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: Central to the plan to protect the city, some or all of the 78 barriers will one day be raised when the sea rises more than 110 centimeters (43 inches), to prevent damaging high tides from pushing into the lagoon city, a world heritage site built picturesquely — but somewhat precariously — upon more than 120 islands. Concerns that high tides are becoming more frequent because of climate change have increased the urgency. While the concept is simple, its realization has been anything but. The system of movable underwater barriers, dubbed Moses, has been beset by corruption, cost overruns and delays. Projected at 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion) and meant to be completed by 2011, the project has so far cost 5.5 billion euros and is running a decade behind schedule. In the wake of last month’s flooding of Venice, the worst in 53 years, the consortium that oversees construction of Moses is eager to demonstrate that the project — after years of bad news — is on track and will be fully operational by the end of 2021. Venetians say they cannot afford to be wrong. Skeptics and critics say they may be. A recent test of the deepest expanse of barriers — at the Malamocco entrance to the lagoon — was declared a success by the New Venice Consortium. It was the last of the four sections of barriers to be completely raised — but so far only in calm seas. The real test will come when all four are raised at once, and not only in serene waters, but under flood conditions. That isn’t scheduled to take place until the end of next year. It took six years to test each of the four movable sea walls covering the three openings to the lagoon, partly because work was slowed by a 2014 corruption scandal that implicated the three main contractors and sent 35 people to jail. Work is continuing largely with the original subcontractors now contracting directly with the consortium, which itself has been placed under government control as a result of the scandal. The fact that the barriers have not yet been physically tested in rough seas is a concern to critics. Paolo Vielmo, an offshore marine engineer who has long criticized the project, said that tests carried out in a laboratory in the Netherlands in the 1990s indicated that the barriers, under certain conditions, would oscillate out of control — possibly even breaking apart. “Its behavior is not predictable,’’ Vielmo said. He said that the trials so far declared successful have been under only modest sea conditions that fail to represent anywhere near the threat of the phenomenon of extreme oscillation called subharmonic resonance. Vielmo and two other offshore engineers have compiled a report for the Codacons consumer and environment protection advocacy group, which is asking officials to run additional calculations to see if the project is indeed viable. And if it is not, Codacons says Moses should be stopped. “We don’t want to delay by one minute the possibility to make Moses operational. But we say we cannot make it operational until we are sure it will work,’’ said Franco Conte, president of Codacons in Venice. “Naturally, the Venetian community is exasperated and they say, ‘If we did 95%, let’s do 100% and see if that works.’ But that is unconscionable. If we don’t know if it works, we cannot experiment.”  The barrier system is made up of giant flood gates, each 20 meters (66 feet) long. The gates are attached by hinges to giant cement blocks placed on the seabed along the three openings from the sea into the lagoon, Malamocco, Chioggia and the Lido. The gates can be lifted to create a temporary barrier in high tides. Once the water has receded, they can be lowered again — allowing shipping traffic to continue and for the tidal system to flush out the lagoon. The idea behind the project was to create a mobile system that would not impede views of the unique and protected landscape. But Moses has suffered criticism from the start that there were simpler, cheaper systems that could have been deployed. Venetians have been waiting since the record 1.94-meter (6.36-foot) flood of 1966 for a system to protect them from regular inundations. The flooding in November, the second-worst recorded, proved the urgency. In the 150 years that they have been recording the tide levels in Venice, two high tides above 1.5 meters have never been recorded in a year. In November, there were three in one week. Climate scientists note that exceptional tides — those over 1.4 meters — have become much more frequent in the past two decades, with more than half of all recorded occurring since 2000. “One has to realize the kind of existential question that that serious flooding has given rise to,” said Jane Da Mosto, an environmental scientist and executive director of the non-profit group We Are Here Venice, which is working to defend the city against myriad issues, including depopulation, cruise traffic through St. Mark’s basin and overtourism. “People are asking: will Venice be defendable against these kinds of episodes?’’  It’s not just the still-uncalculated damage to landmarks like St. Mark’s Basilica, where corrosive salt water creeps through porous brick and tile. It’s also the boxes of ruined belongings and piles of soaked mattresses discarded in alleyways and loaded onto motorboats and trash barges for disposal. The relentlessness of the Venetian fall and winter tides make one-third of ground floors uninhabitable in the historic canal city. “I am very old, I cannot say that I want to die, but I certainly do not want to be witness to the fact that it does not work,” 84-year-old resident Paola Scarpa said of the Moses barriers, as she walked to check on a family property in the Canareggio neighborhood on a recent December morning. “It would be a pain too great.”  ___  Associated Press journalist Trisha Thomas contributed to this report.

A: Venice tide barriers pass another test but skeptics remain.
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Q: Firefighters were battling to control more than 40 wild fires that remained ablaze across NSW, the state’s Rural Fire Service (RFS) said. There were no reports of injuries caused by the fires by mid-afternoon local time, though 45 homes were destroyed. The strong winds have blown the dangerous smoke across large parts of NSW. The RFS said the smoke was unlikely to clear for at least 24 hours, while hot, dry conditions are expected to linger for several days more - exacerbating the threat of more fires as authorities try to access the damage of blazes now extinguished. “Dust may aggravate existing heart and lung conditions and cause symptoms like eye irritation and cough,” said Richard Broome, director of environmental health, NSW Health. “Symptoms can occur for several days after dust is inhaled, so people with the chronic conditions need to be vigilant with their treatment programs.”  One of the biggest fires in recent days was recorded in Lake Cathie, 379 kilometers (235.5 miles) north of Sydney - which has destroyed more than 2,000 hectares (4,942 acres) of a national park. The fire is now contained, though the area is a prime breeding ground for koalas, stoking fears that hundreds will have been killed by the fires. “Based on our calculations, with a minimum 60% mortality rate about 350 koalas will be lost,” Sue Ashton, president of the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital told Reuters. “It’s terrible, it’s absolutely devastating. It’s a national tragedy.”  Ashton said seven rescuers on Thursday attempted to enter the worst affected areas but were advised to leave as strong winds stoked fears of the fires spreading.

A: Hazardous smoke blankets Sydney as winds fan Australia bushfires.
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Q: Voters in both Western states approved ballot initiatives in 2012 allowing personal possession and use of marijuana by anyone aged 21 and or older for purposes of just getting high, though public consumption of pot remains illegal. In January the world’s first state-licensed retail marijuana outlets opened for business in Colorado, and stores in Washington are set to follow suit later this year. Both states are among 20 that have already removed criminal sanctions for medical use of marijuana. The federal government still classifies marijuana as an illegal narcotic, but the Obama administration has given states new leeway to experiment with legalized cannabis. In Denver’s Civic Center Park near the state capitol, revelers on Sunday gathered to hear music and listened to speakers during a weekend event that organizers billed as the “world’s largest 4/20 rally.”  The date of April 20, or 4/20, corresponds to the numerical code widely recognized within the cannabis subculture as a symbol for all things marijuana. Police officers standing by on the fringes of the Denver festival issued 63 citations on Sunday, most for smoking pot in public - a ticket that carries a fine of $150. About half as many were cited on Saturday, police said. At least eight individuals were taken to a detoxification facility for treatment during the two days, police said. Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said officers have refrained from wading into the crowd to arrest violators, but instead were citing people who openly defied the public consumption ban. “Those ticketed were blatantly in violation of state law and city ordinances,” Jackson said. Organizers of the rally and city officials beefed up security at the event after three people were wounded by gunfire at last year’s rally. Separately, the Cannabis Cup, a trade show sponsored by High Times magazine, drew sold-out crowds over the weekend at a Denver convention venue. The two-day event featured marijuana sampling and workshops, such as how to open a pot shop, cultivation tips, and how to talk to children about weed, according to the event’s website. Rachel O’Bryan, spokeswoman for Smart Colorado, an organization that advocates for stricter enforcement of marijuana laws, said the cannabis industry needs to do more to police its own. “People are flouting the law by openly consuming,” she said. “We’re concerned about the message that sends to our kids.”  In Seattle, several hundred people who paid $15 a head crowded the cavernous interior of a former brewery where Rainier Beer was made for decades to attend a 4/20 gathering organized by sponsors of the city’s annual Hempfest rally. Reggae music played over loudspeakers and the air inside was thick with the sweet, skunky odor of cannabis. But no police were visible at the event, which organizers deliberately held on private space leased from the brewery owners in an industrial section of the city south of downtown. The gathering featured a workshop on how to roll a joint with an entire ounce (28 grams) of marijuana - the legal limit for personal possession in the state - as well as vendors selling pipes and other paraphernalia, and a blind-toke test in which participants tried to distinguish between different strains of pot by sampling them. Attendees ranged from middle-aged baby boomers to a younger crowd from the so-called millennial generation. A cheer from the crowd went up at precisely 4:20 p.m. local time, as many attendees milling about outside lit joints and pipes simultaneously, sending puffs of smoke into the air followed by raucous fits of coughing. One woman in the crowd accepted a joint handed her from a bearded bystander. “You look just like Jesus,” she exclaimed in an apparent reference to the event coinciding with Easter Sunday. “How does it feel to be risen?”  Doug Medina, 54, said he traveled hundreds of miles with his wife and daughter from Billings, Montana, to Seattle for the 4/20 weekend celebrations there. “It feels a little more open than it did five or 10 years ago,” he said while smoking a joint outside the brewery.

A:
Marijuana fans pack 4/20 events in Colorado, Washington state.
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