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: The third-term Democrat touted past achievements and trumpeted a long list of policy initiatives, many of which he previewed in a series of announcements over the past month. Cuomo also stressed the need for fiscal restraint, with the state staring at a $6 billion budget gap, caused largely by soaring Medicaid spending. The agenda Cuomo outlined in the speech includes plans for expanding anti-discrimination protections in the state constitution, an overhaul for New York City’s Penn Station and a proposed ban on foam food containers. Cuomo also outlined another ban that would cover marketing flavored e-cigarettes to children, initiatives intended to lower the cost of prescription drugs, guaranteed paid sick leave time for more New York workers and expanded universal pre-kindergarten. “New York at her best is the progressive capitol of the nation, and we must fulfill that destiny again this year,” Cuomo said. Cuomo delivered his address at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center in downtown Albany to an audience of members of the Legislature and top politicians from around the state. The speech kicked off a legislative session running through June 2. The governor’s address comes after several episodes of violence targeting Jewish people, including an attack by a man who stormed inside the home of a Monsey rabbi, Chaim Rottenberg, and stabbed five people at a Hanukkah celebration. Rottenberg delivered a blessing before Cuomo’s address and called for tolerance. “I will never forget the horror of that night,” Rottenberg said. “But I will also never forget how we continue to celebrate after that day, how we continue to rejoice in the miracle of Hanukkah. I will never forget the resilience on display that night and in the following days, the resilience of Jewish people and the resilience of New York.” Cuomo is proposing a new law targeted at domestic terrorism and said New York would be the first state in the U.S. to enact such legislation. The new law would apply to crimes in which at least one person died and victims were targeted by their race, religion and gender, among other topics. Cuomo called the attack “intolerable” and pledged the state won’t stand for it. “They attacked me, and they attacked you,” Cuomo said. “These are the times, my friends, when New York state is called upon to lead to set a course for a troubled nation searching its way through the fog of confusion,” he said. In a policy briefing book that accompanied his speech, Cuomo said his proposal to legalize marijuana would limit the sale of cannabis products to adults over age 21. But he only briefly mentioned his legalization proposal in his address Wednesday, to tepid applause. A similar proposal to legalize recreational marijuana failed last year among disagreements over funding and hesitation from suburban Democrats. Lawmakers instead scaled back penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana and created a process for expungement. Cuomo has declared “Making Progress Happen” as his slogan for 2020. But any progress will have to come while the state is grappling with a budget gap fueled by soaring Medicaid costs. Debate over how to handle the shortfall is expected to color virtually every policy debate this year. Hundreds of activists rallied in Albany demanding action on issues including the state’s ambitious climate change goals. Cuomo called climate change the “transcendent threat of our times” and proposed sending voters a $3 billion bond in November to fund a flood reduction and habitat restoration program he is calling Restore Mother Nature. “Because no economic strategy, no social justice reform, no education policy will be worth a damn if we don’t have a planet to live on,” he said. Cuomo has yet to share many details about his plans to address soaring costs of the Medicaid program, which serves over 6 million people. The governor called Wednesday for improved accountability in the Medicaid system, saying safeguards were needed to limit potential overspending on the program by municipalities. More details of how the administration plans to address the funding gap may have to wait for his budget proposal, expected in mid-January. Cuomo has cautioned against overspending while pledging not to raise taxes. That budget-conscious message could clash with more left-leaning lawmakers and advocates who want to balance the budget with new taxes on the wealthy. The governor’s party has seen big political wins in recent years, even as some long-time Democratic incumbents have lost to more left-wing challengers. But Cuomo argued Wednesday true progressive politics must be grounded in “reality” and champion results over rhetoric. Republicans, who have seen their clout diminish in Albany, say they will hold down spending and resist new taxes. Republican leaders including state GOP chairman Nick Langworthy criticized the governor for failing to address the budget deficit as well as a mounting debate over bail reforms enacted last year. Cuomo and other Democrats have signaled they are open to making changes to the statute. In his preview announcements over the past month, Cuomo has released proposals to ban untraceable guns, study high speed rail, allow liquor sales in movie theaters, require the use of American-made steel and iron on infrastructure projects and ease rules for prosecuting sexual assault involving intoxicated victims, among other initiatives. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Democrat, said lawmakers have their own priorities this year, including working to increase school aid, affordable housing, infrastructure, local businesses, rural hospitals and mental healthcare.

Answer: Cuomo’s 2020 agenda: Fight hate, help planet, legalize pot.


Question: On May 12 2020, the following image of small children separated by “chalk squares” on a playground during the COVID-19 pandemic began circulating:In a caption on the above iteration, the user wrote “Their reality …😢🌈,” but did not include any contextual information about the image or the events it showed. In it, five seemingly lonely children were seen in the photograph, each confined to the inside of their own chalk square.One of the five in the upper right corner sat at the edge of her square, her legs outside the boundary. Each chalk square appeared to delineate a solitary play area for every child, and spaces between seemed to ensure the children would not come too close to one another as they engaged in socially distant playground activity.Images of the “chalk square” children circulated concurrently alongside an unrelated viral post by “Americas Mom” on Facebook (archived here), in which a photograph of a crying woman is accompanied by a lengthy rant about the woman’s “quarantine fatigue” and ancillary concerns that her child was becoming lonely and/or irritating her.That post began by outlining the purported social effects of quarantine on children, before devolving into a rant decrying the use of masks and disinfectant:Written by a Mom, thank you 🙏: “I’ve had enough. People need to seriously look around and see what it’s doing to our kids. To kids too young to understand what’s going on. Kids that are by themselves with no siblings to play with, no cousins around, no friends. No secret play dates. No interaction with anyone besides mom or dad. What do you think that’s doing to our kids biologically and psychologically?The answer is we don’t know!But when you’re a parent you can see the hurt that your child is going through every day and you can explain to them why.. Do you know what I’ve been telling her, the truth! People are afraid of getting sick sweetheart. People are dependent on the government to protect them from everything. You might not agree with that and honestly I don’t care. Because I don’t agree with anything that’s going on right now.Every time I get into the car with my child she begs to go someplace, crying. Should I record it for you? Should I make you hear it on the daily like I do? Will that make you change your mind?You say that you care about these kids. You don’t. You fear for these kids, that is a difference. You fear that they’re going to be sick.. but are you fearing that their minds are now going to be ill and stunted in growth with no Social interactions? I hope you know those social interactions are how they build their immune system.So put a new spin on essential employees that are allowed to send their kids to childcare. These kids are allowed the ability to socially interact with one another, and have the ability to build their immune system. Nonessential employees or people that never put their child in daycare and relied on social interaction for play are now being stunted. So you’re telling us our kids are no longer essential? Our kids aren’t essential￼ enough to build their immune system’s or build their social connections?You say you are not wanting to open the playgrounds because you can’t socially distance and you can’t disinfect. Where was your concern with disinfecting prior to coronavirus? Are you telling us that you never sanitized the parks before so they were riddled with viruses and bacteria that our child was going to become ill?Open the playgrounds, stop the social distancing, stop the masks that are POINTLESS. And I swear to god if the medical professional comes on here and says I wear a mask for 12 hours a day, I’m gonna put your ass on blast. Because you do not wear a mask all throughout your 12 hour shift. Stop lying to yourself.If you don’t agree with me that’s fine. But step the f**k out of my way while I try to fix the future for my child. Because I’ll be damned if she cries every day wanting to play with somebody or wanting to go do something and she can’t because you live in fear. Live in fear in your own f**king house.”As for the children playing in chalk squares, that image was originally tweeted by French journalist Lionel Top on May 12 2020:Les enfants font leur rentrée aujourd’hui (un petite partie d’entre-eux plutôt). Ambiance très étrange, voire dérangeante… pic.twitter.com/g91y5hLatJ— Lionel Top (@lioneltop) May 12, 2020That tweet, automatically translated by Twitter, read:The children are coming back today (a small part of them rather). Very strange, even disturbing atmosphere …In a second tweet, Top provided additional detail about the photograph:Contexte :Pour faire respecter les distances, tout en profitant des récrés, l’équipe pédagogique a dessiné des carrés au sol pour les + petits. Les enfants jouent, dansent, sautent, rient ensemble… mais depuis ce carré.De ce qu’on a vu, ils ne le vivent pas comme une punition https://t.co/i98ZltvteN— Lionel Top (@lioneltop) May 12, 2020Ils apprennent à vivre ensemble mais différemment.Les photos sont marquantes et la plupart des réactions sur Twitter témoignent d’une même émotion, celle d’une école qui ne correspond pas à ce que l’on connaît, mais les enfants ce matin n’étaient pas « malheureux »— Lionel Top (@lioneltop) May 12, 2020Twitter translation:Context: To ensure that distances are respected, while taking advantage of recreation, the teaching team has drawn squares on the ground for the little ones. The children play, dance, jump, laugh together … but from this square. From what we’ve seen, they don’t see it as a punishmentThey learn to live together but differently. The photos are striking and most of the reactions on Twitter show the same emotion, that of a school which does not correspond to what we know, but the children this morning were not “unhappy”A viral photograph of children in “chalk squares” after returning to school during the COVID-19 pandemic was real, shared by a French journalist on May 12 2020. Top captured the image at a preschool in Tourcoing, France, and emphasized that the children were not suffering or unhappy.Comments

Answer: A photograph appears to show small schoolchildren playing alone in marked-off chalk squares drawn on playground asphalt.


Question: A customer leans against a pharmacy counter in a file photo. The FDA is launching a new effort meant to strengthen its oversight of prescription drugs after they win approval, an agency official said on Tuesday. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi  The plan, called “Safety First,” includes creation of a new  database of possible side effects from medicines, plus clear  schedules for following up on concerns about them. The effort was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. FDA spokesman Christopher DiFrancesco confirmed the information  in the Journal’s story. The action is the FDA’s latest move to address charges that  the agency has been slow to respond to potential side effects  that emerge after a medicine reaches the market. The agency was sharply criticized for its handling of Merck  & Co Inc’s arthritis pill Vioxx, which the company withdrew in  2004 after research found it doubled heart attack and stroke  risk. The new plan will grant some new powers to the office that  monitors the safety of medicines after their approval. Critics  have said concerns from the safety office frequently get  overruled by the office that grants approval to new drugs. The pre-market review office may have a bias in favor of a  medicine it previously deemed safe enough to be sold, critics  say. The drug safety office “will be playing an expanded role in  the resolution of certain drug-related safety issues,” FDA  Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock wrote in an e-mail to staff  that was provided to Reuters. The safety group also will take the lead on epidemiological  studies and medication error prevention, Woodcock said. But the effort will not give the post-approval safety  office ultimate power to sign off on new warnings or  recommendations to remove a drug from the market, the Wall  Street Journal said. FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach told the Journal the  agency was creating a new appeals process for cases of  scientific disagreement that can take a dispute up to the  office of the commissioner. The FDA is expected to testify about the plan at a  congressional hearing on Wednesday.

Answer:
FDA plans new post-approval drug safety effort.