t live with myself.” 

  Cruz also said he wanted the victims and their relatives to determine his sentence, but it’s up to a jury that must be unanimous to decide it’s death.

Bases Loading: The Houston Astros blew away the Boston Red Sox 9-1 last night to send the American league series back to Texas for its conclusion. Boston scored 25 runs in the first three games of the series before going into a slump.

  In the National League, Atlanta beat Los Angeles last night and now leads that series 3-1. 

The Spin Rack: The Centers for Disease Control says red, white, and yellow onions imported from  Chihuahua, Mexico are responsible for 652 cases of salmonella poisoning in 37 states. — The district attorney in New York’s suburban Westchester County has subpoenaed the property-tax records from one of former president Donald Trump’s golf clubs, indicating they are working on a previously undisclosed criminal investigation into the Trump Organization. — The AMC movie theater chain says it’s going to put open captioning on movies in 240 of their theaters in 100 markets, roughly 40 percent of the company’s US screens. — Dozens of Netflix employees walked out of a company office building in Los Angeles yesterday protesting the Dave Chappelle stand-up special in which he jokes about transgender people.

Metaversal Plans: Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to re-name his company to better reflect its role in what Zuck refers to as “the metaverse,” according to the technology reporting website, The Verge. Zuckerberg’s personal metaverse includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and the virtual-reality headset company, Oculus.

  The term “metaverse” was coined originally by sci-fi novelist Neal Stephenson to describe a virtual world people escape to from a dystopian, real world, which, when you think about it, that’s Facebook.

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