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.

Q: The two on Thursday toured a Lowndes County neighborhood where residents say the sewage system regularly overflows into their yards and homes. They then held a town hall in Hayneville. Charlie Mae Holcombe, 70, of Hayneville, said heavy rains are always a sign of trouble. Holcombe described the problems she faced as Gore and Barber spoke with her in her driveway. She said the toilets in her house will begin to bubble as a sign the sewage system is about to backup, sometimes filling her yard — including the area around a child’s swing set — and her house with raw sewage. “They have had to come and pump it out of my yard with the pump truck,” Holcombe said. “It’s backing up, even in my bathtub. The sewage has run over all in the house.” Her home in Lowndes County is in an area that has been plagued by sewage problems and concerns about potential illness. “I have heard about it and seen pictures of it for a long time, but it was shocking to see it in person,” Gore said of the conditions he saw. Alabama’s Black Belt region gets its name for the dark rich soil that once gave rise to cotton plantations. But the type of soil makes it difficult for traditional septic tanks, in which wastewater filters through the ground, to function properly, said Alabama State Health Officer Scott Harris in an interview with The Associated Press. The region’s intense poverty and inadequate municipal infrastructure contribute to the problem. “Sewage is typically handled at a local level... These counties haven’t always been able to do that,” Harris said. Catherine Coleman Flowers, an activist who has worked on rural environmental issues in the county for years, said wastewater sanitation problems are not limited to Alabama’s Black Belt. “It’s all over the country,” Flowers said, adding that climate change, with heavy rains and rising water tables, will make it worse. Holcombe said she’s not sure what it means, but when a red light flashes at a sewage treatment lagoon across the street, it is a reliable sign that her yard will flood. In addition to overwhelmed septic and sewage systems, some homes in the rural county are on “straight pipe” systems where sewage runs untreated from home to yard. Harris said a May survey of almost 200 Lowndes County households found that two to three percent of the households were on straight pipe systems. Holcombe’s home sits not far from the state highway where voting rights marchers walked from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Barber noted the proximity to the key sites of the civil rights movement and said the environmental issues are about the continued fight for justice. The town hall, held at a community center in Hayneville, focused on a number of environmental issues. Birmingham resident Jimmy Smith described living near a Superfund site in Birmingham. Others described concerns about landfills, straight pipe sewage systems and coal ash disposal in the Black Belt. At the town hall, Gore criticized what he described as the continued resistance from power companies and politicians to switching to renewable forms of energy such as solar energy. “It’s really a disgrace that this far Southern state with abundant sunshine is deprived of the advantages of the solar revolution being enjoyed all over the world,” Gore said.

A: Environmental justice issues focus of town hall.
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Q: Navajo President Jonathan Nez made the announcement after a spike in deaths that he attributed to shifting traffic patterns after the city of Gallup recently shut down to outside visitors. That lockdown in northwestern New Mexico has since ended. On the Navajo Nation, residents will face citations, with potential fines and jail time, if they leave their homes during the lockdown, which starts Friday night and ends Monday around dawn. Nez urged people to listen and not pack their bags to head out of town during the lockdown. “Stay home, that’s the bottom line. There’s nothing wrong with staying home and taking care of your home, taking care of your family members,” a frustrated Nez said Thursday. “We need to be able to recognize that what you do affects everybody.” While the state of Arizona has loosened its restrictions on residents and businesses, the Navajo Nation has clamped down. The tribe already has daily nighttime curfews and requires people to wear masks when out in public. Government offices are closed or have limited services. The tribe’s stay-at-home order has been extended to June 7, while Arizona’s expired Friday. As of Friday, the tribe reported 127 deaths and 3,740 positive coronavirus cases since it first began tracking the figures. More than 500 people have recovered, tribal health officials said. There were no new deaths reported on Friday. Loretta Christensen, the chief medical officer for the Navajo-area Indian Health Service, said the reservation’s three largest hospitals hit capacity last week — in line with expected predictions — and a significant number of patients were transferred off the reservation. “We’re still getting cases across the area, but not at the velocity we did before,” she said in a call with reporters Thursday. People who have tested positive but no longer need to be hospitalized are being encouraged to stay in one of three isolation centers set up in basketball gyms on and off the reservation to protect their families. Isolation tents also are available for those who would rather not leave their property, Christensen said. For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death. McKinley County, which includes Gallup, had been the hot spot on the reservation because of a recent outbreak at a detox center. Apache County in Arizona surpassed it with the most COVID-19 cases on the reservation, according to the Thursday figures. Apache County had 948 positive cases, while McKinley County had 928, tribal officials said. Navajo County in Arizona had 757 cases, and San Juan County in New Mexico had 428. Six other counties in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah had smaller numbers. The Navajo Nation’s total cases include 99 that previously weren’t included because they took longer than usual to verify. Tribal officials also cited jurisdictional challenges.

A: Navajo Nation residents to be under strictest lockdown yet.
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Q: The state Court of Appeals said retirees don’t have a contract preventing them from being forced to pay part of their health insurance costs under a law passed in 2011. A three-judge panel ruled unanimously that there is no contractual obligation limiting the State Health Plan covering more than 700,000 employees, retirees and their dependents. “Retired state employees are promised nothing more than equal access to health care benefits on an equal basis with active state employees,” Judge John Tyson wrote in the ruling for himself and Judges Wanda Bryant and Robert Hunter. Retirees, including former Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake, sued in 2012 after the legislature directed the state employee health insurance plan to mandate that they make monthly contributions to receive what had been standard insurance coverage. The retirees claimed the state had agreed to a non-amendable contract that entitled them to premium-free health benefits for the rest of their lives under a health care plan in which the former workers paid 20 percent of their co-insurance. Retirees still have access to premium-free options in a 70/30 plan and, if qualified, to a Medicare Advantage plan. Active state employees have no premium-free health care options, the judges said. The appeals court reversed a 2017 decision by Gaston County Superior Court Judge Edwin Wilson that retirees had a contractual right to receive the standard coverage without a premium. State Treasurer Dale Folwell, whose office includes the State Health Plan, estimated in 2017 that with more than 220,000 people covered by the lawsuit, Wilson’s decision could cost state taxpayers more than $100 million, plus much more to cover the higher cost for retiree coverage in the future. ___ Follow Emery P. Dalesio on Twitter at http://twitter.com/emerydalesio . His work can be found at https://apnews.com/search/emery%20dalesio.

A:
N. Carolina court: State retirees should pay health premiums.
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