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: The justices did not comment in refusing to review an appeals court ruling that upheld the law. Enforcement of the law had been on hold pending the legal challenge but will begin shortly, said Steve Pitt, general counsel to Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin. The American Civil Liberties Union had challenged the law on behalf of Kentucky's lone remaining abortion clinic. The ACLU argued that "display and describe" ultrasound laws violate physicians' speech rights under the First Amendment. The federal appeals court in Cincinnati upheld the Kentucky law, but its sister court in Richmond, Virginia, struck down a similar measure in North Carolina. The Supreme Court had previously upheld "informed consent" laws for women seeking abortions. The court will hear an abortion case in March, over Louisiana's attempt to require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Doctors' speech also has been an issue in non-abortion cases. The federal appeals court in Atlanta struck down parts of a 2011 Florida law that sought to prohibit doctors from talking about gun safety with their patients. Under the law, doctors faced fines and the possible loss of their medical licenses for discussing guns with patients. In Kentucky, doctors must describe the ultrasound in detail while the pregnant woman listens to the fetal heartbeat. Women can avert their eyes and cover their ears to avoid hearing the description or the fetal heartbeat. Doctors failing to comply face fines and can be referred to the state's medical licensing board. The ACLU called the law unconstitutional and unethical. ACLU lawyer Alexa Kolbi-Molinas said that the Supreme Court "has rubber-stamped extreme political interference in the doctor-patient relationship." Pitt painted a different picture of the law. "It's a five-minute procedure that takes place before the abortion is performed to give women who might have a lack of understanding of what's actually in the womb, that this is a real living human being there, they might change their mind," he said. The high court's decision not to review the ultrasound case came on Bevin's final day in office. Bevin, a Republican, is an outspoken abortion opponent. During his term, he signed a series of measures passed by the GOP-led legislature that put limits and conditions on abortion, including the 2017 ultrasound law. Those laws have triggered several legal challenges. Bevin was defeated in last month's election by Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear, but Republicans remain in control of the state legislature. ___ Associated Press writer Bruce Schreiner contributed to this report from Frankfort, Ky.

SOLUTION: Supreme Court leaves Kentucky's ultrasound law in place.

PROBLEM: Researchers set out to determine what killed coral near the $205 million dredge work at the port, which was done to make way for the larger ships sailing through an expanded Panama Canal to bring cargo to South Florida. Their study, published this month in the online journal PeerJ, compared work done in the channel to nearby coral. It puts at odds two governmental agencies that clashed over the dredge. Environmentalists had long worried that that $205 million dredging would damage the coral. The Miami Herald (http://hrld.us/2gFJYNi ) reports the Corps contended a disease outbreak was responsible. State environmental regulators argued that mud stirred up by the dredge or leaked by a barge as it ferried sediment offshore smothered coral. The research team studied pictures taken before, during and after the dredge and said sediment spread across an area about 14 times bigger than the Corps permit allowed for. The study found that warm temperatures in the summer of 2014 triggered widespread bleaching and disease and the coral stressed by the sediment died in larger numbers than nearby coral. The project deepened the port's channel by 6 feet, making it 52-feet deep. It completes a $1 billion makeover that includes a new tunnel at the port. "We now know the Corps dramatically underestimated both the severity and the geographic extent of the sediment impacts on the reef," said Miami Waterkeeper Rachel Silverstein, whose group joined other conservationists in a legal fight to clean up the dredge. "The monitoring and the protocols that were supposed to protect this reef during the dredge clearly failed and this study is providing peer-reviewed, statistically valid evidence showing that impacts from the dredging resulted in widespread impacts." Beginning in the summer of 2015, the fisheries service repeatedly warned the Corps that damage appeared to be more widespread and the agency was in danger of violating its permit. The Herald reports that the Corps also failed to provide updated surveys of the work, which prompted the fisheries service to issue a sharp letter accusing the agency of selectively choosing "certain results to downplay the permanent effects" of the dredge. Corps officials said the study used limited data and failed to distinguish between the types of sediment that buried coral during the dredge. "Drawing broad scale conclusions based on limited data is very misleading and not good science," Corps spokeswoman Susan Jackson told the Herald via email. She said the agency is "committed to understanding potential impacts" and has expanded monitoring efforts, which include cameras on the ocean floor to record conditions. The researchers conclude that the study highlights the need to be more careful when dredging near sensitive reefs and should serve as a warning for the upcoming $374 million expansion at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. ___ Information from: The Miami Herald, http://www.herald.com

SOLUTION: Study: Mud stirred up during PortMiami dredge killed coral.

PROBLEM: "Politicians and national media once again have turned their attention to Chicago's violence. The city's nearly 800 murders in 2016 prompted President Donald Trump to repeatedly liken parts of Chicago to sections of the Middle East. Trump also has said he will ""send in the feds"" to ""fix the horrible carnage,"" but no signs of federal intervention have been seen so far. Trump's focus on Chicago, combined with the recent murders of 2-year-old Lavontay White Jr., 11-year-old Takiya Holmes and 12-year-old Kanari Bowers, has only heightened interest in what is happening in Chicago. The subject came up as MSNBC's Willie Geist interviewed U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., on Feb. 15. Geist asked Durbin why Chicago is so violent, especially in comparison to other major cities like New York, which saw a historically low murder rate in 2016. (The Chicago violence segment starts at 3:54) Durbin made the argument that Chicago, as a whole, doesn't suffer from constant violence. He said the gun violence only occurs in a few areas. ""You can almost pinpoint half of the gun violence deaths to two or three specific sections in the city,"" Durbin said. ""They are just areas of devastation, economically and otherwise."" Is Chicago's violence actually that concentrated? Murder across neighborhoods We reached out to Durbin's office to see where he found this data. His press secretary, John Normoyle, pointed to a Chicago Tribune article published on Feb. 1 titled, ""Violence in Chicago still stubbornly high; Trump reacts again."" The story cites Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson who, during a press conference, said half of Chicago's homicides in January occurred in three police districts: Englewood on the South Side and the West Side districts of Harrison and Austin. We followed up with the Police Department's News Affairs Office to verify that statement. The department's director of communication, Frank Giancamilli, sent back a press release from Feb. 1 that says the Englewood, Austin and Harrison police districts approximately made up half of Chicago's 51 murders in January. The distinction is important. Data from each police district crime map shows a total of 22of the 51 January murders can be attributed to the Englewood, Austin and Harrison districts. It's a significant chunk 43 percent but not exactly half. 'It's a tale of two cities' Loyola University criminology professor Arthur Lurigio said violence in these areas is hardly news. Violence has been rampant in the Englewood, Austin and Harrison areas since the 1960s, Lurigio said. ""Without even seeing the data, I would have picked those three districts,"" Lurigio said. ""These communities haven't changed, and I expect them to continue being this violent if they experience the same conditions."" This brings us to the second part of Durbin's statement: The areas in which gun violence is concentrated are plagued by other problems that feed the violence. ""Homicide doesn't occur in a vacuum,"" Lurigio said. ""Violence is a public health problem, but people only view it in a criminal aspect. People in these areas are plagued by other social, economic and health problems. Things like housing foreclosures, high unemployment and school closures. So a lot of young men devalue their own life because they don't see a future. There's no compunction about pulling the trigger."" There's data backing up Durbin and Lurigio's claims. According to U.S. Census data compiled by the Chicago Tribune, both Austin and Englewood have an unemployment rate of 21 percent compared to an 11.1 percent rate in Chicago overall. East Garfield Park and West Garfield Park both make up parts of the Harrison Police District and have unemployment rates of 15 and 25 percent, respectively. Likewise, those neighborhoods have considerably lower individual incomes and higher percentages of households in poverty than Chicago as a whole. ""Chicago is like a tale of two cities,"" Lurigio said ""It's a city that's been utterly neglected in some parts. Give the city money to repair infrastructure where its needs it most. Fix the primary school systems in these areas. Don't call murder a crime problem when the answers lie in investing in these blighted areas."" Our ruling In a recent interview with MSNBC, Durbin spoke about gun violence in Chicago. Durbin said of Chicago, ""You can almost pinpoint half of the gun violence deaths to two or three specific sections in the city. They are just areas of devastation economically and otherwise."" Durbin's office cited a news article that used statistics from the Chicago Police Department. A press release from CPD News Affairs Office confirms this. It read: ""Three districts (7, 11, 15) are responsible for approximately 50% of murders in January 2017."" We confirmed these statistics by looking at data available on crime maps posted on the CPD Harrison, Englewood and Austin district websites. Durbin's assessment of Chicago's homicides is accurate. He did say you can ""almost"" attribute half ofdeaths to a few communities and 43 percent are in certain west and south side neighborhoods. Acrime expert told us these trends have been consistent over the last five decades. Finally, we found data that shows there is a correlation between areas with high violence and economic hardship.

SOLUTION:
You can almost pinpoint half of the gun violence deaths to two or three specific sections in the city. They are just areas of devastation, economically and otherwise.