Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.
--------
Question: Paragraph: NCR Corp. will fund the dredging of contaminated sediments and removal of an aging dam in the Kalamazoo River under an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Justice and the state of Michigan, officials told The Associated Press ahead of an official announcement. “This is a big step forward toward cleaning up the river,” said John Irving, a deputy assistant administrator in the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. The Kalamazoo is polluted with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, from paper recycling mills. Used for ink removal, the chemicals were discharged into the river from the 1950s through the mid-1970s. They also seeped into groundwater and surface waters from landfills where mill waste was dumped. In addition to the river, the contamination zone in Allegan and Kalamazoo counties includes a roughly 3-mile (5-kilometer) section of a tributary called Portage Creek, as well as mill properties, riverbanks and floodplains. It is on the federal Superfund list of hazardous sites. Signs posted along the river warn anglers not to eat the fish they catch. The EPA has overseen the removal of nearly 450,000 cubic yards (344,000 cubic meters) of soil and sediment from the area since 1998, in addition to cleaning up 7 miles (11 kilometers) of the river and riverbanks. Eighty-two acres (33 hectares) of landfills containing PCBs have been covered with layers of clay, topsoil and vegetation to prevent the toxins from leaching into groundwater. But much remains to be done. The agreement between NCR and the government calls for the company to pay at least $135.7 million for cleanup work that is expected to take an additional 10-15 years. Among the tasks: dismantling Trowbridge Dam in Allegan County. The dam, which was built in 1898 to supply electric power to Kalamazoo, is in poor shape and has been over-topped by high water. It is the highest-priority dam removal planned in Michigan, according to the state Department of Natural Resources, which set aside $2.9 million in May to get the project underway. The first step is to stabilize the structure so that it won’t collapse while a contractor dredges PCB-laced sediments from a 2.4-mile (3.9-kilometer) river section upstream, which is expected to take three years, said Paul Ruesch, the EPA’s on-site coordinator. NCR funds will pay for that work and for razing the dam when the sediment removal is complete, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark told the AP. “You want to get that sediment out before taking the dam out, so you’re not letting the sediments wash further downstream,” he said. The removal of tainted soils in several floodplain spots is also funded under the deal. And the company will also pay $76.5 million to the EPA to cover past and future costs of the river cleanup; $27 million to other federal and state agencies for damages to natural resources; and $6 million to the state for past and future costs. The proposed settlement was filed in federal court Wednesday. The public will get 30 days to comment, after which the government agencies could make revisions before requesting final court approval. NCR spokesman Scott Sykes said the company had no comment. The agreement represents a significant milestone in the overall cleanup, which is expected to end up costing about $851 million, Clark said. Payment negotiations are continuing with other companies that share responsibility for the pollution, including Georgia-Pacific, International Paper and Weyerhaeuser. The Kalamazoo River project is among those on the Superfund list designated by the Trump administration for special attention because of cleanup delays, Irving said. “This settlement represents substantial progress in the cleanup and restoration of the Kalamazoo River,” said Liesl Clark, Director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy. In addition to protecting public health and the environment, she said, it will fund “projects to restore natural resources and help compensate the public for lost recreational opportunities within this important Southwest Michigan watershed.” While “extremely welcome,” the deal won’t raise enough money to finish the cleanup and agencies should continue pressing the polluters to do more, said Kenneth Kornheiser, president of the Kalamazoo River Watershed Council, a nonprofit advocacy group. “I appreciate the monumental size of the problem, but somebody created the problem and needs to be responsible for remediating the damage,” he said. ___ Follow John Flesher on Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnflesher Claim: Company to pay $245M toward cleanup of Kalamazoo River PCBs.

Answer: One of the companies responsible for polluting an 80-mile (129-kilometer) stretch of river and floodplains in southwestern Michigan with toxic chemicals will pay at least $245.2 million to advance a cleanup effort that began more than 20 years ago, federal officials said Wednesday.


Question: Paragraph: Novacyt said the FDA’s approval meant that hospitals and laboratories in the United States would be able to use the test for clinical diagnosis of the coronavirus, and that the test was now available for immediate distribution in the U.S. market. “The U.S. FDA EUA authorization is another important endorsement of the performance and quality of our COVID-19 test and demonstrates once again Novacyt’s growing role in tackling this pandemic,” said Novacyt CEO Graham Mullis. Claim: Healthcare group Novacyt wins U.S. approval for coronavirus test.

Answer: Novacyt, a healthcare company specializing in clinical diagnostics, announced on Monday approval from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) regulator for its product aimed at testing for coronavirus.


Question: Paragraph: There is broad scientific consensus that the effects of climate change have devastated the world’s reefs, recently ravaging large swaths of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, one of the natural wonders of the world. The carbon dioxide that humans pump into the atmosphere spikes the temperature and acidity of seawater, which both poisons the marine invertebrates and hampers their growth at alarming rates, according to studies published last year in the journal Science. Experts estimate that half of the corals that existed in the early 20th century have died. But the corals at the northernmost tip of the Red Sea are exhibiting remarkable resistance to the rising water temperatures and acidification, according to recent research conducted by the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences based in Eilat. Experts hope the lessons learned in the Red Sea can help coral reefs elsewhere in the world. “Corals worldwide are dying and suffering at a rapid pace, but we have not witnessed a single bleaching event in the Gulf of Aqaba,” said Maoz Fine, an expert on coral reefs at Bar-Ilan University and director of the research. Warmer water causes corals to eject the brightly colored plants that serve as their primary food and oxygen source. This causes reefs to “bleach,” or take on a bone-white pallor that often portends mass mortality. While other hardy coral species can be found in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, “there’s nowhere else in the world that reefs are this far away from their bleaching thresholds,” said Fine. Plenty of other refuges remain unknown, but “this is the only spot we know of with a warranty ensuring these reefs stay safe for the next several decades,” he said. On a recent day at the lab, Fine examined coral fragments in water treated to simulate future global warming scenarios, pointing to their ruddy color as a sign of good health. The Gulf of Aqaba has become a refuge for tough corals that are projected to outlast far worse future conditions. Fine’s latest study, published this month in the Journal of Experimental Biology, found further cause for optimism: The coral species’ thermal resistance carries over to their offspring, indicating that future generations will also remain immune to bleaching, with implications that could extend beyond this spot of the Red Sea. Fine’s research credits northern Red Sea coral resilience to a giant natural selection event that occurred some 18,000 years ago. As glaciers retreated at the end of the ice age, reefs moved in to recolonize the southern part of the sea, where temperatures ran exceedingly high. Only corals that could bear the heat managed to reach maturity and migrate north, where they resettled in conditions several degrees cooler than their thermal threshold. Further research is underway to determine how existing in temperatures below their tolerance levels may lend corals physiological benefits. “All corals were obliterated except for the best genotypes, the winners of the climate change lottery,” said Fine. Today, these hardy corals continue to survive as Red Sea waters warm, only showing signs of heat stress at six degrees above the summer maximum sea temperature. “Not only does this give us an incentive to protect this special refuge as much as possible, but also allows us to find hints as to the most important genes for thermal resistance,” he added. Picking out winning genes can contribute to an urgent worldwide push to restore and repopulate dead reefs. Some cutting-edge labs in Hawaii and Australia have even started crossbreeding the corals that survived or recovered from the mass bleaching of their reefs to create gene banks of “super-corals” that they hope can survive future elevated temperatures. “If corals are surviving and reproducing in the Gulf of Aqaba under stressful conditions, and in the central and southern Red Sea they’re not, we can reseed the hardy corals in nearby bleached areas,” said Jacqueline De La Cour, operations manager for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch, who was not a part of the study. “Entirely new ecosystems that can withstand climate change would be established.” The U.S. agency has honed such restoration techniques in Florida, where reefs play a critical role in softening the blow of hurricanes. Jessica Bellworthy, a doctoral student in Fine’s lab, said that while it’s too soon to tell whether Gulf of Aqaba corals would retain their resilience if multiplied and transplanted to other environments, it’s a “direction we could eventually take our data.” Fine likened transplanting corals to “playing God,” saying that although such human intervention has become well-established, it carries ecological risks and raises ethical questions. For instance, should humans be introducing new species where there are natives? But some scientists contend that only a hands-on response can address accelerating reef mortality rates. From 2014-2017, corals experienced the most widespread and damaging “bleaching event” in global history, said De La Cour. Experts often compare reefs to rainforests when trying to convey their stunning diversity of life. “If you lose reefs, you lose everything that depends on them,” said Michael Webster, executive director of Coral Reef Alliance, a San Francisco conservation group. Reef death not only carries dire consequences for wildlife, but also for the homes, health and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people: those who fish, work in tourism, dwell on islands made of coral or rely on reef protection from coastal erosion. “The survivors in the Gulf of Aqaba are only going to become even more essential to us over the next 100 years,” said De La Cour. “Coral refuges show us that species can adapt. It gives us hope.” Claim: Northern Red Sea coral reefs may survive a hot, grim future.

Answer:
As the outlook for coral reefs across a warming planet grows grimmer, scientists in Israel have discovered a rare glimmer of hope: The corals of the northern Red Sea may survive, and even thrive, into the next century.