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: Trump even suggested Thursday that the release could have been intentional. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the clearinghouse for the web of U.S. spy agencies, said it had ruled out the virus being man-made but was still investigating the precise source of the global pandemic, which has killed more than 220,000 people worldwide. Though scientists suggest the likeliest origin of the pandemic remains natural, that it spread from an infected animal to a human, Trump claimed to have seen evidence to support the theory that the origin was an infectious disease lab in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Chinese outbreak. He said the U.S. now “is finding how it came out.” “It’s a terrible thing that happened,” the president said. “Whether they made a mistake or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one, or did somebody do something on purpose.” The intel statement said the federal agencies concur “with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.” “The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.” In recent days the Trump administration has sharpened its rhetoric on China, accusing the geopolitical foe and vital trading partner of failing to act swiftly enough to sound the alarm about the outbreak or to stop the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19. U.S. officials have said the Chinese government should “pay a price” for its handling of the pandemic. This all comes as the pace of Trump’s own original response continues to come under scrutiny, questioned as too meager and too slow. Earlier Thursday, before Trump’s comments, the Chinese government said that any claims that the coronavirus was released from a laboratory are “unfounded and purely fabricated out of nothing.” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang cited the institute’s director, Yuan Zhiming, as saying the lab strictly implements bio-security procedures that would prevent the release of any pathogen. “I would like to point out again that the origin of the virus is a complex scientific issue, and it should be studied by scientists and professionals,” Geng said. He also criticized those in the U.S. who say China should be held accountable for the global pandemic, saying they should spend their time on “better controlling the epidemic situation at home.” At the White House, Trump repeatedly blamed China for its handling of the outbreak, criticizing the country for restricting domestic travel to slow the virus but not international travel to keep it from spreading abroad. “Certainly it could have been stopped,” Trump said during an event in the East Room on his administration’s efforts to aid seniors during the outbreak. “They either couldn’t do it from a competence standpoint, or they let it spread.” “It got loose, let’s say, and they could have capped it.” Earlier this month, Trump addressed the lab theory saying, “More and more, we’re hearing the story.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added at the time, “The mere fact that we don’t know the answers — that China hasn’t shared the answers — I think is very, very telling.” Pompeo also pressed China to let outside experts into the lab “so that we can determine precisely where this virus began.” While Trump and Pompeo have made their feelings clear, a U.S. intelligence official disputed the notion that there was pressure on agencies to bolster a particular theory. The intelligence official was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue and spoke only on condition of anonymity. Scientists say the virus arose naturally in bats. Even so, Pompeo and others have pointed fingers at an institute that is run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It has done groundbreaking research tracing the likely origins of the SARS virus, finding new bat viruses and discovering how they could jump to people. “We know that there is the Wuhan Institute of Virology just a handful of miles away from where the wet market was,” Pompeo said two weeks ago. The institute has an address 8 miles, or 13 kilometers, from the market that is considered a possible source. U.S. officials say the American Embassy in Beijing flagged concerns about potential safety issues at the lab in Wuhan in 2018, but they have yet to find any evidence the virus originated there nearly two years later. Scientists studying the virus for months have made clear they believe it wasn’t man-made but are still working to determine a point at which it may have jumped from animals to humans. Early attention focused on the live-animal market in Wuhan where the first cases were reported in December. But the first person identified with the disease had no known connection to that market. Kristian Andersen, who studies the virus at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, puts the odds of it being accidentally released by the Wuhan lab at “a million to one,” far less likely than an infection in nature. But virus expert David O’Connor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said he thinks too little is known to rule out any source, except the idea the virus was man-made. Finding the source is important, he said, because it may harbor the next pandemic virus. The U.S. was providing funding to the Wuhan lab for its research on coronaviruses, Michael Morell, former acting director and deputy director of the CIA, said Thursday. He said State Department cables indicate that there have been concerns in past years among U.S. officials about the safety protocols at that lab. If the virus did escape from a Chinese lab, it not only reflects negatively on China but also on the United States for providing research funding to a lab that has safety concerns, Morell said during an online forum hosted by the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security at George Mason University. “So if it did escape, we’re all in this together,” Morell said. “This is not a gotcha for China. This is a gotcha for both of us.” ___ Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann in Washington and Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

SOLUTION: Trump speculates that China released virus in lab ‘mistake’.

PROBLEM: The state Health Department says Tuesday that 42 days have passed with no new cases in Rockland. That’s the equivalent of two incubation periods and the timeframe when measles outbreaks are typically declared over. The nation’s worst measles epidemic in 27 years emerged a year ago, with most of the cases centered in Orthodox Jewish communities in Rockland and New York City. Health officials administered nearly 30,000 measles vaccinations in Rockland County as part of efforts to stop the outbreak. Over the summer, the state eliminated non-medical exemptions for measles vaccinations required for school children and tightened rules for granting medical exemptions.

SOLUTION: Measles outbreak that sickened 312 in Rockland declared over.

PROBLEM: Abortion was decriminalised in Northern Ireland last year after the British parliament bypassed opposition from socially conservative Christian politicians in Belfast to bring the region into line with the rest of the United Kingdom, where abortion has been legal for decades. But the regional health ministry missed an April 1 deadline to begin providing abortion just as the coronavirus pandemic complicated the government’s recommended back-up option of travelling to England for the procedure. “We are in a worse position than we have ever been in,” said abortion rights activist Emma Campbell, co-chair of the Alliance for Choice group, which has seen a five-fold increase in calls for help since the travel restrictions were introduced. “Access is worse than it has been for over 50 years.”  One 39-year-old education worker from County Down who is seven weeks pregnant and seeking an abortion said she had been told by her local doctor that no provision had been set up to provide abortions in Northern Ireland. “I was told I would have to take a ferry, take the pill in the clinic in the morning, then take the other pill and then get the ferry home,” she told Reuters. “What is happening to women in Northern Ireland is inhumane,” she said. “Having to sneak out to get to Liverpool is not what should be happening in 2020.”  The only British clinics currently available for women from Northern Ireland seeking publicly funded abortions are in Manchester and Liverpool, but no direct flights are available due to the coronavirus lock-down, activists say. A spokeswoman for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which operates the government’s booking system for Northern Ireland women requiring abortions, said that due to flight cancellations the ferry was currently the only viable route. “Some in the Northern Ireland Executive are clearly attempting to delay the widespread establishment of services, by refusing to commission services for example ...” spokeswoman Katherine O’Brien said. Amnesty International described the situations as “unfair, dangerous and needlessly putting women and girls at risk” and said it was worried it would lead to women attempting unsafe abortions. Northern Ireland’s First Minister Arlene Foster, who like Health Minister Robin Swann describes herself as “pro-life”, on Monday told a press conference she was against “abortion on demand.”  “It’s a retrograde step for our society,” she said. Foster’s Democratic Unionist Party on Monday voted against a proposal to allow doctors to prescribe the abortion pill via telephone consultations - a measure that has been introduced across the rest of the United Kingdom in the wake of coronavirus lockdown while Swann’s Ulster Unionist Party abstained, a source close to the Northern Ireland executive told Reuters. The leader of the non-sectarian Alliance Party Stephen Farry wrote a letter to Swann saying women in Northern Ireland had been left in an “untenable situation.”  The department of health said it was “considering this urgently” but said it would be an issue for the Northern Ireland executive to decide. Alliance for Choice says it has been forced to return to its practice from before abortion was decriminalised and work with other groups to try to source abortion pills from the internet and get a doctor in the Netherlands to assess women and prescribe the pills even though it is not legal to prescribe abortion pills for home use in Northern Ireland. However, even this is dependent on supply of pills which have been severely limited by coronavirus, Campbell said. Activists say that in addition to a surge in calls seeking help, they have seen a number of examples of women self-harming and at least one attempting suicide. Another pregnant woman, a 29 year old beauty industry worker from Belfast, said she had asked a local charity to send her pills but she had no idea if or when they would arrive. “At this time nothing is certain and it’s very scary that it’s completely out of my hands,” she said.

SOLUTION:
Northern Irish women told to sail to England for abortions despite pandemic.