Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

[Q]: But one theory about the epic undertaking reserves a special place for a nearby river, now known as the Frome, that may have served as a conduit for ferrying some of the smaller megaliths toward the site on rafts. Today, the placid waterway is once again playing a supporting role in a grand vision, albeit one its architects want to etch in the statute books, not in stone. Frome, a market town in the county of Somerset, is petitioning the British government to grant the River Frome “legal personhood” – in effect, giving it human rights. In throwing down this gauntlet, the town has joined a global “rights of nature” movement linking river basins in New Zealand to rainforests in South America and towns in the U.S. Midwest. In each case, communities are reimagining ways to harness the law to defend the Earth’s living tissues, and the places they call home. Some have dubbed it Mother Earth’s MeToo moment. In practical terms, supporters hope that granting the Frome rights will give lawyers a new avenue to seek redress whenever its waters are sullied by runoff from pig and dairy farms or overflowing sewers. Last month, one of the River Frome’s tributaries turned an unnatural shade of neon blue – highlighting wider concerns over water quality in British rivers. But Peter Macfadyen, an undertaker who redrew Frome’s political map by leading a band of independent candidates to take over the town council, wants to do more than protect one river. In an era of accelerating climate change, Macfadyen and his allies see their quest as part of a struggle to reset the balance between nature and the modern world. “This is much bigger than just wanting to punish people for doing something wrong,” said Macfadyen, who also served as Frome’s mayor. “It’s about trying to change a mindset about the environment in which we live.”   Supporters of the nature’s rights movement see Frome as the first test case for the concept in Europe. Nevertheless, the town has been waiting for months for the government to respond. And just as critics have questioned the effectiveness of campaigns in other countries, some in Frome have their doubts. Neil Howlett, a lawyer who lives by the river in Frome, says he backs many of the community-building steps taken by Macfadyen and other independent local politicians. But he sees the council’s vision for a “river’s rights” bylaw as a distraction. “Having a law which is completely outside the cultural basis of the society in which you pass the law doesn’t make for law that works,” Howlett said. “It’s lovely as an idea. But it’s only lovely as an idea.”   “PROGRAMMED FOR SELF-DESTRUCTION”   Although indigenous peoples have long shared the intuition that rivers, mountains and lakes are in some sense living, sentient beings, American legal scholar Christopher Stone framed the idea in contemporary legal terms. In his 1972 book, “Should Trees Have Standing?”, Stone argued that voiceless natural features would be best protected by granting them the kinds of legal protections and access to courts usually reserved for two-legged plaintiffs. The argument was a novel twist on the long-established principle in the United States that companies can enjoy “legal personality” to distinguish their legal obligations from those of their directors and shareholders. The idea is starting to spread. Campaigners won what is hailed as the first “rights of nature” courtroom victory in Ecuador in 2011 when judges stopped a road-widening project from dumping gravel in the Vilcabamba River. Around the same time, Bolivia enshrined a far-reaching vision of nature’s rights in a statute known as “The Law of the Rights of Mother Earth.”  In 2017, New Zealand’s parliament became the first legislature to acknowledge a river’s legal personhood when it passed a bill recognising the rights of the Whanganui River as an “indivisible and living whole.”  That same year, a high court in India declared the Ganga and Yamuna rivers legal entities – along with two Himalayan glaciers and their meadows, waterfalls and forests. Colombia’s constitutional court made a similar move for the Atrato River basin, where riparian communities face illegal gold mining and paramilitary violence. This summer, Bangladesh recognised the rights of all its rivers. Although legal systems in many developing countries were implanted during colonial times, nature’s rights campaigns in Europe and North America represents a role reversal in which “eco-cratic” indigenous worldviews are enjoying a revival. Advocates see this new “Earth jurisprudence” as a skeleton key to unlock a shift away from the endless pursuit of economic growth, regardless of the ecological consequences. “The current system is programmed for self-destruction, and the legal system is the enabler,” said Mumta Ito, a lawyer and founder of Nature’s Rights, a Scotland-based advocacy group, which is advising Frome town council. “The only way we’ll be able to change things is by creating a new operating system with nature’s rights at its core.”  Although the quest to win legal personhood for the River Frome was started barely a year ago, the roots of the campaign stretch back to a meeting at the Griffin pub in Frome one evening in 2011. Fed up with party divisions hobbling the town council, Macfadyen and a group of like-minded collaborators resolved to stand as independents at the next elections. Nestling in a shallow bowl of hills and noted for picturesque cobbled lanes, Frome has long been a magnet for free thinkers. But in a town of almost 27,000 people, the mavericks had never attempted a takeover. Surprising even themselves, the Independents for Frome movement won 10 seats on the 17-seat council with their model of a new participatory form of decision-making. In 2015, the Independents swept all 17 seats, prompting the Frome Times to dub the town “The People’s Republic of Frome.” In elections this May, independents won almost 80% of the vote. On a recent afternoon, Macfadyen led Reuters on a tour of some council-backed projects grouped loosely along the river, whose green-brown waters curve gently through the town. Wildflowers, nettles and brambles had been deliberately allowed to run riot on its steep, shaded banks. Near the bridge in the town centre, Frome’s “share shop” allows people to rent items such as power tools, musical instruments or camping gear at low rates. Nearby, a community fridge means nobody’s excess fresh vegetables need go to waste. The town council also backed a new renewable energy cooperative, which raised £300,000 from locals to put solar panels on buildings such as the health centre and football club. Macfadyen laid out step-by step instructions for running a town council in his book “Flatpack Democracy” – a play on the idea that thriving localism could be replicated at scale like  self-assembly furniture. Inspired by Frome’s example, independents have taken over more than 20 other town councils and have strong representation on another 20, Macfadyen says. Jamie Kelsey Fry, a contributing editor at the New Internationalist magazine, co-founded a similar initiative in the neighbouring county of Devon. He sees the campaigns as part of a “new municipalism” movement reshaping politics in cities as diverse as Barcelona in Spain, Jackson in Mississippi and Valparaiso in Chile – their organisers often driven at least in part by concerns over climate change. “These groups are going to become exceptionally valuable, because as society functioning in its normal, business-as-usual way begins to collapse, we’re going to have to be in a position to look after ourselves,” Kelsey Fry said. Although the rights of nature movement is growing fast, turning its aspirations into effective restraints on commercial interests remains a challenge. In the United States, the city of Toledo, Ohio, voted in February to amend its charter to state that the giant Lake Erie, plagued by toxic algae blooms, had a right to “exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.” This summer, state lawmakers quashed the move, saying nature did not have appropriate standing. In the case of Frome, legal practitioners would be astonished if the government approves the town’s draft bylaw, partly because there are already laws protecting the river. For example, in 2017, a court in the nearby city of Bath fined a Somerset farmer £22,000 for allowing slurry to spill into the water. The contamination had turned the River Frome brown and foul-smelling and killed at least 1,700 fish. Frome town council said the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government informed it last week that a decision on its application was still pending. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment. With the world’s water bodies facing growing pressure from the extremes of heat, drought and rainfall driven by climate change, Macfadyen argues that any initiative that helps people to look at nature with fresh eyes is worthwhile. “We’re in the situation we’re in because we’ve misunderstood our position in the ecosystem,” Macfadyen said. “And unfortunately, we were wrong. We can’t do what we like. If we pour poison over everything, it comes back to bite us.”
[A]: Mother Earth's MeToo moment: English town joins campaign for 'nature's rights'.


[Q]: The Alabama Department of Public Health announced the 2018 infant mortality rate was the lowest in Alabama history with 7.0 deaths per 1,000 live births It is an improvement over the 2017 rate of 7.4 and the 2016 rate of 9.1. “I am committed to improving the health of mothers and babies, and I am glad to see the infant mortality rates in 2017 and 2018 have improved from the rates earlier in this decade,” Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement. However, Alabama’s mortality rate remains higher than the provisional U.S. rate of 5.7. “The continuing decline in Alabama’s infant mortality is a start to closing the historically large gap between the state and national rates,” Alabama Center for Health Statistics Director Nicole Rushing said. A total of 405 infants born in 2018 in Alabama died before reaching their first birthday. There also remains a racial disparity in infant mortality rates. The infant mortality rate for black infants in Alabama was 11.0 in 2018, more than twice the infant mortality rate for white infants at 5.1. State Health Officer Scott Harris said the the reduction in infant mortality is encouraging, but the state must continue to address Alabama’s racial disparities in birth outcomes, increase access to prenatal care and getting treatment for women for drug use disorders. Jim Carnes is the policy director for Alabama Arise, which advocates for low-income families. He said the state also needs to examine barriers to health care. “Of course we celebrate the improvements in Alabama’s rate, but there are some disturbing trends,” Carnes said, noting the persistent racial disparity and the number of births without prenatal care. While low-income women gain Medicaid coverage during pregnancy, they often don’t have care before or between pregnancies that could address chronic conditions or problems before they are pregnant, Carnes said. “That is something we could impact in a huge way with Medicaid expansion,” Carnes said. The Health Department said the leading causes of infant deaths in 2018 were congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities; disorders related to short gestation and low birth weight; sudden infant death syndrome and bacterial sepsis of newborns. These causes accounted for 50% of Alabama infant deaths.
[A]: Alabama infant mortality rate hits record low .


[Q]: “Puzzling,” says the May 2018 exchange between William Happer, now a member of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, and Thomas Wysmuller of the Heartland Institute, which disavows manmade climate change. Their exchange calls scientifically established rises in sea levels and temperatures under climate change “part of the nonsense” and urges the NASA head — who was copied in — to “systematically sidestep it.” It cannot be discerned whether it was Happer or Wysmuller who put that pressure on the new NASA chief. Their exchange is included in emails from 2018 and 2019 that were obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund under the federal Freedom of Information Act and provided to The Associated Press. But the emails show that Happer, who was then advising Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency, kept up the pressure after he joined the National Security Council late last year. In February, he emailed NASA deputy administrator James Morhard, relaying a complaint about NASA’s websites from an unidentified rejecter of man-made climate change. “I’m concerned that many children are being indoctrinated by this bad science,” said the email that Happer relayed. (Happer’s own message was redacted from the records obtained by the environmental group.) NASA does not appear to have buckled under such heat. Specific statements targeted in the email still appear on the space agency’s website. A NASA spokesman on Thursday upheld the space agency’s public statements on climate change. “We provide the data that informs policymakers around the world,” spokesman Bob Jacobs said. “Our science information continues to be published publicly as it always has.” Heartland Institute spokesman Jim Lakely said in an email that NASA’s public characterization of climate change as man-made and a global threat “is a disservice to taxpayers and science that it is still pushed by NASA.” The institute is one of the most vocal challengers of mainstream scientific findings that emissions from burning coal, oil and gas are damaging the Earth’s atmosphere. Since joining the National Security Council, Happer tapped two analysts with the institute to help him frame challenges to widely accepted scientific findings on global warming, the emails show. In a March 3 email exchange, Happer and Hal Doiron, another policy adviser to Heartland, discuss Happer’s scientific arguments in a paper attempting to knock down the contributions of fossil fuel emissions in climate disruption, as well as ideas to make the work “more useful to a wider readership.” Happer writes he had already discussed the work with another Heartland adviser, Wysmuller. Academic experts denounced the administration official’s continued involvement with groups and scientists who reject what numerous federal agencies say is the fact of man-made climate change. “These people are endangering all of us by promoting anti-science in service of fossil fuel interests over the American interests,” said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann. “It’s the equivalent to formulating anti-terrorism policy by consulting with groups that deny terrorism exists,” said Northeastern University’s Matthew Nisbet, a professor of environmental communication and public policy. The National Security Council declined to make Happer available to discuss the emails. The AP and others reported this year that Happer was coordinating a proposed White House panel to challenge the findings from scientists in and out of government that carbon emissions are altering the Earth’s atmosphere and climate. Trump in November rejected the warnings of a national climate change assessment by more than a dozen government agencies. “I don’t believe it,” he said. Happer, a physicist who previously taught at Princeton University, has claimed that carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas from the burning of coal, oil and gas, is good for humans and that carbon emissions have been demonized like “the poor Jews under Hitler.” The emails show Happer expressing surprise that Bridenstine, a former Oklahoma congressman, had put his skepticism of global-warming science behind him before becoming NASA chief in April 2018. Bridenstine a year ago told reporters that after reading Defense Department briefings on global warming, he became convinced it is a serious national security problem: “We’re defending territory in the Arctic that we never had to defend. The Russians are doing things in the Arctic that they never used to be able to do.” He said no other agency has NASA’s credibility when it comes to studying climate change and helping policymakers form decisions about it. Two major U.S. science organizations took issue with Happer’s emails. “We have concerns that there appear to be attempts by a member of the National Security Council to influence and interfere with the ability of NASA, a federal science agency, to communicate accurately about research findings on climate science,” said Rush Holt, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advance of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society. Hundreds of scientific assessments by leading researchers and institutions the last few decades have looked at all the evidence and been “extremely credible and routinely withstand intense scrutiny,” said Keith Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society. He said efforts to dismiss or discredit such assessments are “an incredible disservice to the public.”
[A]:
Emails: Trump official pressed NASA on climate science.