Viral News: The Food and Drug Administration ordered Johnson & Johnson to throw out 60 million doses of Covid vaccine because of suspicion that they might be contaminated.

  The doses were made at a Baltimore facility that may not have followed proper production protocols. It’s not the first time that vaccines have been put on hold or thrown out because of manufacturing confusion and mishaps. But the loss of Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine deals a blow to President Biden’s goal of getting the country 70 percent vaccinated by July 4^th.

  At the moment, only 43 percent of the US population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Fifty-two percent has had at least one dose. Sometime in the next few days, or a week, the US will hit the mark of 600,000 deaths. 

Water, Water: A western drought worse than anything experienced in the past 20 years has water sources drying up before the onset of the most extreme summer heat. A drought map of the West makes it look like two-thirds of it is on fire.

  The winter snowpack, which slowly releases water from the mountains in spring, is largely depleted and reservoirs are dropping to record lows.  Much of the West had record-low rain and snow over the past year and higher-than-usual temperatures aggravated the situation.

  Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the giant artificial bodies of water, are at 52 and 54 percent of their usual levels for this time of year. They look like dry ceramic bowls with a puddle at the bottom.

  Low water also means high fire danger. Dry grass and ground cover is bound to burn and fire authorities are expecting a bad season.

Eighty-sixed: The Oregon House of Representatives ejected rep. Mike Nearman for letting rioters into the closed Capitol building during a special legislative session last December 21^st. It’s the first time the Oregon legislature has expelled a member.

  The vote was 59-1 with you-know-who the only vote in his favor. Nearman was found to have plotted with the intruders and refused to resign. He let dozens of people, some with guns and wearing body armor, into the Capitol. 

Book Beat: Amanda Kloots, widow of the Broadway star Nick Cordero who died of Covid, is publishing one of the first of what are likely to be a flood of pandemic-era memoirs.

  Kloots, who had a young baby at the time, became a sympathetic public figure as she chronicled over social media the decline and death of  her husband. She collected 600,000 followers. 

  Cordero, 41, had starred in the Broadway musicals “Waitress” and “A Bronx Tale.” He died after 3 ½ months in the hospital.

  In her style of openness, Kloots writes, ““I was not a good wife.” She chronicles how she and her husband fought over his desire to leave acting for writing music. “I was not understanding any of it,” she says. “I was like, ‘This is a waste of time, and we have no money.’ 

   Kloots is now a host of “The Talk,” the CBS morning chat show. She created a jump rope fitness program offered at Equinox clubs in New York and California. Next week, HarperCollins will publish her memoir, “Live Your Life: My Story of Loving and Losing Nick Cordero.”

  She writes of the little things in her marriage. “We always grocery shopped together at the same store and bought the same things,” she says. “Some of those little moments that you would never think of as really mattering have haunted me the most.”

Keeping Up: Little known to the larger world of people with better things to do, Thursday night marked the end of the television series “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” about the family of Los Angeles tabloid stars who are famous for being famous. You know … Kim, Kourtney, Kylie, Kendall, and Khloé, and their mother Kris Jenner, plus various spouses, exes, and children.

  Alyssa Bereznak writes for The Ringer  that the family members “became a living advertisement, oversharing the minute details of their wardrobe, interior design, beauty treatments, makeup routines, workouts, diets, and plastic surgeries. Eventually, the show morphed from cable network oddity to the nucleus of a far larger Kardashian-Jenner-industrial complex.” 

  It’s a money machine and it’s not going away. The family is leaving the E! network for their own streaming platform. Viewership has been dropping for years and the Kardashians have become more of a social media phenomenon and daily fodder for the NY Post.

The Spin Rack: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is demanding that the two Trump administration attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and William Barr, be called to testify about secretly investigating two Democratic members of Congress about information leaks — A 29-year-old Chicago police officer has been charged with breaching the Capitol during the January 6th insurrection and entering a senator’s office. Off. Karol Chwiesiuk, later texted that he’d “knocked out a commie.”

Citizen Journalism: The Pulitzer Prize board awarded a special citation to Darnella Frazier, the teenager who shot the crucial cellphone footage of George Floyd’s murder last summer at the hands of Minneapolis police. 

  Frazier was 17 at the time she filmed Floyd’s death. Her video contradicted the initial police version of what happened.

  In Friday’s announcement, the board said Frazier received the citation for “courageously reporting the murder of George Floyd, a video that spurred protests against police brutality around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalists’ quest for truth and justice.”

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