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: Karen Sage of Austin, facing a Tuesday runoff with Mindy Montford of Austin for the Democratic nod for a judgeship, touts her experience as a prosecutor overseeing a new unit focused on defendants with mental illness. With no Republican opponent in November, the winner of the runoff will likely be a shoo-in for Travis County’s 299th state District Court judgeship. In a mailer sent to voters April 3, Sage celebrates the new program, saying that jail “time for non-violent, mentally ill offenders has been reduced by 50 percent.”We wondered if Sage’s statement—echoed in a TV ad she debuted Wednesday—reflects reality. Sage’s campaign initially referred us to Rosemary Lehmberg, the Travis County district attorney. Lehmberg confirmed that she asked Sage, an assistant district attorney, to helm the felony mental health unit, which was started in January 2009. Claire Dawson-Brown, the DA’s director of strategic prosecutions, said a magistrate started handling a special docket comprised of “mental health” defendants in late April 2009. To be in the program, Dawson-Brown said, defendants must usually be charged with a non-violent crime. They also must be diagnosed with major depression or considered bipolar, schizo-affective or schizophrenic, and seen as unstable in the jail. “It would be someone in a crisis situation,” she said, “or their mental illness is impairing their behavior.” Experts team to address the needs of the mental health inmates, Dawson-Brown said. She said participants get services they need in custody and when they return to the community. Besides Sage, who has a paralegal and a secretary, each defendant has an attorney familiar with mental health issues; she said the magistrate, a jail counselor and officials serving the local mental health and adult probation systems also play roles, with social workers sometimes getting involved. And how has the program affected jail stays? Sage said she reached her 50-percent reduction statement by comparing a baseline estimate that “mental health” inmates facing felony charges were averaging 106 days in jail before the program began to the 42-day average for participants in the program at the time she left the office in mid-December to run for judge. The decrease amounts to 60 percent. Dawson-Brown agreed that as of late 2008 and early 2009, the average Travis County jail stay for all its “mental health” defendants, including violent offenders, was 106 days. We pointed out that the baseline figure sweeps in the longer jail stays of individuals charged with violent crimes who aren’t automatically put in the new program, driving up the pre-program average and potentially skewing before and after comparisons. Dawson-Brown then gave us more detailed jail-stay information enabling an improved review of the change in average jail stays. Based on the new figures, we estimate that defendants who have been through the new program would have averaged 77 days in jail before the program began. The nitty gritty: We multiplied the number of affected defendants categorized by the level of felony they faced--ranging from first-degree felony charges to second- and third-degree felonies to state-jail felony charges--by the days that similarly charged defendants averaged in jail before the program began. Next, we totaled those defendant-days-in-jail and divided the total (19,432) by the number of defendants (253) to reach the pre-program estimate of an average of 77 days in jail. Through February, the magistrate had processed 253 defendants since the program’s start, according to Dawson-Brown, and they averaged 36 days in jail. Best we can tell, the average jail stay for defendants dropped by 41 days, or 53 percent.

Answer: "Karen Sage Says that under a new program jail ""time for non-violent, mentally ill offenders has been reduced by 50 percent."


Question: The story makes it clear that cost of the test is currently speculative (“could cost about $500”) and goes even further to caution that: “Johns Hopkins holds the patent and has not licensed it as yet to a company that would ultimately set the price.” The story makes the two key results of the test quite clear. First, that the 1,005 people tested already had been diagnosed with one of eight common cancers, and the blood test was able to detect cancer in about 70 percent of them. Second, the test was also given to 812 people without cancer and only a false reading for cancer less than 1 percent of the time. Including the additional finding that the test was only able to detect cancer in about 40 percent of the patients with early cancer (ie. stage I) was a thoughtful way of introducing the relevant issue of falsely negative tests. The story does an excellent job of finding an independent source who explains that one of the potential risks of cancer screening tests is either identifying cancers that are not there, or are benign, and can lead to “pointless and potentially dangerous treatments.” The opposite harm is also mentioned; that is, a screening test that erroneously gives a negative result, leading providers to falsely reassure a patient that cancer is not there. Cautious language is used at many points in the story and it does three things quite well. First, it lists the most important limitation of the study: The screening test studied was unable to identify the type of cancer. Second, the implications of both falsely positive and falsely negative tests were explained succinctly and placed in a clinical context that would matter to those undergoing screening. Finally, we were very encouraged by the inclusion of this sentence: “… the researchers will still have to demonstrate that the test improves and extends the lives of cancer patients.” There is no disease mongering in this story. The two independent sources cited provide important context for understanding the strengths, limitations, and clinical context of the screening test. This was a tough call, but ultimately we felt the story would have been stronger had it mentioned the performance of current screening methods for some of the cancer types, such as Cologuard for colon cancer. That said, we were glad the story included some of the pitfalls of screening for prostate and breast cancer, as well as the long struggle to develop more blood tests for cancer. It’s mentioned the authors of the study are “hoping their idea would eventually lead to a $500 test … but they have a long way to go.” Future studies of the screening test are also discussed, so it seems clear this test is not currently available. It’s made clear that “there have been many attempts over the decades to develop blood tests to screen for cancers … but these methods don’t give reliable results.” It’s also pointed out that what makes this screening test unique is that it combines two previously used methods (screening for proteins and for DNA) into one test. This story does not appear to rely upon a news release.

Answer: Scientists Edge Closer To A Blood Test To Detect Cancers


Question: Those actions became the new normal this week, when the count neared 12,000 people infected by a new coronavirus that originated in China and spread to other countries. More than 250 have died in China. The precautions were on display Friday in a string of majority-Asian population cities in Southern California — Alhambra, San Gabriel and Arcadia — that are linked together just east of Los Angeles. “Business is way down. Everybody is staying inside and lots of people are wearing masks,” said Leo Peng at Beyond Services in Alhambra, a normally bustling business where people can notarize documents, get fingerprinted and use other services needed to obtain forms of identification. Peng himself says he has become diligent about washing his hands and is thinking about getting a mask, “although some people say they’re really not necessary.” Sitting just a few feet away at a computer terminal was Cynthia Bao, wearing a bright pink mask. “I never wear a mask, but I’m pregnant, and I don’t want to get the coronavirus or the flu or any virus,” she said. In San Francisco’s Chinatown, Hoa Nguyen and her husband were among the few people wearing masks as they waited at a bus stop carrying bags loaded with fruits and vegetables. “It’s better to be safe than sorry,” she said. “In Chinatown, there’s a higher chance you might come across someone who has traveled to China recently.” While people are taking personal precautions, organizers are going a step further by canceling Lunar New Year celebrations in parts of the U.S.  Sponsors of Saturday’s annual festival in Alhambra announced they were postponing it indefinitely. The event normally draws thousands and shuts down the city’s main thoroughfare for blocks, featuring a parade, games, music, food booths and other events. Other cancellations include a Lunar New Year Temple Bazaar this weekend in Flushing, Queens, home to New York City’s largest Chinatown; a Lunar New Year celebration Saturday at a high school in Rockville, Maryland; a Chinese New Year Festival on Saturday at the University of Arizona in Tucson; and festivities Friday in the city of Elk Grove, outside Sacramento. San Francisco still plans to go along with its celebration on Feb. 8, though officials said they are closely monitoring the outbreak. Gregg Orton, national director of the Washington-based National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, said it’s understandable that events are being canceled out of an abundance of caution. “We want to take this seriously but we don’t want to fall back into racism and hysteria at the end of the day,” Orton said. “We’re all in this together.” In Alhambra, many people supported canceling the festival. “I think that’s a good idea until we see that the virus is gone,” said Richard Vu who repairs cellphones at a shop on the edge of the festival’s parade route. He said he’s trying to keep his distance from customers and uses hand sanitizer after handling each phone. He usually wears a mask, too, but forgot it Friday. When he tried to buy another at a pharmacy, he found they were sold out, a common experience that others cited. “They say they won’t have any more until March,” Vu said. Pharmacies in Manhattan’s Chinatown and other neighborhoods also have reported being out of masks. Officials gathered at a hotel in San Gabriel, a city neighboring Alhambra, said it’s important to take precautions but that people should not panic. “At this point, we are not in the same situation as China,” Dr. Munto Davis of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health told reporters. “We do not have thousands of cases inside the United States.” There are seven cases: three in California, one in Washington state, one in Arizona and two in Chicago. Meanwhile, a main drag in Alhambra that is lined for miles with upscale restaurants, hipster bars and tea houses, was unusually quiet Friday. A sprawling parking lot, a difficult place to find a parking spot on any day, was only half-filled and business was slow at the huge 168 Market, part of a popular Asian chain of grocery stores. People seemed to be heeding the advice of medical professionals, being careful but not panicking while expressing hope that others wouldn’t blame every Asian person for the outbreak. “The racism has been something,” Bao said with disgust. “I sort of get it,” she added. “We’re Chinese, and we don’t know who has been to China and who hasn’t. But you don’t need to make remarks about it.” To which Peng added: “I hope everybody would work together and not discriminate against one group of people.”  ___ Associated Press reporters Daisy Nguyen in San Francisco and Terry Tang in Phoenix contributed to this story.

Answer:
Chinese communities rattled by virus, cancel new year events.