TASK DEFINITION: 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.
PROBLEM: On May 12 2020, the following image of small children separated by “chalk squares” on a playground during the COVID-19 pandemic began circulating:In a caption on the above iteration, the user wrote “Their reality …😢🌈,” but did not include any contextual information about the image or the events it showed. In it, five seemingly lonely children were seen in the photograph, each confined to the inside of their own chalk square.One of the five in the upper right corner sat at the edge of her square, her legs outside the boundary. Each chalk square appeared to delineate a solitary play area for every child, and spaces between seemed to ensure the children would not come too close to one another as they engaged in socially distant playground activity.Images of the “chalk square” children circulated concurrently alongside an unrelated viral post by “Americas Mom” on Facebook (archived here), in which a photograph of a crying woman is accompanied by a lengthy rant about the woman’s “quarantine fatigue” and ancillary concerns that her child was becoming lonely and/or irritating her.That post began by outlining the purported social effects of quarantine on children, before devolving into a rant decrying the use of masks and disinfectant:Written by a Mom, thank you 🙏: “I’ve had enough. People need to seriously look around and see what it’s doing to our kids. To kids too young to understand what’s going on. Kids that are by themselves with no siblings to play with, no cousins around, no friends. No secret play dates. No interaction with anyone besides mom or dad. What do you think that’s doing to our kids biologically and psychologically?The answer is we don’t know!But when you’re a parent you can see the hurt that your child is going through every day and you can explain to them why.. Do you know what I’ve been telling her, the truth! People are afraid of getting sick sweetheart. People are dependent on the government to protect them from everything. You might not agree with that and honestly I don’t care. Because I don’t agree with anything that’s going on right now.Every time I get into the car with my child she begs to go someplace, crying. Should I record it for you? Should I make you hear it on the daily like I do? Will that make you change your mind?You say that you care about these kids. You don’t. You fear for these kids, that is a difference. You fear that they’re going to be sick.. but are you fearing that their minds are now going to be ill and stunted in growth with no Social interactions? I hope you know those social interactions are how they build their immune system.So put a new spin on essential employees that are allowed to send their kids to childcare. These kids are allowed the ability to socially interact with one another, and have the ability to build their immune system. Nonessential employees or people that never put their child in daycare and relied on social interaction for play are now being stunted. So you’re telling us our kids are no longer essential? Our kids aren’t essential￼ enough to build their immune system’s or build their social connections?You say you are not wanting to open the playgrounds because you can’t socially distance and you can’t disinfect. Where was your concern with disinfecting prior to coronavirus? Are you telling us that you never sanitized the parks before so they were riddled with viruses and bacteria that our child was going to become ill?Open the playgrounds, stop the social distancing, stop the masks that are POINTLESS. And I swear to god if the medical professional comes on here and says I wear a mask for 12 hours a day, I’m gonna put your ass on blast. Because you do not wear a mask all throughout your 12 hour shift. Stop lying to yourself.If you don’t agree with me that’s fine. But step the f**k out of my way while I try to fix the future for my child. Because I’ll be damned if she cries every day wanting to play with somebody or wanting to go do something and she can’t because you live in fear. Live in fear in your own f**king house.”As for the children playing in chalk squares, that image was originally tweeted by French journalist Lionel Top on May 12 2020:Les enfants font leur rentrée aujourd’hui (un petite partie d’entre-eux plutôt). Ambiance très étrange, voire dérangeante… pic.twitter.com/g91y5hLatJ— Lionel Top (@lioneltop) May 12, 2020That tweet, automatically translated by Twitter, read:The children are coming back today (a small part of them rather). Very strange, even disturbing atmosphere …In a second tweet, Top provided additional detail about the photograph:Contexte :Pour faire respecter les distances, tout en profitant des récrés, l’équipe pédagogique a dessiné des carrés au sol pour les + petits. Les enfants jouent, dansent, sautent, rient ensemble… mais depuis ce carré.De ce qu’on a vu, ils ne le vivent pas comme une punition https://t.co/i98ZltvteN— Lionel Top (@lioneltop) May 12, 2020Ils apprennent à vivre ensemble mais différemment.Les photos sont marquantes et la plupart des réactions sur Twitter témoignent d’une même émotion, celle d’une école qui ne correspond pas à ce que l’on connaît, mais les enfants ce matin n’étaient pas « malheureux »— Lionel Top (@lioneltop) May 12, 2020Twitter translation:Context: To ensure that distances are respected, while taking advantage of recreation, the teaching team has drawn squares on the ground for the little ones. The children play, dance, jump, laugh together … but from this square. From what we’ve seen, they don’t see it as a punishmentThey learn to live together but differently. The photos are striking and most of the reactions on Twitter show the same emotion, that of a school which does not correspond to what we know, but the children this morning were not “unhappy”A viral photograph of children in “chalk squares” after returning to school during the COVID-19 pandemic was real, shared by a French journalist on May 12 2020. Top captured the image at a preschool in Tourcoing, France, and emphasized that the children were not suffering or unhappy.Comments

SOLUTION: A photograph appears to show small schoolchildren playing alone in marked-off chalk squares drawn on playground asphalt.

PROBLEM: A photograph supposedly showing the gravestone of a woman named Kate McCormick, who passed away in the 1870s from a fatally botched abortion, has been circulating online for several years. In May 2019, the Facebook page “American News X” revived interest in the image:  This is a genuine photograph of a tombstone marking the grave of a woman who passed away in the 1870s after claiming she took abortion-inducing drugs, and we were able to corroborate many of the details of the inscription via contemporaneous news reports. Our one caveat with this Facebook post is the stated date for when the tombstone was erected. While McCormick passed away in the 1870s, it wasn’t until more than a century after her death, in 1997, that an anonymous donor placed the pictured gravestone on her final resting place. The Story of Kate Simpson (AKA Kate McCormick) McCormick’s story can be gleaned from various articles published by newspapers in Tennessee in 1876 concerning an inquiry into her death, the death of her child, and the doctor who was charged with (and ultimately acquitted of) providing her with abortion-inducing drugs. While these reports contained a fair amount of detail such as eyewitness testimonies, a few facts of the case are still a bit unclear. We have done our best to piece together the events that led to McCormick’s death, the trial of the man who reportedly killed her, and the circumstances of her burial below. Katie’s story starts in Humboldt, Tenn., where she was seduced and impregnated by a shoemaker named George Burgess. After becoming pregnant, Burgess sent McCormick to Memphis to have the child with the promise that he would soon follow to marry her. But Burgess never followed. In late January 1876, a stillborn child was discovered at what news accounts referred to as “Mrs. Widrig’s boarding house.” Police arrived and found that the child’s mother, Kate Simpson (alias Kate McCormick), was also deathly ill. She passed away the following day: Katie McCormick Page 1 Wed, Feb 2, 1876 – Page 3 · Public Ledger (Memphis, Tennessee) · Newspapers.com The Trial of Dr. D.S. Johnson Dr. D.S. Johnson was arrested and indicted on three charges related to the death of McCormick and her child. The Memphis Public Ledger described the charges against Johnson in a 9 February 1876 article, stating that the doctor was indicted for administrating “large quantities of deadly, dangerous, unwholesome, deleterious and penicious pills, herbs, drugs, potions, teas, liquids powders and mixtures” with the intent of causing an abortion, for causing said abortion, and for “feloniously, willfully, deliberately, premeditated and with malice aforethought kill[ing] and murder[ing] the said Kate McCormick.” A number of witnesses who were with McCormick in her final days provided testimony to authorities. Widrig, the woman who ran the boarding house where the bodies were discovered, told authorities that McCormick had paid Dr. Johnson $25 to terminate her pregnancy. A woman named Mollie Brown provided similar testimony: Mrs. Widrig was sworn and stated that the girl came to her house some time before Christmas, but only stayed one night that she came back three weeks ago, and on Saturday night, or, rather, Sunday morning, she was delivered of a dead child; that Dr. Johnson had been attending her; that her suspicions were aroused and she asked Katie to tell her the whole truth; on Sunday Dr. Frayser had been sent to see Katie by Chief Athy and told her that the girl would die; this she told to Katie, who seemed much affected and made a confession; she said: “Mrs. Widrig, I think my time is short,” and then she added: “Dr. Johnson gave the medicine to destroy my child; tell Dr. Johnson that I promised not to deceive him or tell any person but the time has come when I can keep the secret no longer; I paid Dr. Johnson twenty-five dollars for the medicine; he gave me the medicine some three weeks ago, and said if it did not do its work in six days it would be a failure; I took the medicine from Dr. Johnson to kill my child and paid him twenty-five dollars for it.” Mollie Brown sworn: Katie told me last night that Dr. Johnson sent her medicine by express; she said to me she was satisfied she was going to die, and that Dr. Johnson was the cause of it. Wed, Feb 2, 1876 – Page 3 · Public Ledger (Memphis, Tennessee) · Newspapers.com Dr. Johnson’s version of events differed. Johnson, as well as two other doctors who visited McCormick before her death, testified that McCormick had been treated only for diarrhea: Dr. Marable testified as follows: On Sunday morning was called by Dr. Johnson to make a call; he told me about the case, and said he had prescribed for diarrhea; the treatment was correct as stated by Dr. Johnson; he said that he had discovered that she had a baby last night, but that she was in danger of dying from the afterbirth; I attended to her immediately, and gave her the necessary remedies to stop the flooding, and the remedies resulted successfully; the girl appeared very weak; Dr. Johnson and I went to see Chief Athy at once with reference to the dead child, and at my instigation Dr. Johnson called upon coroner Spelman to hold an inquest on the dead infant, which inquest was held on Sunday; I advised Dr. Johnson as to the necessary treatment to place the girl under with a view to her recovery; the girl had diarrhea and I prescribed with Dr. Johnson for its treatment; the girl was nervous and troubled in mind; she said she was out of money and had no friends; trouble of mind and excitement very often cause abortions or miscarriages, and the greatest trouble physicians have in such cases is to keep the patients quiet; I think flooding and mental anxiety was the cause of her death. Johnson testified as follows: Three weeks ago I first saw the deceased; she came to my office and told her story, and wanted to hide her disgrace; I advised her not to commit abortion as it was against the law; I called to see her at Mrs. Widrig’s boardinghouse and prescribed for diarrhea; on Sunday morning I called and found that she had a miscarriage; I then called on Dr. Marable; the prescription given her by me was ascitate of lead and morphine; the girl seemed troubled and said she would sooner die than live; she said this both before and after the abortion had taken place. Johnson was eventually acquitted of the charges against him. The Burial of Kate McCormick The story of McCormick did not end with her death. While McCormick’s mother traveled to Memphis after learning of her daughter’s death, she left the city without making arrangements for burial. Similarly, Burgess, the man who reportedly impregnated McCormick, didn’t undertake a visit to view the body. A particularly depressing passage published by the Public Ledger on 4 February 1876 (which contains some racial language common to the era) noted that McCormick’s body was stored in a “pauper’s coffin” in a stable that served as a morgue for the impoverished in Shelby County:  Fri, Feb 4, 1876 – Page 3 · Public Ledger (Memphis, Tennessee) · Newspapers.com The reporter who found McCormick’s body sought to remedy the situation by obtaining the help of a Capt. George W. Miller of the Cut Off Saloon. Miller agreed to finance a proper burial, and McCormick’s body was taken to Elmwood Cemetery:  Fri, Feb 4, 1876 – Page 3 · Public Ledger (Memphis, Tennessee) · Newspapers.com McCormick was interred at Elmwood Cemetery sometime in 1876, but the gravestone shown above was not originally present at her final resting place. This tombstone was erected in 1997 and was paid for by an anonymous person who was apparently moved by McCormick’s sad tale.

SOLUTION: A photograph shows a tombstone from 1875 that marks the resting place of Kate McCormick, who reportedly died after a botched abortion.

PROBLEM: Aerus air quality technicians who inspected the Jefferson County Election Commission office last month found evidence of water damage and mold buildup, and an oppressive musty odor permeated the air. “They found mold in the carpet,” Commissioner Stuart Soffer said. “In the heating and air room, the readings were unbelievable and there was a pickle bucket in there with water and mold that has been growing because apparently one of the units back there was leaking, and the two air filters were black with mold.” Soffer noted that mold was growing inside the cabinets in the media room, where commissioners work to prepare elections and to tabulate election results. He added that the moisture contamination was coming from a building next door that was leaking into the election commission office. “The bottom line is that we cannot continue using this building,” he said. “We have a liability and if you knowingly expose people to this stuff, you’re setting yourself up.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mold can prompt a variety of health problems including eye, nose and throat irritation, but can also lead to lung disease and upper respiratory tract illness for those with asthma or a compromised immune system. Aerus’ measurements showed that one election room contained 73,300 particles per cubic foot small mold spores, which technicians said far exceeded acceptable levels of 2,500 particles per cubic foot. They also found large mold spores measuring 16,800 particles per cubic foot, while the acceptable level is 200 particles per cubic foot. The Arkansas Gazette-Democrat reported that the damp and mold could lead to corrosion of electronic voting machines. The technicians said mold spore levels far exceeded acceptable levels. Aerus, which sells air and water purifiers, recommended a $1,500 dehumidifier. Soffer suggested that the election commission could move into the former sheriff’s office facility in the county courthouse. But County Judge Gerald Robinson, the chief executive of county government, said that room wasn’t available to the election commission. Robinson said he would look for another county-owned building to use. ___ Information from: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, http://www.arkansasonline.com

SOLUTION:
Arkansas election office may move due to high mold levels.