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.
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Question: Italy’s Civil Protection officials said the quake, which struck at 3:19 a.m., was part of a swarm of some 1,000 tremors, most of them barely perceptible, linked to Etna’s volcanic eruption this week. Italy’s national seismology institute said the quake had a magnitude of 4.8 on the open-ended Richter scale and 4.9 on the moment magnitude scale, which relates to the amount the ground slips. It struck north of Catania, the largest city in the eastern part of the Mediterranean island, but no damage or injuries were reported there. The quake opened up cracks in homes in several towns, sending chunks of concrete debris tumbling to the ground. It toppled a Madonna statue in a church in Santa Venerina and broke up sidewalks and a stretch of highway, forcing it to close. Many people spent the hours after the quake sleeping in their cars. In the town of Piano d’Api, firefighters removed cracked stucco from the bell tower of the damaged Santa Maria della Misericordia church. Italy’s culture ministry said the quake damage to churches was being tallied by experts. “Etna remains a dangerous volcano, and this country of ours is unfortunately fragile,” government undersecretary Vito Crimi said as he reported 10 people injured. The most seriously injured was a 70-year-old man who fractured ribs and was undergoing surgery for chest injuries. A 71-year-old patient was being kept in hospital for observation, while others were treated and released, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. Additionally, 18 other people went to local hospitals suffering from panic attacks or shock, news reports said. One 80-year-old man was safely extracted from the rubble of his home, ANSA said, while a woman told state radio that her sister was pulled out from under a heavy armoire that had toppled. A ceiling collapsed in another house, and in other homes parts of exterior walls crumbled. Some stone walls along fields and local roads crumbled. Etna, the largest of Italy’s three active volcanoes, has been particularly active since July. In recent days, Etna’s latest eruption has been shooting volcanic ash, heavy smoke and lava stones into the air, coating roads and homes nearby with ash. A new fracture has opened near Etna’s southeast crater and lava has been flowing down an uninhabited slope. The quake was also felt in the upscale Sicilian resort town of Taormina and in other towns in eastern Sicily. The Civil Protection agency said temporary shelters were being set up in gyms or municipal buildings for people whose houses were damaged or who were too frightened to return to their homes. Similar volcanic activity on Etna has been observed many times in past decades, Andrea Billi, a geologist with the state National Council of Research, told RaiNews24. This kind of activity “can last days or weeks,” he said, “but it’s unpredictable.” Italy’s Civil Protection chief said it appeared the activity at Etna was calming down. “From a scientific point of view, we’re dealing with an isolated event,” Angelo Borrelli told Sky TG24 TV. “The technical experts tell us we’re heading toward a cooling of the lava, and we ought to expect a quiescence of the phenomenon (of earthquakes).” Some residents told reporters that after a similar quake in 1984 which killed a person, many on Mount Etna retrofitted their houses to enable them to withstand more powerful temblors. ___ Frances D’Emilio is on twitter at a href=’http://www.twitter.com/fdemilio%3c’www.twitter.com/fdemilio/a

Answer: Quake from Mount Etna volcano jolts Sicily, sparks panic.


Question: Besides holding a rare special session, the full Legislature will meet in a way unlike ever before. A small number of lawmakers will meet in the state Capitol in Cheyenne and the rest will take part by video conference. Lawmakers have drafted five bills, four of which have mirror versions so the House and Senate can consider them simultaneously, and plan to wrap up no later than Saturday. The bills would: — Give Gov. Mark Gordon guidance in allocating $1.25 billion in federal Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding. Legislators propose putting the money toward emergency public health costs, aid for families and businesses, economic development programs including infrastructure projects and, to the extent federal law allows, replacing public revenue lost during the pandemic. — Help ensure that people who fall ill from the coronavirus can collect unemployment benefits and not be evicted for missing rent payments. — Alter state funding calculations for school districts and authorize Gordon to make certain emergency funding transfers between state agencies. — Allocate up to $275 million in interest-free loans and other aid for businesses affected by the coronavirus. — Give legal immunity to businesses whose customers contract the coronavirus, a proposal to be initially taken up by the Senate only. The public can monitor the proceedings online. Journalists will keep an eye on things from the House and Senate galleries. Wyoming’s previous special session in 2004 involved an ultimately unsuccessful constitutional amendment to limit payouts in medical malpractice cases.

Answer: Rare Wyoming Legislature special session to take on COVID-19.


Question: The movement of the potentially deadly disease to a new province highlights the difficulties that health workers in Congo face in controlling the outbreak. Two new patients tested positive in the Mwenga area of South Kivu, adding to North Kivu and Ituri provinces where there are confirmed cases of the disease, according to the health ministry. The new cases are “a 24-year-old woman and her 7-month-old child,” said Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, the director of Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research, in a statement released on Friday. The mother and her child had visited Beni, in North Kivu province, which is the center of the outbreak. They returned to South Kivu province where they fell sick with Ebola. The mother died Thursday and her child is being treated by a response team, said Muyembe’s statement. The local Ebola response team has identified more than 120 people who may have been infected with the Ebola virus by contact with the woman and her child. Those people will be vaccinated to reduce the risk that they will get Ebola. The Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo has killed 1,808 people out of 2,765 confirmed cases, according to the new report. The current outbreak, which started on Aug. 1 last year, is the second largest in history. The spread of confirmed cases to a third province shows that health workers have struggled to contain the outbreak, despite the use of a vaccine. Many people in eastern Congo do not trust doctors and other medics. An average of 81 new cases of Ebola are confirmed each week, according to the World Health Organization, which issued an update on the outbreak Friday. WHO said that its appeal for $287 million to fund the public health part of its campaign to control this outbreak has only received $15 million so far. Earlier this week, doctors announced positive news that two new drugs appear to be effective at saving lives of those who fall ill with Ebola. Muyembe and other scientists announced that preliminary results from a trial in Congo found two drugs — made by Regeneron and the U.S. National Institutes of Health — seem to be saving lives. Researchers said more study is needed to nail down how well those two compounds work. The drugs are antibodies that block Ebola. In the trial, significantly fewer people died among those given the Regeneron drug or the NIH’s, about 30%, compared to those who received another treatment. There is less danger that Ebola will spread through Goma, the capital of North Kivu province with more than 2 million inhabitants, because about 200 contacts and suspected cases have been identified and have received proper medication, said Muyembe. He said people arriving in Goma are being monitored at the city’s entry points. Health officials have also vaccinated tens of thousands of people in Congo and surrounding countries in an attempt to stop the outbreak, but the virus has now continued to spread for more than a year. Response efforts have been repeatedly hampered by attacks on health workers and continuing mistrust among the affected communities; many people in the region don’t believe the virus is real and choose to stay at home when they fall ill, infecting those who care for them. ___ Maliro contributed to this report from Beni, Congo. ___ Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

Answer:
Ebola outbreak spreads to 3rd province in eastern Congo.