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 lawmakers demanded that the executive explain why blackouts intended to prevent downed power lines from sparking deadly wildfires caused so much trouble of their own. The explanation CEO Bill Johnson offered the Capitol hearing room: Several smaller outages that PG&E triggered in the year before its debacle began in mid-October went well, giving his company misplaced confidence. “I think we got a little complacent that we had figured it out,” Johnson testified last month. PG&E had not figured it out. An Associated Press review shows widespread problems with the four “public safety power shutoffs” the utility started rolling out in 2018, a year before massive blackouts paralyzed much of California in recent months. Interviews and documents obtained under public records requests reveal persistent failures and broken promises that in some cases compromised public safety. Even as PG&E assured regulators it was fixing the problems, the utility kept making many of the same mistakes, further undermining trust after its outdated equipment and negligence has been blamed for fires that killed nearly 130 people during 2017 and 2018. Communication, a foundation of emergency management, was poor. PG&E’s notifications of impending outages were haphazard at times, with some sent after the power was already out. Telecommunications companies, water providers and emergency managers did not always receive the early word they needed. “We were surprised that PG&E provided no advanced warning to us,” an official with the city of Oroville’s drinking water provider wrote state regulators about a June outage. PG&E made important information hard to get. It was slow to distribute electronic maps showing who would lose power, making it harder for emergency responders to know exactly where to send resources. The utility also balked at providing the addresses of medically needy customers to local officials who planned to check on them in person. Breakdowns afflicted even basic technology. In a region that’s home to Silicon Valley and its thousands of computer programmers and engineers, PG&E had not prepared the website where it posted outage updates for a crush of customers, so it crashed. Tech experts from the state had to intervene. The sound quality of some calls PG&E hosted during shutoffs was so poor that emergency responders and legislators had a hard time understanding updates. Even then, not everyone was invited. “In the future, AT&T requests that it and other communications providers be included on any conference calls providing real time information,” the telecommunications giant protested to regulators after the June shutoff. These and other early failures weren’t widely recognized as harbingers of the issues that would overwhelm PG&E come mid-October, partly because the outages affected rural areas with less political and economic clout. While the headline-making shutoffs affected more than 2 million people across much of PG&E’s 70,000-square-mile service territory, the four initial blackouts affected tens of thousands in Northern California’s Sierra Nevada foothills and famed wine valleys. They hit in October 2018 and then in June, September and early October of this year. Among those who saw trouble building were regulators at the California Public Utilities Commission. The first shutoff was chaotic and the next three were not going according to the guidelines regulators had passed. Commission staff met more frequently with PG&E starting in the spring, using advice and persuasion rather than mandating changes. “We, as the state, never got to the point where we had complete confidence in PG&E’s ability to execute,” said Elizaveta Malashenko, the top California regulator overseeing blackouts. Malashenko, deputy executive director of safety and enforcement policy, told the AP that the commission didn’t act more aggressively because it has to balance punitive intervention with giving utilities a chance to self-correct. “There needs to be some basic operational assumption that you can set up a conference call,” Malashenko said. Some critics faulted regulators for not doing enough. The utilities commission, a sprawling bureaucracy with a complex rule-making process, was “not aggressive enough early in setting clear requirements and standards,” said Melissa Kasnitz, legal director for the Center for Accessible Technology, which advocates for people with disabilities. PG&E promised to fix a range of problems promptly, and an executive said it worked hard to deliver. In many ways, that didn’t happen. Not only did the problems continue throughout the smaller shutoffs, but they were replicated on a huge scale starting with the mid-October shutoffs. The problems galled local officials, who vented deep frustration that a utility they often work closely with kept failing them. After all, they are the ones dealing with a shutoff’s consequences. They must dispatch ambulances, run jails and water plants, direct traffic through darkened intersections, set up community shelters and much more. “It’s almost as if it’s intentional disregard of all the warnings we gave them,” said Napa County Supervisor Diane Dillon, whose district north of San Francisco has experienced nearly every shutoff. ___ Sixteen million people — more than the population of nearly any U.S. state — depend on PG&E for power. The shutoffs were an inconvenience for some and extremely costly for others. For society’s most frail, they brought questions of life and death. Those who rely on medical devices in their homes were particularly vulnerable. “PG&E did nothing to help us who depend on electricity to run our life support,” recounted Grace Lin, a polio survivor who needs a ventilator to breathe and uses an electric wheelchair. “It’s not like we could simply grind our teeth and tough it out by holding our breath.”   Lin said she was confused by the notifications PG&E sent ahead of the first shutoff that affected her San Francisco Bay Area home on Oct. 9. The company website they referred to for updates was frozen. Lin considered herself lucky that she had the means to evacuate 20 miles away, to a quadriplegic friend’s house that had electricity. PG&E could identify “medical baseline” customers such as Lin based on billing records. Local officials working to identify everyone who might need help repeatedly asked PG&E to share its list, so no one was overlooked. Regulators said PG&E promised it would release medical baseline addresses during a shutoff. Yet when each of the first four hit, PG&E insisted that locals sign a legal agreement not to disclose the addresses, causing delay and uncertainty that regulators said could risk lives. On the eve of the first massive power outage, Malashenko of the utilities commission was urgently emailing company officials in frustration. “This issue has been discussed many times over the last several months” yet “has once again become an issue with PG&E,” she wrote on Oct. 8. Malashenko said state officials also pushed PG&E to improve in other areas. Starting in April, they met at least weekly with PG&E, pointing out needed improvements and stressing that aspects of the utility’s preparation was inadequate. PG&E argued that the commission’s own privacy rules meant it couldn’t share the addresses without a non-disclosure agreement, spokesman Jeff Smith explained. Resolving the problem took an order that the commission’s executive director sent three hours before the first massive blackouts began. Other groups of vulnerable Californians endured shutoffs without the help they needed. “A lot of them don’t have support, a lot of them don’t have family,” Betty Briggs, 84, said of her elderly neighbors in the well-touristed Napa Valley town of Calistoga. “It makes it very difficult, and it puts them in danger.”   Briggs can get around without help, but her husband requires 24-hour care due to dementia. He lives nearby at Cedars Care Home, where seven residents in their 80s and 90s experienced three shutoffs before mid-October. The outages created anxiety for people reliant on routine, as well as practical problems. Beds and wheelchair lifts require electricity. So does the heat and air conditioning. When the freezer got too warm, staff tossed 30 days of backup food. Owner Irais Lopez still hasn’t restocked fully. “Now, we only buy small quantities,” Lopez said, “because we don’t know what will happen.”  ___   At PG&E’s high-rise headquarters in downtown San Francisco, the emergency operations center springs to life with each shutoff. Employees in different colored vests that distinguish their expertise cluster around banks of computer monitors showing real-time updates. Maps track wind speed and direction, as well as which circuits are down. Conversation hums in the background. This is where decisions are made and answers can be found — and local officials said they felt they had little access to either. Fed up with communication gaps, one hard-hit county requested a presence at PG&E headquarters during the September shutoff. Regulators required that the utility hold seats in its emergency operations center for local representatives, but a lawyer for Sonoma County instead spent her day in a conference room several locked doors away. “There was just a lack of understanding on behalf of PG&E of why local government needs timely information,” said Petra Bruggisser, a deputy county counsel. PG&E already had a shaky reputation in its Northern and central California territory. The company spent three years in bankruptcy starting in 2001, after California’s attempt to deregulate its power market went awry. Maintenance failures led to a natural gas pipeline blast near San Francisco in 2010 that killed eight people. PG&E was found criminally liable and paid a $1.6 billion fine. In late 2017, its equipment was suspected of starting the Tubbs Fire that killed 22 people and destroyed more than 5,600 buildings. The utility revealed in spring 2018 that it would start using power shutoffs when fire danger was high and extreme winds blew. PG&E then began to explain what to expect, sending millions of emails to update its customer contact files, running advertising in multiple languages and holding hundreds of meetings with community leaders, public safety agencies and residents. The California Public Utilities Commission started writing guidelines for how utilities should roll out “de-energization.” The guidelines were published as a 176-page document in June. By that point, PG&E had again filed for bankruptcy protection, crushed by liabilities for fires in 2017 and 2018, including the Camp Fire that nearly wiped out the town of Paradise and killed 85 people. The utility now has a market value of about $6 billion — a drop of $30 billion in just over two years — and is working with the state and a federal judge to emerge from bankruptcy by June 30. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he expects PG&E’s entire 14-member board of directors, including Johnson, its CEO, to step down before the state will approve the utility’s plan to regain its financial footing. “PG&E’s recent management of the public safety power shutoffs did not restore public confidence,” the Democratic governor warned the company in a Dec. 13 letter. “Instead, PG&E caused extreme uncertainty and harm for Californians who rely on power for their health care and their livelihood.” PG&E said Johnson was not available for an interview. The utility’s point man on the shutoffs told AP that he believes Johnson, while testifying before lawmakers last month, was referring to its ability to kill and safely restore power to an extremely complex electrical grid. Sumeet Singh, a vice president who oversees PG&E’s community wildfire safety program, listed a litany of ways the utility is investing in fixes that he said will lessen the need for future shutoffs. Those include trimming more vegetation near power lines and burying some lines in areas most at risk of igniting. Singh also acknowledged that the utility had some struggles during the early shutoffs but that it strove to improve and disputed any characterization that it did not succeed in some ways. He cited how quickly the utility restored power as one improvement, along with the timeliness and accuracy of customer notifications. “Did we hit the mark on every single improvement? No. Do we have more work to do? Yes,” Singh said. Power shutoffs are likely to be a feature of life in California for years to come. PG&E must invest billions in infrastructure upgrades, and communities are spreading into lands once populated by trees and brush. Regulators promise to be watching closely. “If we have an outcome that doesn’t meet the public expectation and what we need to run as a state,” said Malashenko of the utilities commission, “that means that we need to rethink our approach and try something different and drive to a better outcome.” In November, the commission launched an investigation into whether it should sanction PG&E for violating shutoff protocols. PG&E said it will need to improve how it reacts after it shuts off the power. “I think we thought the big event was turning off the power,” Johnson told lawmakers. “And I think we focused on that as the main event instead of the impact of that, right, on the people it affected.” ___ Pritchard reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press journalists Terence Chea and Eric Risberg in Calistoga and Adam Beam in Sacramento contributed to this report. ___ Contact Pritchard at https://twitter.com/lalanewsman.
[A]: AP Exclusive: PG&E’s history with blackouts signaled trouble.


[Q]: "In a press conference on May 5 in which Gov. Greg Abbott updated his reopening plan to add businesses such as hair salons and gyms, he recommended that at-risk populations ""remain at home if at all possible"" and avoid in-person gatherings, such as a church service, funeral or wedding. ""We strongly encourage at-risk populations to try to watch or participate remotely, remembering this very important point, and that is almost 75 percent of the deaths from COVID-19 in the state of Texas are a result of people contracting COVID-19 who are age 65 and older,"" Abbott said. Texas was among the first states to start reopening businesses and lifting restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus, allowing retail stores and restaurants to open May 1 at 25 percent capacity. Abbott announced the latest set of reopenings Monday, expanding restaurant capacity to 50 percent and granting bars the ability to open at 25 percent capacity within the next couple weeks. This comes as the state continues to see its number of infections and deaths rise and clusters form mostly in rural parts of the state where meatpacking plants are located. Hospitalizations, however, have decreased since mid-April. With that in mind, we had to ask: Is Abbott right that almost 75% of coronavirus deaths in Texas are people older than 65? Looking at the numbers Abbott’s spokesman John Wittman said Abbott’s claim is based on figures from the Texas Department of Health Services, which publishes daily numbers on the state’s COVID-19 testing and cases. The data includes a breakdown of coronavirus deaths by age, race and gender, but only for those cases where the deaths have been investigated by the local and regional health departments. As of Wednesday, the majority, or 489, were still under investigation. ""The demographic data on cases and fatalities come from the case investigation forms submitted by local health departments and our regional offices,"" said DSHS spokesman Chris Van Deusen. The purpose of the investigation is to confirm that the person had COVID-19 but also to collect other details about them and the circumstances around their death, Van Deusen said. Wittman said the data showed that 75% of investigated deaths were people 65 and older when Abbott made this statement. ""It alternates almost daily, but it’s generally around that range,"" Wittman said. As of May 6, the day after the press conference, the death toll in Texas was 948. Fewer than half, or 433, had been investigated. Of those, about 71 percent were Texans 65 and older. It was still about 71 percent, or 345 out of 489 investigated cases, as of Wednesday. The age groups broke down like so: Ages 10 to 19 years old: 2 deaths, or 0.4% Ages 20-29: 10 deaths, or 2.04 % Ages 30-39: 9 deaths, or 1.8% Ages 40-49: 21 deaths, or 4.29% Ages 50-59: 54 deaths, or 11.04% Ages 60-64: 45 deaths, or 9.2% Ages 65-69: 59 deaths, or 12.06% Ages 70-74: 45 deaths, or 9.2% Ages 75-79: 45 deaths, or 9.2% Ages 80+: 196 deaths, or 40.08% Across the United States, about 79% of coronavirus deaths have been people 65 years and older, according to the National Center for Health Statistics data submitted between the beginning of February to the beginning of May. Like Texas’ statistics, the national numbers are also incomplete. The number of deaths represent only those entered between those dates and only include people with confirmed or presumed COVID-19. ""While 80% of deaths are electronically processed and coded by NCHS within minutes, most deaths from COVID-19 must be coded by a person, which takes an average of 7 days,"" the NCHS states on its website. The data is also always somewhat behind because of the lag time between when a death occurred and when a death certificate is completed, submitted to NCHS and processed for reporting purposes. The delay can last anywhere from one week to eight or more. Our ruling Abbott said almost ""75 percent of the deaths from COVID-19 in the state of Texas are a result of people contracting COVID-19 who are age 65 and older."" Of confirmed coronavirus deaths, close to 75% were people within the age group Abbott provided, but he failed to include the caveat that this statistic leaves out more than half of the total deaths that have not yet been investigated."
[A]: “Almost 75 percent of the deaths from COVID-19 in the state of Texas are a result of people contracting COVID-19 who are age 65 and older.”


[Q]: "In the wake of mass shootings in Wisconsin and around the country, it may have been alarming to hear Gov. Scott Walker explain why he proposed more spending for mental health care in his 2013-2015 budget. ""Nationally, serious mental illness costs at least $193 billion a year in lost earnings,"" Walker said during his Feb. 20, 2013, budget presentation. ""In Wisconsin, only half of all the adults with serious psychological distress received mental health treatment or medication."" In the course of his remarks, Walker used two different terms -- ""serious mental illness"" and ""serious psychological distress."" He used the second to illustrate lack of care. Is he correct that only half of Wisconsin adults with ""serious psychological distress"" receive care? Backdrop: mass shootings  Walker didn’t mention mass shootings in his budget address, but he alluded to them two weeks earlier when he revealed his plan to boost mental health spending by $29 million over two years. The National Alliance on Mental Illness Wisconsin praised the spending boost, which would be done from several different pots of money.But the advocacy group said Walker’s rejection of a federal proposal to expand Medicaid ""reflects a shallow understanding"" of ""crucial means to affordable mental health care for Wisconsin residents."" In revealing his plans, the governor stopped short of drawing a clear link between treating mental illness and preventing mass shootings, but indicated his plan took on greater urgency after mass killings in 2012. Those incidents included the shooting deaths of six worshippers at a Sikh temple outside of Milwaukee and of 26 children and adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.  To be clear, only about 1 percent of people with mental illness considered to be severe are regarded as dangerous. But a 2011 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report found that this group can pose a dilemma for policy-makers, who lack the data to develop a sound system for dealing with it. Walker’s budget, which could be modified by the Legislature, includes $12.6 million to treat more patients who have been committed to mental hospitals, $10.2 million to expand community-based care programs for people with severe mental illness and $3.8 million for more coordination of care for children with behavioral issues. Walker’s evidence When we asked Walker’s office for evidence to back his claim, we were initially referred to a January 2013 report by his Department of Health Services. The report estimated, based on a federal survey of American adults, that in 2011, 49 percent of the 1 million adults in Wisconsin who had ""any mental illness"" did not get treatment. Any mental illness refers to people who have a ""diagnosable mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder."" The disorder causes impairment -- ranging from mild to moderate to substantial -- in carrying out major life activities. The 49 percent figure cited in the health department’s report might appear to support Walker’s claim. But his claim about Wisconsin didn’t use the term mental illness. It used the phrase ""serious psychological distress."" We pointed out the difference to Stephanie Smiley, spokeswoman for the department. She then cited federal survey data showing that over a two-year period -- 2010 to 2011 -- an estimated 51 percent of Wisconsin adults with ""serious psychological distress"" did not get treatment in the previous year. (She also said that in 2008-2009, 31 percent of state adults with serious mental illness got treatment.) So, the 51 percent figure about serious psychological distress appears to back Walker’s claim. But let’s understand serious psychological distress as compared to serious mental illness, given that mental illness was the focus of Walker’s comments and his proposed spending increase. Other evidence Based on definitions pertaining to adults from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which oversees the surveys Walker cited: there are differences between serious mental illness -- the first term Walker used in his budget speech -- and serious psychological distress, which he mentioned second. Serious mental illness refers to a ""diagnosable mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder"" that involves substantial impairment in carrying out major life activities. Serious psychological distress refers to how a person responds to six questions in a federal survey about whether they feel nervous, hopeless, restless or fidgety, sad or depressed, ""that everything was an effort"" and ""no good or worthless."" Experts we consulted said that serious mental illness was a more precise term used to identify a person after thorough diagnosis and that serious psychological distress was an intentionally vague term used by researchers doing surveys. ""It kind of casts a wider net,"" Annabelle Potvin of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Wisconsin said of the serious psychological distress term, which she said indicates a need for a person to get a mental health assessment. Serious psychological distress can encompass people anywhere on a scale from mild to serious mental illness, but tends to be lower on the scale. That’s according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Tim Connor, who evaluates mental health programs across the state; and Walter Laux, behavioral health division director of Community Advocates, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit agency. Indeed, the state Department of Health Services, in a 2010 report, also made a distinction. Serious psychological distress is a ""non-specific category of distress"" characterized by a ""mood or anxiety disorder and a lesser degree of functional impairment than serious mental illness."" It is considered to be ""an indicator of possible serious mental illness, with similar but less strict inclusion criteria."" In other words, people with serious psychological distress might have mental illness, but that distress is generally regarded as lower on a scale than serious mental illness. Our rating After making a reference to serious mental illness, Walker said: ""In Wisconsin, only half of all the adults with serious psychological distress received mental health treatment or medication."" Strictly speaking, Walker’s statistical claim is accurate, at least based on estimates derived from a federal survey. But his statement needs clarification, given that people with serious psychological distress may have mental illness, but have not been diagnosed as being mentally ill."
[A]:
In Wisconsin, only half of all the adults with serious psychological distress received mental health treatment or medication.