TASK DEFINITION: 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.
PROBLEM: "Former Gov. Jeb Bush is using the recent release of activist videos criticizing Planned Parenthood as a chance to advertise his own record on restricting abortion. During the first Republican primary presidential debate on Aug. 6, 2015, Bush sidestepped a question from Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly about his time on the board of the Bloomberg Family Foundation, which has donated millions to Planned Parenthood. Instead, Bush reiterated he had a long history of opposing abortion. ""Here’s my record: As governor of Florida I defunded Planned Parenthood. I created a culture of life in our state,"" he said. (Watch the exchange in the video here.) Bush earlier this week said the federal government should do the same. We’ve documented Bush’s opposition to abortion before, as well as his preference for abstinence-only education. But we wanted to check if he cut off state assistance for Planned Parenthood while governor, well before the current controversy. It turns out he did, long prior to recent calls to end federal funding for the group. Targeted cuts Planned Parenthood is a network of affiliated nonprofit organizations that cooperate with each other, led by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Funding comes from a wide range of sources, including private donations, grants, health center revenue and Medicaid. In Florida, there are currently two affiliates accredited with the national organization after several mergers, so the group is not organized quite the same as it was in 2001. There are now 23 health centers in the state, 16 of which provide abortion services. (Three of these were recently cited by the state Agency for Health Care Administration for allegedly providing second-trimester abortions without a license, violations Planned Parenthood has denied. A fourth was cited for improper recordkeeping.) Both Bush’s campaign and the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates pointed to the same thing: Two line-item vetoes Bush made to the state budget in 2001. According to a 2001 state fiscal analysis, Bush vetoed $115,759 in funding for Northeast Florida Planned Parenthood in Duval County and $187,084 for Department of Health contracts with Planned Parenthood in Collier and Sarasota counties. As governor, Bush was well-known for his frequent use of his veto power. That money was not for abortions, but was being used to provide family planning services to poor women, and had been available for more than a decade. To give you an idea of the scale of the state assistance, one of the affiliates confirmed in 2001 the payments made up about a quarter of their budget. It used the money to help pay for pap smears and sexually transmitted disease screening and treatment, among other services. The other affiliate noted the money went to treat patients who had no health insurance or access to Medicaid. Laura Goodhue, executive director of the Florida alliance, confirmed the group did not get any state funding after Bush’s 2001 veto. It still does not receive assistance from the state now. Our ruling Bush said, ""As governor of Florida I defunded Planned Parenthood."" In 2001, he used his line-item veto power to end funding for Planned Parenthood affiliates, and that funding never returned. We must note that the money was for family planning and health care services, not abortions, but he did cut off state money for the group."

SOLUTION: As governor of Florida I defunded Planned Parenthood.

PROBLEM: "U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, is again backing programs aimed at identifying mentally ill people who pose a risk for mass killings. Ayotte, saying she has strong bipartisan support, has co-sponsored a bill geared toward education, awareness and intervention relating to mental illness since the mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012. Ayotte introduced the Mental Health First Aid Act in January 2013, which never made it past a congressional committee. However, elements of that bill went into the Mental Health Awareness and Improvement Act that was part of the gun control legislation the Senate voted down in April. Two days after a mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard in September 2013, Ayotte and Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, issued a joint statement to Senate leadership advocating programs to educate teachers in recognizing symptoms of mental health illness and how they could defuse potentially dangerous situations. Soon after, she appeared on CNN’s The Lead With Jake Tapper. She said a bill that addresses mental health issues would pass the Senate easily. Ayotte said the mental health amendment that was attached to last April’s gun-control legislation passed easily. However, it was not enacted because the gun bill itself lost. ""I actually think it can be taken up separately and easily passed because of the mental health provisions. It got over 90 votes in the Senate and very little gets 90 votes around here,"" Ayotte said. We wondered whether the mental health amendment really got such overwhelming support. We looked at the official roll call vote on the amendment and found that it had indeed passed by a 95-2 vote on April 18. Despite voting for the mental health amendment she co-sponsored, Ayotte later became one of 41 Republicans who voted against the gun control proposal sponsored by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., that would have expanded background checks. Five Democrats also voted against it. The mixed messages these votes sent drew sharp criticism from critics. Ayotte responded with a statement that said: ""I believe that restricting the rights of law-abiding gun owners will not prevent a deranged individual or criminal from obtaining and misusing firearms to commit violence. While steps must be taken to improve the existing background check system, I will not support the Manchin-Toomey legislation, which I believe would place unnecessary burdens on law-abiding gun owners and allow for potential overreach by the federal government into private gun sales."" Our ruling Ayotte said that mental health provisions related to mass shootings ""got over 90 votes in the Senate."" While an early version of the bill never made it out of committee, the Senate did eventually vote, 95-2, for a mental-health amendment to a gun control bill. The full bill lacked enough votes to pass and was pulled from the floor, but she is correct that the amendment did get 90 votes."

SOLUTION: "Mental health provisions related to mass shootings ""got over 90 votes in the Senate."

PROBLEM: The Food and Drug Administration will allow 22nd Century Group to begin selling the first low-nicotine cigarettes reviewed by federal health regulators. The products contain roughly 95% less nicotine than standard cigarettes, according to the FDA. Nicotine, which occurs naturally in tobacco plants, is the addictive chemical that makes cigarettes, chew and related products so hard to quit. Past efforts to sell similar low-nicotine products have fallen flat. Regulators stressed that their ruling does not mean the new products are safer than regular cigarettes. The agency noted there are no safe tobacco products. Cigarettes cause cancer, lung disease, stroke and a number of other deadly diseases. But the agency’s tobacco chief, Mitch Zeller, noted in a statement that 22nd Century Group’s products are the first cigarettes to show the potential “to help reduce nicotine dependence among addicted smokers.” The FDA is continuing to review a separate application from the company on whether the cigarettes present a reduced risk to smokers. The U.S. smoking rate has fallen to an all-time low of 14% of adults, or roughly 34 million Americans. But smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the U.S., responsible for some 480,000 deaths annually Low-nicotine cigarettes are not a new idea. Philip Morris experimented with selling a line of them in the U.S. in the late 1980s, without much success. Since then, most low-nicotine cigarettes have been used for research purposes to study addiction in smokers. Kenneth Warner, a tobacco expert at the University of Michigan’s school of public health, called the idea “good in concept,” but said he would be “astonished if there’s much of a market for this.” There are several techniques for reducing nicotine, including chemical extraction and cross-breeding plants. Williamsville, New York-based 22nd Century Group plans to sell its cigarettes under the brand name Moonlight, in regular and menthol flavor. Last year, the FDA began the process for regulating nicotine in cigarettes to make them minimally or non-addictive. But the agency recently dropped the nicotine plan from its list of regulatory priorities. And tobacco companies have signaled their opposition. The FDA has sponsored several studies showing that when smokers switch to low-nicotine cigarettes they smoke less and are more likely to try quitting. The research was considered pivotal to establishing that smokers won’t compensate by smoking more cigarettes or inhaling more deeply if nicotine levels are low. That was sometimes the case with “light” and “low tar” cigarettes marketed in decades past. Those products were banned as misleading. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

SOLUTION:
US permits sale of cigarettes with 95% less nicotine.