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.

Example Input: Britain’s step, which follows France, amounts to a victory for electric cars that if copied globally could hit the wealth of oil producers, as well as transform car industry jobs and one of the icons of 20th Century capitalism: the automobile itself. The mayors of Paris, Madrid, Mexico City and Athens have said they plan to ban diesel vehicles from city centers by 2025, while the French government also aims to end the sale of new gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2040. The British government has been under pressure to take steps to reduce air pollution after losing legal cases brought by campaign groups. Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives had pledged to make “almost every car and van” zero-emission by 2050. “There should be no new diesel or petrol vehicles by 2040,” environment minister Michael Gove told BBC Radio. The ban would only apply to conventional rather than hybrid vehicles that have both an electric and combustion engine, Gove’s ministry said. There is a mountain to climb, however. Electric cars currently account for less than 5 percent of new car registrations in Britain, with drivers concerned about the cost and limited availability of charging points and manufacturers worried about making expensive investments before the demand is there. “We could undermine the UK’s successful automotive sector if we don’t allow enough time for the industry to adjust,” warned    Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. Hawes said there were only 12,000 public charging points in Britain and new power infrastructure would be needed, as well as steps to ensure the power network could cope with large numbers of people seeking to charge vehicles at the same time. While many automakers may find it hard to countenance the end of the combustion engine, some have embraced a future where electric vehicles, or perhaps even driverless ones, prevail. This month, Volvo became the first major traditional automaker to set a date for phasing out vehicles powered solely by the internal combustion engine by saying all its car models launched after 2019 would be electric or hybrids. Renault-Nissan in 2009 announced plans to spend 4 billion euros on electric car development. But until Volkswagen (VW) admitted in 2015 to cheating on U.S. diesel emissions tests, most mainstream auto manufacturers had been slow to sink serious investment into battery cars. The backlash against diesel, without which carmakers would struggle to meet CO2 targets, has since refocused minds and produced a flurry of new commitments. VW itself unveiled ambitious plans last year to roll out 30 new battery-powered models that it expects to account for 2-3 million annual sales by 2025 - or as much as 25 percent of its vehicle production. “Even though modern combustion engines will be relevant for at least another 20 years, it is clear that the future will be ruled by electric drives,” VW chief executive Matthias Mueller said earlier this year. PSA Group boss Carlos Tavares, in the past a vocal defender of diesel technologies, said on Wednesday the French company was ready to embrace mass electrification, provided the required consumer demand and government support were there. “The rise of the electric vehicle is very much dependent on the subsidies and the support governments will be able to give to this technology,” Tavares told analysts during the company’s first-half results presentation. PSA is planning to roll out new pure-electric and plug-in hybrid models from 2019. Toyota, which pioneered hybrids but long resisted battery-only cars, changed tack last year and has since unveiled plans for a new range of pure-electric models. In Europe, so called ‘green cars’ benefit from subsidies, tax breaks and other perks, while combustion engines face mounting penalties including driving and parking restrictions. China, struggling with catastrophic pollution levels in major cities, is pushing plug-in vehicles, though in the United States there is much less appetite so far. Germany, the home of major carmakers such as VW, Daimler and BMW, should soon start phasing out petrol and diesel too, said Oliver Wittke, a transport expert in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats. But there is likely to be resistance in Europe’s biggest car market. More than 600,000 jobs could be at risk in Germany from a potential ban on combustion engine cars by 2030, the Ifo economic institute said this month in a study commissioned by Germany’s VDA car industry lobby. Germany’s major carmakers have invested heavily in diesel technology, which offers more efficient fuel burn and lower carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline-powered cars. In response to the British decision, a German government spokeswoman said on Wednesday Merkel had repeatedly warned against “demonizing” diesel vehicles. A spokesman for VW’s Audi brand, two thirds of whose European sales are diesel cars, said it could make diesel “fit for a future with even more stringent emission standards”. Yet Britain’s move will accelerate the decline of diesel cars, whose nitrogen oxide emissions have been blamed for causing respiratory diseases, in Europe’s second biggest market. The government will provide more than 250 million pounds to local authorities for schemes to restrict diesel vehicles’ access to polluted roads but said other options should be exhausted before charging users of polluting vehicles. Any restrictions or charges for polluting vehicles to use affected roads should be time-limited and lifted as soon as air pollution is within legal limits, it added. Gove said he favored road-by-road restrictions for diesel vehicles rather than outright bans from town centers or costly vehicle scrappage schemes, but did not rule them out entirely if they were local authorities’ preferred options. The government also said it would consult later this year on other possible measures including a targeted scrappage scheme. London mayor Sadiq Khan, of the opposition Labour Party, said the government’s commitment was half-hearted and steps needed to be taken before 2040 to tackle air pollution. “We need a fully-funded diesel scrappage fund now to get polluting vehicles off our streets immediately, as well as new powers so that cities across the UK can take the action needed to clean up our air,” Khan said in a statement. Turning away from oil will add to discussions about whether the world is reaching peak oil demand and how additional electric power can be generated. Some companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, expect demand to peak as early as by the end of the next decade. Demand for diesel cars fell 10 percent in the first half of the year in Britain while sales of petrol vehicles rose 5 percent, according to industry data. Sales of electric and hybrid models rose by nearly 30 percent, the fastest growing section of the market albeit from a low base.
Example Output: Electric cars win? Britain to ban new petrol and diesel cars from 2040.

Example Input: The Sackler family owns Purdue Pharma, the privately held drug company that has made billions from OxyContin, and Sacklers hold most of the seats on the board. Members of the family have been accused in a case brought by the state of Massachusetts of deceiving patients and doctors about the drug’s risks as deaths mounted. And documents recently released in the case shine new light on former Purdue Pharma President Richard Sackler’s role in the aggressive marketing of the powerful opioid. As the allegations mount, family members who made their fortunes well before OxyContin even went on the market have sought to distance themselves from their relatives. At the same time, activists have called on institutions to cut ties with the Sacklers, staging protests at museums that have received millions in donations. “The Sackler name is becoming synonymous with the opioid epidemic, and it is damning for these institutions to have their name up,” said Nan Goldin, a photographer whose works have been displayed at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum and at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has a Sackler Wing. Lost in the outrage: One of the most generous and best known of the Sacklers died in 1987, nearly a decade before OxyContin was released. Arthur M. Sackler made his money from medical research, medical advertising and trade publications. His younger brothers, Raymond and Mortimer, bought out his stake after he died. Arthur Sackler’s name is on a gallery at the Smithsonian, a wing of galleries at London’s Royal Academy of Arts and a museum at Beijing’s Peking University. The Sackler Wing at the Met, which houses the celebrated Temple of Dendur from ancient Egypt, was funded by all three brothers. Richard has likewise donated heavily to various institutions. After a federal investigation, Purdue Pharma and three executives — none of them Sacklers — pleaded guilty in 2007 and agreed to pay more than $600 million for misleading the public about the risks of OxyContin. The Stamford, Connecticut, company has also been hit with a multitude of lawsuits over its role in the opioid crisis that killed more than 47,000 people in 2017 alone. Arthur’s nephew, Richard Sackler, who became president of Purdue Pharma in 1999 and remains on the board, is at the center of the litigation. He and other current and former executives have been accused of hiding the dangers of the drug from doctors and patients, encouraging physicians to prescribe more of the highest doses and minimizing the abuse crisis as it was unfolding. “This is not too bad. It could have been far worse,” he wrote to Purdue Pharma executives in 2001 after a federal prosecutor reported that 59 people in one state had died from OxyContin, according to documents released this week in the Massachusetts case. At the launch party for OxyContin in 1996, Richard Sackler boasted the drug would bring a “blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition,” the documents say. Years later, they say, he sought to shift blame onto drug users themselves, recommending the company “hammer on the abusers in every way possible.” “Richard followed that strategy for the rest of his career: collect millions from selling addictive drugs, and blame the terrible consequences on the people who became addicted,” attorneys in Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s office wrote. “By their misconduct, the Sacklers have hammered Massachusetts families in every way possible. And the stigma they used as a weapon made the crisis worse.” A spokesman for Richard Sackler’s family referred questions about the lawsuit to the company. Purdue Pharma said in a statement that Massachusetts’ case — the first one brought by a state to personally name members of the Sackler family — is “littered with biased and inaccurate characterizations.” The company said it will “aggressively defend against these misleading allegations.” Arthur Sackler’s widow and children insist that they never financially benefited from the sale of OxyContin. “It is a gross injustice to connect Arthur to the opioid crisis some 30 years after his death when he had nothing to do with it,” Dame Jillian Sackler said in a statement. “It denies the many important contributions he made working to improve world health and to build cultural bridges between peoples.” But activists have made no distinction between Arthur and his relatives. In July, dozens of activists led by Goldin held a protest inside the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard, scattering pill bottles and holding banners that read “SHAME ON SACKLER.” Similar demonstrations have been held at the Met and the Smithsonian. Goldin, who was addicted OxyContin for years, said that getting the institutions to act will be difficult. “Who is going to turn down the money? They offer millions to these institutions, and the board members are not necessarily committed to action, so it’s going to take a lot,” she said. A Met spokesman said that the Sackler family’s support began decades before the opioid crisis, but that the museum will be examining its gift acceptance policies. The Guggenheim, home to the Sackler Center for Arts Education, had no comment. A Harvard spokesman said in an email that Arthur Sackler’s donation in 1982 paid for the construction of the building that originally housed the museum but that his foundation does not fund the museum. ___ Associated Press reporter Verena Dobnik contributed to this report from New York. ___ Follow Alanna Durkin Richer at http://www.twitter.com/aedurkinricher
Example Output: Opioid crisis brings unwanted attention to wealthy family.

Example Input: A University of Iowa study shows the state’s contribution to the Gulf dead zone spiked 47 percent to 618 million pounds in 2016, based on five-year running annual averages. “Just based on water quality data, I think we can say we’ve not made much progress over the past 20 years in terms of nitrogen,” said Chris Jones, a research engineer at the UI’s IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering. Environmentalists say the study raises new questions about the effectiveness of Iowa’s approach to improving water quality and its reliance on voluntary ag compliance. “We’ve been pouring state and federal money into cutting nutrient pollution for decades, and this highlights the fact that the voluntary approach is not working,” said Jennifer Terry, executive director of the Iowa Environmental Council. “We’re not headed in the right direction. ... We need to follow the lead of other states and pass some environmental laws that will actually reduce loads and result in cleaner water,” Terry said. The Des Moines Register reports that the news comes as Iowa marks the five-year anniversary of the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, a plan designed to cut by 45 percent the nitrogen and phosphorus levels that leave Iowa and feed Gulf hypoxia — or the dead zone. Oxygen levels within the zone are so low that marine life can no longer survive, threatening the Gulf’s seafood industry. Most of the nutrient losses come from farming, although the strategy also targets losses from urban wastewater and industrial operations. Last year, Iowa invested $420 million in those water quality improvements, including helping farmers plant cover crops, build terraces and tackle other conservation practices that hold nutrients in place. But farmers expanding their drainage tile systems — along with increasing hog, cattle and chicken feeding operations, which provide manure to fertilize crops — likely outweigh those conservation efforts, UI scientists say. The nutrient reduction practices “being implemented are a tiny, tiny portion of what needs to be done, and it’s occurring in a system that’s changing,” Jones said. “We appreciate all that is being done with nutrient management and conservation farming. Unfortunately, we’re just impacting too few acres with too few practices,” added Larry Weber, executive associate dean for UI’s College of Engineering. Jones wrote the study with Weber and Keith Schilling, another UI research engineer. Increased nutrient pollution in water creates problems for people and animals beyond the dead zone. High phosphorus levels can lead to toxic algae blooms that can befoul lakes, rivers and streams, potentially killing pets and making people ill. And the federal government limits the amount of nitrates in drinking water to 10 milligrams per liter. Higher levels can be fatal to babies under 6 months old. Increased levels translate to higher costs for utilities for nitrate removal. “We need a dramatic increase, a rapidly-scaled up increase in conservation practices and more funding,” said Cindy Lane, the Iowa Environmental Council’s water program director. Schilling said the study shows that targeting nutrient reduction investment in Iowa can have a significant impact downstream. “Iowa has a dominant role in this Gulf hypoxia issue,” Schilling said. “Let’s invest the resources here, where we really need it. “If we solve Iowa, we solve the Gulf,” he said. The UI study gives Iowans new information in the fight to reduce the nitrogen levels that flow from the state into the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, which make their way to the Gulf of Mexico. Looking at Iowa Department of Natural Resources data from 23 monitoring stations, the study shows Iowa on average over the past 18 years contributed 29 percent of the total nitrogen headed to the Gulf from the Mississippi-Atchafalaya river basin. The river basin is a massive watershed that includes all or part of 31 states. Iowa’s nitrogen impact was even greater in other watersheds. The state averaged 45 percent of the nitrogen levels going into the Upper Mississippi River basin, and 55 percent of the nitrogen going into to the Missouri River basin. “When you look at the entire Missouri (River) watershed, our land comprises 3.3 percent of the total area ... and Iowa contributes nearly 12 percent of the water,” Jones said. But “we contribute 55 percent of the nitrate,” he said. “The way that pencils out is that the amount of water coming from Iowa has seven times more nitrates than the rest of the Missouri River watershed,” Jones said. If Iowa’s contributions were removed, the Missouri River would have little nitrogen contributions in some years. “We really need to take seriously the Missouri River’s contribution as a driver for Gulf hypoxia,” Jones said. The growing concentration of livestock feeding operations in western Iowa might account for Iowa’s large contribution to the Missouri River nitrate levels, the scientists said. “People tend to dismiss livestock influences, but maybe there’s more to it than people give credit it for,” Schilling said, adding that it would require more study to determine the impact. Iowa’s nitrogen levels, based on running five-year annual averages, have been above the 2003 value for 10 consecutive years, the study says. The scientists say 2003 was the first year the five-year rolling average could be calculated, with data that starts in 1999. The goal of the Gulf Hypoxia Task Force, made up of federal, state and tribal leaders, “will be very difficult to achieve if nitrate retention cannot be improved in Iowa,” the report said. The task force, with Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig as chairman, seeks to reduce the dead zone to 1,900 square miles by 2035. The deadline was extended from 2015. Last year, the dead zone set a record, which, at 8,776 square miles, was more than four times the goal size. The report says about 90 percent of Iowa’s nitrogen levels “can be sourced to the 72 percent of the state’s land area that is in crop cultivation.” Iowa, an agriculture powerhouse, is a national leader in corn, soybean, pork, egg and beef production. “This intense production of carbohydrates and protein has resulted in the state being a leading contributor” to the nitrogen loads and Gulf hypoxia, the report said. Naig said farmers understand the important role they play in improving water quality and are scaling up efforts across the state “as we move from demonstration projects to larger, watershed-scale implementation projects. “We recognize that there is still a lot of work to be done, but we are on the right path,” said Naig, who adds farmers are working with more than 250 partners in 65 rural and urban demonstration projects. The UI scientists doubt that increased cropping is the reason for the increased nitrogen impact. Iowa’s cropped area has increased only 4 percent over the past 18 years, while other states’ farmed land has climbed 21 percent, particularly in Minnesota, North and South Dakota and Kansas. About 85 percent of Iowa’s acres are farmed, making it the fifth-highest in the nation, based on the 2012 U.S. Agriculture Census, so there are few acres left that can be brought into production compared with other states. “Iowa’s decline in the share of the region’s soybean area was especially pronounced, dropping from 18.6 percent in 1999 to 14.5 percent in 2016,” the report said. “One would expect our (nitrogen) contributions relative to the other areas would be diminished,” Jones said. “But the opposite has occurred.” Jones said it’s led the scientists to consider other factors. The scientists doubt that Iowa farmers are using significantly more fertilizer. “When we look at nitrogen sales data, it might change a little year over year. But on a per acre basis, that hasn’t changed a lot since 1990,” he said. And with little increase in corn and soybean acres, the scientists speculate that Iowa’s increased nitrogen levels could be coming from more drainage tiles. Or farmers could be using more manure as fertilizer from animal feeding operations. Without Iowa, the Gulf’s overall nitrate loads would have declined 43,400 tons over 18 years, based on five-year running annual averages, the scientists’ data show. Instead nitrate loads grew by 52,000 tons. “It’s pretty clear these loads from the Ohio basin have to be declining,” Jones said. “A lot that is coming from Indiana.” That state’s high level of cover crop adoption by farmers could be the reason, he said, and should be studied. Cover crops such as cereal rye slow the rate of water runoff, reduce erosion and improve soil fertility. Iowa also needs to honestly discuss the impact that drainage tiling has on nitrogen losses, Jones said. Iowa doesn’t collect data on how much underground drainage runs through the state, although officials estimate about 9 million acres are drained through tile. Environmentalists believe the number is much higher. Underground drainage tile helps improve yields by quickly removing excess water from fields. Iowa’s tiling system consists of a network of drainage lines that feed into large pipes. The massive network, first constructed in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, turned once swampy lands into some of the nation’s most productive farmland. But water quickly carried away by the tiling system misses cleansing that would naturally occur by filtering through soil or the roots of trees, shrubs and grasses in riparian buffers along streams. Des Moines Water Works unsuccessfully sued drainage districts in three north Iowa counties in 2015, claiming underground tiles funneled high levels of nitrates into the Raccoon River, a source of drinking water for 500,000 central Iowa residents. “We acknowledge that it’s important to track implemented conservation, and we encourage that,” Jones said. “But we also need to have the courage to talk about these things that drive the system in the other direction.” Terry said Iowa is “one of the most heavily tiled states in the nation,” and its 110-year-old law regulating the practice does little to protect water quality. ___ Information from: The Des Moines Register, http://www.desmoinesregister.com
Example Output:
Study: Iowa nitrogen pollution in the water is getting worse.