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: A University of Iowa study shows the state’s contribution to the Gulf dead zone spiked 47 percent to 618 million pounds in 2016, based on five-year running annual averages. “Just based on water quality data, I think we can say we’ve not made much progress over the past 20 years in terms of nitrogen,” said Chris Jones, a research engineer at the UI’s IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering. Environmentalists say the study raises new questions about the effectiveness of Iowa’s approach to improving water quality and its reliance on voluntary ag compliance. “We’ve been pouring state and federal money into cutting nutrient pollution for decades, and this highlights the fact that the voluntary approach is not working,” said Jennifer Terry, executive director of the Iowa Environmental Council. “We’re not headed in the right direction. ... We need to follow the lead of other states and pass some environmental laws that will actually reduce loads and result in cleaner water,” Terry said. The Des Moines Register reports that the news comes as Iowa marks the five-year anniversary of the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, a plan designed to cut by 45 percent the nitrogen and phosphorus levels that leave Iowa and feed Gulf hypoxia — or the dead zone. Oxygen levels within the zone are so low that marine life can no longer survive, threatening the Gulf’s seafood industry. Most of the nutrient losses come from farming, although the strategy also targets losses from urban wastewater and industrial operations. Last year, Iowa invested $420 million in those water quality improvements, including helping farmers plant cover crops, build terraces and tackle other conservation practices that hold nutrients in place. But farmers expanding their drainage tile systems — along with increasing hog, cattle and chicken feeding operations, which provide manure to fertilize crops — likely outweigh those conservation efforts, UI scientists say. The nutrient reduction practices “being implemented are a tiny, tiny portion of what needs to be done, and it’s occurring in a system that’s changing,” Jones said. “We appreciate all that is being done with nutrient management and conservation farming. Unfortunately, we’re just impacting too few acres with too few practices,” added Larry Weber, executive associate dean for UI’s College of Engineering. Jones wrote the study with Weber and Keith Schilling, another UI research engineer. Increased nutrient pollution in water creates problems for people and animals beyond the dead zone. High phosphorus levels can lead to toxic algae blooms that can befoul lakes, rivers and streams, potentially killing pets and making people ill. And the federal government limits the amount of nitrates in drinking water to 10 milligrams per liter. Higher levels can be fatal to babies under 6 months old. Increased levels translate to higher costs for utilities for nitrate removal. “We need a dramatic increase, a rapidly-scaled up increase in conservation practices and more funding,” said Cindy Lane, the Iowa Environmental Council’s water program director. Schilling said the study shows that targeting nutrient reduction investment in Iowa can have a significant impact downstream. “Iowa has a dominant role in this Gulf hypoxia issue,” Schilling said. “Let’s invest the resources here, where we really need it. “If we solve Iowa, we solve the Gulf,” he said. The UI study gives Iowans new information in the fight to reduce the nitrogen levels that flow from the state into the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, which make their way to the Gulf of Mexico. Looking at Iowa Department of Natural Resources data from 23 monitoring stations, the study shows Iowa on average over the past 18 years contributed 29 percent of the total nitrogen headed to the Gulf from the Mississippi-Atchafalaya river basin. The river basin is a massive watershed that includes all or part of 31 states. Iowa’s nitrogen impact was even greater in other watersheds. The state averaged 45 percent of the nitrogen levels going into the Upper Mississippi River basin, and 55 percent of the nitrogen going into to the Missouri River basin. “When you look at the entire Missouri (River) watershed, our land comprises 3.3 percent of the total area ... and Iowa contributes nearly 12 percent of the water,” Jones said. But “we contribute 55 percent of the nitrate,” he said. “The way that pencils out is that the amount of water coming from Iowa has seven times more nitrates than the rest of the Missouri River watershed,” Jones said. If Iowa’s contributions were removed, the Missouri River would have little nitrogen contributions in some years. “We really need to take seriously the Missouri River’s contribution as a driver for Gulf hypoxia,” Jones said. The growing concentration of livestock feeding operations in western Iowa might account for Iowa’s large contribution to the Missouri River nitrate levels, the scientists said. “People tend to dismiss livestock influences, but maybe there’s more to it than people give credit it for,” Schilling said, adding that it would require more study to determine the impact. Iowa’s nitrogen levels, based on running five-year annual averages, have been above the 2003 value for 10 consecutive years, the study says. The scientists say 2003 was the first year the five-year rolling average could be calculated, with data that starts in 1999. The goal of the Gulf Hypoxia Task Force, made up of federal, state and tribal leaders, “will be very difficult to achieve if nitrate retention cannot be improved in Iowa,” the report said. The task force, with Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig as chairman, seeks to reduce the dead zone to 1,900 square miles by 2035. The deadline was extended from 2015. Last year, the dead zone set a record, which, at 8,776 square miles, was more than four times the goal size. The report says about 90 percent of Iowa’s nitrogen levels “can be sourced to the 72 percent of the state’s land area that is in crop cultivation.” Iowa, an agriculture powerhouse, is a national leader in corn, soybean, pork, egg and beef production. “This intense production of carbohydrates and protein has resulted in the state being a leading contributor” to the nitrogen loads and Gulf hypoxia, the report said. Naig said farmers understand the important role they play in improving water quality and are scaling up efforts across the state “as we move from demonstration projects to larger, watershed-scale implementation projects. “We recognize that there is still a lot of work to be done, but we are on the right path,” said Naig, who adds farmers are working with more than 250 partners in 65 rural and urban demonstration projects. The UI scientists doubt that increased cropping is the reason for the increased nitrogen impact. Iowa’s cropped area has increased only 4 percent over the past 18 years, while other states’ farmed land has climbed 21 percent, particularly in Minnesota, North and South Dakota and Kansas. About 85 percent of Iowa’s acres are farmed, making it the fifth-highest in the nation, based on the 2012 U.S. Agriculture Census, so there are few acres left that can be brought into production compared with other states. “Iowa’s decline in the share of the region’s soybean area was especially pronounced, dropping from 18.6 percent in 1999 to 14.5 percent in 2016,” the report said. “One would expect our (nitrogen) contributions relative to the other areas would be diminished,” Jones said. “But the opposite has occurred.” Jones said it’s led the scientists to consider other factors. The scientists doubt that Iowa farmers are using significantly more fertilizer. “When we look at nitrogen sales data, it might change a little year over year. But on a per acre basis, that hasn’t changed a lot since 1990,” he said. And with little increase in corn and soybean acres, the scientists speculate that Iowa’s increased nitrogen levels could be coming from more drainage tiles. Or farmers could be using more manure as fertilizer from animal feeding operations. Without Iowa, the Gulf’s overall nitrate loads would have declined 43,400 tons over 18 years, based on five-year running annual averages, the scientists’ data show. Instead nitrate loads grew by 52,000 tons. “It’s pretty clear these loads from the Ohio basin have to be declining,” Jones said. “A lot that is coming from Indiana.” That state’s high level of cover crop adoption by farmers could be the reason, he said, and should be studied. Cover crops such as cereal rye slow the rate of water runoff, reduce erosion and improve soil fertility. Iowa also needs to honestly discuss the impact that drainage tiling has on nitrogen losses, Jones said. Iowa doesn’t collect data on how much underground drainage runs through the state, although officials estimate about 9 million acres are drained through tile. Environmentalists believe the number is much higher. Underground drainage tile helps improve yields by quickly removing excess water from fields. Iowa’s tiling system consists of a network of drainage lines that feed into large pipes. The massive network, first constructed in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, turned once swampy lands into some of the nation’s most productive farmland. But water quickly carried away by the tiling system misses cleansing that would naturally occur by filtering through soil or the roots of trees, shrubs and grasses in riparian buffers along streams. Des Moines Water Works unsuccessfully sued drainage districts in three north Iowa counties in 2015, claiming underground tiles funneled high levels of nitrates into the Raccoon River, a source of drinking water for 500,000 central Iowa residents. “We acknowledge that it’s important to track implemented conservation, and we encourage that,” Jones said. “But we also need to have the courage to talk about these things that drive the system in the other direction.” Terry said Iowa is “one of the most heavily tiled states in the nation,” and its 110-year-old law regulating the practice does little to protect water quality. ___ Information from: The Des Moines Register, http://www.desmoinesregister.com

A: Study: Iowa nitrogen pollution in the water is getting worse.
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Q: "The protests against stay-at-home orders in some state capitals have drawn comparisons to the 2010 tea party movement, but the idea of protesting such rules amid a pandemic is not just a 21st-century phenomenon. There are parallels to a protest a century ago. ""During the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, several influential San Francisco residents including a few physicians formed the Anti-Mask League which objected to wearing masks to prevent the spread of influenza,"" stated an April 22 Facebook post. ""They held meetings of thousands of maskless people. San Francisco was ultimately one of the cities that suffered the most with a high death rate."" (The ""Spanish flu"" is a misnomer — it’s more accurate to refer to it as the flu pandemic of 1918.) The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The post includes a black-and-white photo of policemen wearing masks over their mouths and noses. We did a reverse Google search and found the image matches a photo of policemen in a different city — Seattle — wearing masks in 1918. But there are accurate statements in the text, which draws from a source at the University of Michigan. We found that there was such a thing as the Anti-Mask League in San Francisco in January 1919. The city did have one of the highest death rates from the flu, but the authors said they can’t prove whether the Anti-Mask League played a role. Mak pulled from an essay by J. Alexander Navarro at the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, a book by Alfred W. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic and the San Francisco Chronicle archives. As the number of flu cases rose in October 1918 in San Francisco, the city passed an ordinance requiring everyone to wear a mask in public except at mealtime. Mask wearing was promoted as a symbol of patriotism. Gov. William Stephens told Californians it was a ""patriotic duty for every American citizen"" to wear a mask. City officials and local newspapers reported widespread compliance with the mask order initially, Navarro found. But some resisted the rules, and police arrested 110 people on Oct. 27 for not wearing their masks or for failing to keep them properly adjusted. The majority were fined $5, though some went to jail. In November, with cases declining, the city started to lift restrictions, although it still required masks. People flocked to public venues including theaters and sports arenas. At a boxing match, the city’s mayor and city health officer were photographed not wearing masks, for which they were fined. Later that month, the mayor annulled the ordinance. But new cases quickly emerged, and the mask ordinance was reinstated in January. Opponents formed the Anti-Mask League, multiple news articles in January 1919 show. Crosby wrote in his book that the league consisted of ""public-spirited citizens, physicians and fanatics."" At a meeting of the Anti-Mask League ""resolutions were passed denouncing the mask ordinance as contrary to the desires of the majority of the people,"" the San Francisco Examiner reported. Nearly 2,000 people attended. The league got their wish, and the mask rule was rescinded Feb. 1. Navarro and colleagues studied how 43 cities fared during the 1918 pandemic and published their results in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They found that many cities experienced second waves after ending social distancing. San Francisco had one of the higher excess-death rates: 673 per 100,000 people. ""It is impossible to say for certainty that the advent of the Anti-Mask League played a role in that outcome,"" Navarro told PolitiFact ""Undoubtedly, having over 2,000 people gather would have helped continue to spread influenza."" The main factors in San Francisco’s outcome, however, were failure to implement interventions such as social distancing quickly and failure to keep them in place long enough. Navarro said he didn’t find something similar to the Anti-Mask League in other cities. Only a few other cities implemented mandatory face mask orders, while others recommended that the public use masks. A Facebook post said during the 1918 flu pandemic, San Francisco residents formed an ""Anti-Mask League."" San Francisco ""was ultimately one of the cities that suffered the most with a high death rate."" Residents angry about the reinstatement of a mask order did form the Anti-Mask League in January 1919. It appeared to be short-lived, as the mask rule was quickly rescinded. Researchers found that San Francisco did have one of the higher death rates in the country, but it is impossible to say whether that was directly related to the mask protests. A photo of masked police officers that accompanies the post is real, but it shows officers in Seattle."

A: During the 1918 flu pandemic, San Francisco residents formed the “Anti-Mask League.” San Francisco “was ultimately one of the cities that suffered the most with a high death rate.”
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Q: Carter still lives in tiny Plains, Georgia, and planned no public celebrations on Tuesday. But he’s had plenty to say recently, warning that re-electing President Donald Trump would be “a disaster” and expressing hopes that his Carter Center will become a more forceful advocate against armed conflicts in the future, including “wars by the United States.” “I just want to keep the whole world at peace,” Carter said as he presented his annual Carter Center report last month. “We have been at war more than 226 years. We have been at peace for about 16 years” since the Declaration of Independence in 1776, he said. And every U.S. military conflict from the Korean War onward has been a war of “choice,” he said. The 39th president survived a dire cancer diagnosis in 2015 and surpassed George H.W. Bush as the longest-lived U.S. president in history this spring. He’s had some trouble walking after a hip replacement in May, but still teaches Sunday School in Plains, and with his wife of 73 years, Rosalynn, now 92, still plans an upcoming trip to help build houses with Habitat for Humanity in Nashville, Tennessee. In his latest appearances at the Carter Center and in a town hall at Emory University, Carter blasted money in politics, urged action to combat the climate crisis, and celebrated the Carter Center’s work on public health, election monitoring and conflict resolution. But he said the center can do more to constructively criticize U.S. military engagements. The Carter Center has “never voiced an opinion publicly” on individual wars, he said with some regret, adding: “This is primarily my fault.” “The United States is very deeply inclined to go to war,” Carter said, partly to “implant American policies” in other countries, and partly to “make a hero” out of wartime commanders in chief. This has significant economic consequences, he said: China has “been at peace” since he normalized relations with Beijing in 1979, and while the U.S. has spent trillions on military conflict, China has invested similar amounts in high-speed rail, new college campuses and other infrastructure. Carter talks with the realism of a nonagenarian, born in 1924 when the world population was quarter of what it is today and life expectancy for American males was 58 years. Saying he plans to start spending more time with his extended family, he told the Carter Center audience that “this may be our last conversation with you ... we may or may not have one next year.” Carter has been accepting visits from several 2020 presidential candidate s, but he’s held back on endorsing any of his fellow Democrats, offering only clues to his thinking. Carter said he voted for Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton last time, but warns that embracing single-payer, government-run health insurance could cost the Democrats votes among moderates and independents. That could rule out Sanders and another progressive favorite, Elizabeth Warren. But Carter also said he’d like to see a woman as president. He said he couldn’t have managed his presidential duties when he was 80, which would nix not only Sanders, at 78, but former Vice President Joe Biden, who is 76. Warren is 70, meaning she’d be nearly 80 at the end of a two-term presidency. Carter said only that he’ll be “voting Democratic” in the general election. By then, he’ll be 96. --- Follow Barrow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP .

A:
Former President Jimmy Carter celebrates 95th birthday.
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