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: Exploring online was easy, with hashtags like #scars, #hurt and #brokeninside. Nothing made sense back then, but Theo absorbed what he saw on websites like a religion. All he could focus on was how the exterior he was born with that of a girl didn't look or feel right. That was six years ago, when he had another name and a different gender. Back then, Theo felt that his body was rebelling in disturbing ways. He developed breasts and got his period. He felt like a boy, but every month, the cramps reminded him of reality. He became a child at war with his body. He wasn't aware of words like gender dysphoria or transgender; those would come later. So would the national debates, the furor over bathrooms, and discussions of how to help children who didn't feel right in their own skin. "When you're 10 years old, you really shouldn't be worried about who you are," Theo would say years later, in a moment of reflection. "You shouldn't be having that existential question when you're in fifth grade. You should be worried about homework and the fifth-grade dance coming up." He knew he was different from other kids in class. One day in the girls' bathroom at his South Florida elementary school, Theo made the first of many gouges in his arm, using a paperclip. Pricks of blood bloomed on his fair skin. A teacher and a school nurse whisked Theo to safety. Theo's mother, Lori Ramos, got the call from the principal. Her child was in the hospital. Ramos burst into the ER: Was it a fall, a fight, a shooting? "What's going on here?" Ramos demanded of doctors and school staff. The answers were confusing: Her child had asked a teacher to call her by a different name, use different pronouns. Her child didn't feel normal and wanted to be a boy. Ramos was bewildered she saw no prior clues her child felt this way. And she was no stranger to transgender, gay, lesbian and bisexual issues she worked in a clinic for HIV patients. When she'd given birth in 2001, in a hot tub on the family's back porch in a Florida suburb an hour south of glitzy Miami Beach, she was thrilled. "I had my older son, and I had my girl, and my family was complete," Ramos said. Her baby. Her "sunshine girl." One who was no longer filled with light. Theo was involuntarily committed for 72 hours so doctors could determine whether he was a danger to himself or others. Soon, therapists and doctors had a diagnosis: gender dysphoria, a conflict between a person's physical or assigned gender and the gender with which they identify. But a diagnosis didn't solve Theo's problems or make him feel better. When he tried to look like a boy, everyone at school noticed. His mother was accepting; his father wasn't. He threatened to disown Theo. Theo again turned to the internet. He started cutting around his thighs and hips his "problem areas." When Theo saw thin kids online, he looked at his own baby fat and, once again, didn't fit in. He wouldn't eat for days, or he'd force himself to throw up. Cutting and vomiting weren't painful, not exactly. They were more of a stress release, a way to match physical pain to what he felt inside: "I just know that it isn't right, that the body I have isn't supposed to be this way." Small aggressions at school led to outright bullying. Other kids asked what was in Theo's pants, if he had a penis, if he could show them. Theo started missing school. A therapist diagnosed depression and anxiety disorder. If only Theo could become a boy through hormone therapy that, he thought, would solve his problems. "It's just like every time I'm misgendered it feels like a wrench clamping around my heart and it slowly grows tighter and tighter," he explained. "Being addressed as female or identifying as female never felt right to me; it always gave me this acute sense of discomfort and pain." Hormone therapy for transgender children is a recent, controversial practice. It hasn't been studied much. The concept that children can be transgender has been discussed in the open only recently; previously, it was something to be hidden, squashed and ignored. About 150,000 teenagers in the U.S. identify as transgender, according to a 2017 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA's School of Law. About 1.4 million U.S. adults identify as transgender. Medical professionals have come up with protocols for children and teens. They recommend that some kids with gender dysphoria essentially pause puberty with hormone blockers until they're certain they want to live as a different gender. But the child must be prepubescent. It was too late when Theo and his parents learned about the option. Theo could take testosterone, but rigorous counseling sessions were recommended first. This annoyed Theo: Why not become a boy right away? Experts say impatience is common: Transgender children want to transition, and waiting is frustrating. Even under regular circumstances, teens and patience aren't usually mentioned in the same sentence. Doctors say going slow when treating trans teens is essential for physical and emotional well-being, and note that if a teen's feelings last until age 16, the desires are probably permanent. Theo insisted testosterone could bring peace with his body: "If I could just start T therapy, I would know I was on the way to being who I'm supposed to be." His parents, though, worried about the effects on their growing child. Theo wanted testosterone, but his anxiety sometimes made him question his desires. It became a regular topic of conversation between mother and son. "I'm nervous," Theo said in the spring of 2016. He was 14. "What if I do change my mind?" "Well, what if you do?" asked his mother. "I can always stop," Theo said. Ramos shook her head. "The changes are permanent." ____ EDITOR'S NOTE: The Associated Press followed Theo Ramos for more than a year as he grappled with his gender dysphoria. This is the first installment of a three-part story. PART ONE: As a child grappling with gender dysphoria, Theo Ramos found himself at war with his body. PART TWO, coming Tuesday: Living with a transitioning transgender child "is anything but a straight line," as his mom says. PART THREE, coming Wednesday: Visibility of transgender issues is at a high, but all the talk in the world doesn't make life any easier as a gender-fluid or transitioning kid. ____ Follow Tamara Lush on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tamaralush .

SOLUTION: Trans teen's war with his body started when he was just 10.

PROBLEM: While governments in at least 20 other states obtained more than 30 million doses of the drug through donations from the federal reserve or private companies, Oklahoma and Utah instead bought them from private pharmaceutical companies. Top officials in both states chalked up the decisions to "the fog of war." Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Tuesday defended the state's $2 million purchase, saying the drug was showing some promise. His health secretary attributed buying the 1.2 million hydroxychloroquine pills to something that happens in the "fog of war." Utah Gov. Gary Herbert at first defended the state's $800,000 purchase of 20,000 packets of hydroxychloroquine compounded with zinc, but has since ordered an investigation of a no-bid contract with a local company that had been promoting the drugs. Herbert, a Republican, also canceled an additional plan to spend $8 million more to buy 200,000 additional treatments from the same company. A left-leaning nonprofit group in Utah filed a price gouging complaint Tuesday with state regulators, arguing the $40 per pack drug was grossly overpriced. Oklahoma's attorney general requested an investigative audit on Tuesday of its Department of Health over spending and warned the agency about retaliating against employees who report wrongful government activities under the state's Whistleblower Act. A spokesman for Attorney General Mike Hunter declined to comment on whether the request was related to the $2 million spent on the drug. Doctors can already prescribe the malaria drug to patients with COVID-19, a practice known as off-label prescribing, and many do. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday warned doctors against prescribing hydroxychloroquine for treating the coronavirus outside of hospitals or research settings because of reports of serious side effects, including irregular heart rhythms and death among patients. Preliminary results from a recent study done on coronavirus patients at U.S. veterans hospitals showed no benefit, casting more doubt on the drug's efficacy during the pandemic. Those were the latest admonitions against the drug that Trump has regularly promoted in public appearances, touting its potential despite his own health advisors telling him it is unproven. Oklahoma acquired 1.2 million pills, or about 100,000 doses, on April 4 from FFF Enterprises, a California-based medical supply wholesaler, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health. Oklahoma state Rep. Melissa Provenzano, a Democrat from Tulsa, said the state's purchase shows that Gov. Stitt's actions don't follow his claim that he relies on data to drive his decisions. "Two million dollars is a lot of money to waste, especially when we have unemployment claims approved yet going unpaid, health care professionals without proper protective equipment, and diagnosed cases and deaths continuing to rise," Provenzano said. Stitt, a first-term Republican, said hydroxychloroquine was showing some promise as a treatment in early March, and he didn't want Oklahoma to miss out on an opportunity to acquire it. "Now there's some evidence the chloroquine may not be as effective, but I was being proactive to try and protect Oklahomans," Stitt said Tuesday when asked about the purchase. "That's always going to be my first instinct, to get the equipment and things we need that I'm seeing in the future would help Oklahomans." Oklahoma's Secretary of Health Jerome Loughridge said several physicians, including some in Oklahoma, were previously optimistic about the drug's promise in treating COVID-19. He added that the drug is also useful for treating lupus and some other auto-immune diseases, so the state's supply "will not have gone to waste." "When we were battling sort of the fog of war at that point, we certainly acquired it on the potential that it would have utility," Loughridge said. Jeff Burton, a former adjutant general of the Utah National Guard chosen to lead the state health department's coronavirus task force, offered a similar explanation for why the state made its purchase. He said the state never received the pills and is trying to get its money back. "I chalk it up to fog of war," Burton told the state's pharmacy board. "There was a lot going on. It's easy to judge it from (an) easy chair.. . . Since then we've decided that was not a wise purchase." Doctors in Oklahoma have been using the drug to treat patients with COVID-19, often in conjunction with a second drug, azithromiocin, but the results "just are not that promising," said Dr. Douglas Drevets, chief of infectious diseases at University of Oklahoma Medicine. FFF Enterprises said it's the company's policy not to comment on transactions with customers. Utah gave a local company called Meds in Motion the $800,000 contract without taking bids from other companies under emergency procurement rules, said Christopher Hughes, director of Utah's division of purchasing. State officials haven't explained why they didn't seek to get the drugs for free. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Saturday it has sent out 28.6 million tablets of hydroxychloroquine sulfate free of cost to states around the country. Several states including New York, Connecticut and Texas received donations of the medication from a private company based in New Jersey called Amneal Pharmaceutical, according to information compiled by The Associated Press. Utah taxpayers deserve to know what happened to allow a purchase that seems like a company taking advantage of the early, chaotic days of the pandemic, said Chase Thomas, executive director of the group called Alliance for a Better Utah that submitted the price gouging complaint. The complaint alleges Utah paid at least double the common price for the medication. "Whether they were buying drugs we didn't need or paying too much for it when they could have gotten them for free, there just needed to be a lot more thought going into this," Thomas said. Meds in Motion didn't answer an email seeking comment about the allegations. Herbert declined to provide an update Tuesday about the investigation of the purchase. He said Friday the state's legal counsel would aim to find out what, how and why it happened. He said he believed state officials acted in good faith as they scrambled to slow the spread of coronavirus, but acknowledged a mistake may have been made. "I have some questions about how it came about," Herbert said Friday. "Bottom line is, we're not purchasing any more of this drug." ___ McCombs and Whitehurst reported from Salt Lake City.

SOLUTION: Oklahoma, Utah face scrutiny over malaria drug purchases.

PROBLEM: "Scott Henson of Austin, who writes the Grits for Breakfast blog on criminal justice policy and politics, told the Austin Post, an online community newspaper, that Texas and the nation have ""criminalized far too much of public life."" ""I think we have somewhere in the range of 2,500 or so felonies on the books in Texas,"" Henson said in an interview posted online Feb. 25, 2013. ""There are 11 different felonies you can commit with an oyster."" That cracked our interest, partly because the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation likewise said about a month earlier that Texas has 11 felonies (not a dozen, dang it) related to harvesting oysters. Felonies are considered the most serious criminal offenses. By email, the center's Marc Levin, director of its Center for Effective Justice, pointed out a January 2012 publication, the ""Current Offense Severity Rankings List,"" written by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. Henson told us by email that Levin was his source for the count when he initially wrote about the topic in 2007. He also said he would check his claim against the state's ""offense severity"" list. Among the state-listed 2,324 felonies, Levin said, some are rather similar or are enhancements of lesser offenses, though the agency ""presumably uses a consistent methodology to delineate each separate offense."" He said the tally of oyster-related felonies aired by the foundation ""allows for some that the parole board counts as separate offenses which some might consider to be essentially the same offense."" We spotted 16 oyster-connected felonies on the list but pruned three that appeared to be duplicates. Also, as Levin noted, two felonies appeared distinct from others only because they take into consideration repeat offenses. Theft of oysters from a private bed is a felony, as is theft of oysters from a private bed and having two or more previous convictions. Similarly, harvesting oysters in a restricted area is a felony, as is oystering in a restricted area with a previous conviction. Adjusting for the seeming duplications and near-similar felonies knocked the oyster-tied felonies in state law to 11: theft of oysters placed on a private seabed; interfering with an oyster buoy or marker with two previous convictions; oystering in a restricted area as designated by the state; night dredging of oysters; night dredging in a restricted area with a previous conviction; night dredging in a polluted area; not having an oystering license; harvesting oysters for non-commercial purposes without a license; harvesting oysters without a commercial license; selling sport oysters; and violating oyster regulations. By telephone and email, a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department official confirmed the felonies, though Brandi Reeder, the agency's fisheries law administrator, stressed that a person could be charged with each felony only if they have been convicted of similar misdemeanor violations in the previous five years--sometimes just once, in other cases two or more times, according to the relevant statutes. At our request, Reeder reviewed our identified 11 felonies, later saying by email that she would say there are seven distinct oyster-related offenses or crimes. Broadly, Reeder said, the oyster felonies are in place for a reason, to deter nefarious, potentially risky activities. ""An oyster can kill you,"" Reeder said, referring to the possible presence of viruses, bacteria and parasites in raw shellfish. ""That's why we take it seriously."" But Texans rarely face oyster felony charges, Reeder said, because nearly all offenders stop after being charged with a misdemeanor. Statewide in the fiscal year ending Aug. 31, 2012, according to the agency, no such felonies were charged. By telephone, neither Henson nor Levin expressed surprise that no oyster felonies were charged in a recent year or that no one can be charged with such a felony without a prior misdemeanor conviction. With a laugh, Henson said: ""I guess the laws worked. They stamped out oyster crime in Texas."" Henson and Levin each said, too, the oyster felonies demonstrate regulatory issues--such as having a license or fishing in restricted waters--being placed inappropriately into criminal statutes. Levin said there is an opportunity to shrink the number of state crimes starting from a Texas House proposal to create a commission that would recommend changes in advance of the 2015 legislative session. Our ruling Henson said there are 11 Texas felonies one can commit with an oyster. He could have said 16, according to the state's breakdown of felony offenses, though Parks & Wildlife suggests such oyster-related crimes break down to seven distinct offenses. Significantly, too, these felony charges are rare. No one can even face one without having previously been convicted of at least one related misdemeanor.s ."

SOLUTION:
Scott Henson Says Texas has "11 different felonies you can commit with an oyster.