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.

Ex Input:
The chamber’s top Republican, who said he was making enactment of the bill “one of my highest priorities,” issued his proposal at a time when the use of e-cigarettes is growing and underage vaping has soared, raising concerns by health expert s. The measure would apply to all tobacco products, e-cigarettes and vapor products and was co-sponsored by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., whose state has also been a major tobacco producer. “Kentucky farmers don’t want their children to get hooked on tobacco products while they’re in middle school or high school any more than any parents anywhere want that to happen,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. Fourteen states, including Arkansas, California and Virginia, have enacted laws raising the minimum age for tobacco sales to 21, according to the anti-smoking Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. So have 470 municipalities, including New York City, Chicago, Boston and Minneapolis. Even so, the use of e-cigarettes and vaping has surged, with much of the increase among teenagers. The CDC says most e-cigarettes contain highly addictive nicotine, which can harm the development of young people’s brains and may them likelier to smoke cigarettes later in life. “Youth vaping is a public health crisis,” McConnell said. “It’s our responsibility as parents and public servants to do everything we can to keep these harmful products out of high schools and out of youth culture.” A government survey found that last year 1 in 5 U.S. high school students reported vaping the previous month. “Today, we are coming together to side with young people’s health,” said Kaine, acknowledging the rarity for bipartisan legislation at a time when the two parties can seldom find middle ground. The bill quickly won the endorsement of the American Cancer Society. Its advocacy organization, the Cancer Action Network, said the measure was a “welcome indication that Congress is taking the alarming crisis of increased youth tobacco use seriously and is committed to taking action.” The group also warned the sponsors to resist amendments that could let the federal government pre-empt stronger measures by states and municipalities, exempt some young people or exclude certain products. A similar bill was introduced last month by Sens. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, Todd Young, R-Ind., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Mitt Romney, R-Utah. Most experts agree e-cigarettes are less harmful than the paper-and-tobacco variety because they don’t produce all the cancer-causing byproducts found in smoke. But researchers say they are only beginning to understand the risks of e-cigarettes, which they think may damage the lungs and contribute to precancerous growths. McConnell has long been involved in tobacco issues. He helped pass the 2004 tobacco buyout, when the government provided billions of dollars for growers who lost money with the end of federal price supports. Kentucky has the highest cancer mortality rate in the country, with nearly 186 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2017, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As health concerns about tobacco have grown in the U.S., demand and production of the crop have fallen in Kentucky, where it had long been a pillar of the state’s economy. Growers have been relying increasingly on industrial hemp, which McConnell has helped legalize. The CDC calls tobacco products the country’s top cause of preventable disease and death, with almost 40 million adult cigarette smokers. The agency says around 4.7 million middle school and high school students use at least one tobacco product, including e-cigarettes. Treating adults with smoking-related diseases costs the country nearly $170 billion annually for medical care. The country’s biggest tobacco company, Altria Group, has invested in the e-cigarette company Juul and has backed bills raising the minimum age for buying tobacco and vaping products to 21. Critics have suggested that support is aimed at forestalling tougher restrictions such as banning flavored vaping products and menthol cigarettes. ___ AP Health Writer Matthew Perrone contributed to this report.

Ex Output:
Senate GOP leader would raise age for buying tobacco to 21.


Ex Input:
A much e-mailed piece about pink-clad prisoners of the Maricopa County Jail was extracted from a July 2003 Associated Press offering about the Summer 2003 heat wave’s effect on the Phoenix area. Those few paragraphs devoted to describing the condition of the inmates held in that jail went on to be widely circulated on the Internet although they formed only the smallest portion of the original piece, an article that described the air’s heat creating turbulence for airplanes overhead, car windshields shattering or falling out, dogs burning their paws on the pavement, and candles melting indoors:  It’s even hotter than usual in Phoenix, the Associated Press reports: About 2,000 inmates living in a barbed-wire-surrounded tent encampment at the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to their government-issued pink boxer shorts. On Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing boxers were either curled up on their bunk beds or chatted in the tents, which reached 138 degrees inside the week before. Many were also swathed in wet, pink towels as sweat collected on their chests and dripped down to their pink socks. “It feels like you are in a furnace,” said James Zanzo’t, an inmate who has lived in the tents for 1 1/2 years. “It’s inhumane.” Joe Arpaio, the tough-guy sheriff who created the tent city and long ago started making his prisoners wear pink, is not sympathetic. He said Wednesday that he told the inmates: “It’s 120 degrees in Iraq and the soldiers are living in tents and they didn’t commit any crimes, so shut your mouths. ” KIND OF PUTS THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE DOESN’T IT? A clue as to the ‘why’ of the selective quoting is contained in the tagline now often part of the forwards: “Kind of puts things in perspective doesn’t it?” Someone was struck by the comparison of the kvetching prisoners to the (presumed uncomplaining) troops serving in Iraq, and was moved to excerpt only that portion of the article to share with others. That the forward has proved as popular as it has shows the comparison resonates with a great many. The U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq may well be bona fide tough-as-nails servicemen, but at least in our mental image of them we also need them to be larger than life. We like to think of them as lantern-jawed heroes coolly dealing with the impossible situation that is Iraq without giving so much as a thought to their personal safety or even letting as little as a complaining word fall from their lips about the miserable conditions they must endure during that tour of duty. The juxtaposition of these brave soldiers to the societal dregs that wash up into a county jail is thus eminently satisfying to contemplate — it’s the comparison of giants to ants, working to exalt the one even as it makes the other look petty and small. Yet if the prisoners housed in Arizona’s Maricopa County tent city jails were complaining, they had some good reasons. At that facility the incarcerated were fed only two meals a day, with green bologna sometimes appearing on the menu. They were quartered in outdoor tents under sweltering conditions, and they slept on cots which lack pillows. They worked on chain gangs. And they wore pink underwear. Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, of the “It’s 120 degrees in Iraq and the soldiers are living in tents and they didn’t commit any crimes, so shut your mouths” quote, reveled in the sobriquet ‘America’s Toughest Sheriff.’ He enjoyed a very high voter approval rating for a time and had little trouble being re-elected to his post multiple times. He was a controversial figure, vilified by some and worshipped by others. In June 2004 the e-mailed excerpt from the July 2003 Associated Press article circulated anew on the Internet, this time prefaced as follows:  This is the way he is, and he has been re-elected several times … Sheriff Joe Arpaio (in Arizona) is doing it RIGHT!! : He has jail meals down to 40 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them. He stopped smoking and porno magazines in the jails. Took away their weights. Cut off all but “G” movies. He started chain gangs so the inmates could do free work on county and city projects. Then he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn’t get sued for discrimination. He took away cable TV until he found out there was a federal court order that required cable TV for jails. So he hooked up the cable TV again but only let in the Disney channel and the weather channel. When asked why the weather channel he replied, so they will know how hot it’s gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs. He cut off coffee since it has zero nutritional value. When the inmates complained, he told them…. this is a good one……”This isn’t the Ritz/Carlton. If you don’t like it, don’t come back.” He bought Newt Gingrich’ lecture series on videotape that he pipes into the jails. When asked by a reporter if he had any lecture series by a Democrat, he replied that a democratic lecture series might explain why a lot of the inmates were in his jails in the first place. You have to love this guy!! More on the AZ Sheriff … [at this point, the text quoted above was repeated]  With one exception (which could simply amount to no more than our not having yet found the right supporting articles), the claims made in the 2004 preface checked out. Sheriff Joe Arpaio did ban  smoking, coffee, pornographic magazines, movies, and unrestricted television in all his jails. Those incarcerated in his tent city jail did indeed work on chain gangs, pull weeds for the city and county, clear brush, and the like. In 1996 the Sheriff put the nation’s first female chain gang to work. Although the e-mailed account made it sound as if he did so out of fear of prosecution for discrimination, there was no such threat lurking in the background — he chose that course of action because it suited his beliefs: “I don’t believe in discrimination in my jail system. Crime knows no gender and neither should punishment,” he said. Regarding the claim about his airing a Newt Gingrich lecture series on the jail’s television system, in 1995 the controversial lawman used canteen funds to buy the Republican House speaker’s 10-part, $150 video lecture series with the intent of piping it into the inmates’ cells. When asked if he’d also be providing those in his charge with a lecture series done by a Democrat, he replied in the negative. “For one thing I don’t know of any,” he said. “And some people might say these guys already got enough of those ideas.” He was also proud of having lowered the cost of feeding inmates in his care. Though assorted news articles quoted slightly differing figures, a 40¢ per serving expenditure was the one most often touted. “It costs more to feed our police dogs than our inmates. The dogs never committed a crime, and they’re working for a living,” Arpaio said. In 1998 Arpaio instituted a policy of charging inmates for their meals, levying a dollar-a-day tariff against each of those incarcerated. In 1994 he banned coffee from the Maricopa County Jail, but he did so not because of its lack of nutritional value, but to protect inmates and guards from hot-coffee assaults by other inmates and to lower costs. (By eliminating the estimated 5,000 cups of coffee served daily for 5,400 inmates, it was expected the county would save $94,158 a year.) The one item we have yet to validate is the assertion that Arpaio deprived inmates of cable TV until discovery that such act was in violation of a federal court order. We’ve yet to locate this order or to confirm that television programming was ever denied those in his care. It is on record, however, that inmates in his charge view only selected programming, such as what’s on The Weather Channel. (“I think my chain gang deserves to know how hot it is when they hit the streets,” said Arpaio.) In September 2007 the following e-mail forwards about Sheriff Arpaio began to circulate:   Sheriff Joe is at it again. Maricopa County was spending approx. $18 million dollars a year on stray animals, like cats and dogs. Sheriff Joe offered to take the department over, and the County Supervisors said “Okay.” The animal shelters are now all staffed and operated by prisoners. They feed and care for the strays. Every animal in his care is taken out and walked twice daily. He now has prisoners who are experts in animal nutrition and behavior. They give great classes for anyone who’d like to adopt an animal. He has literally taken stray dogs off the street, given them to the care of prisoners, and had them placed in dog shows. The best part? His budget for the entire department is now under $3 million. Now he’s in trouble with the ACLU again. He painted all his buses and vehicles with a mural that has a special hotline phone number painted on it, where you can call and report suspected illegal aliens. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement wasn’t doing enough in his eyes, so he had 40 deputies trained specifically for enforcing immigration laws, started up his hotline, and bought 4 new buses just for hauling folks back to the border. Although Sheriff Joe Arpaio did not (as implied above) take over the operations of the entire Maricopa County Animal Care & Control (MCACC) department, he was instrumental in the opening of the Maricopa Animal Safe Hospice (MASH), a no-kill animal shelter operated by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) in what was formerly Phoenix’s First Avenue Jail. The MASH is a facility dedicated to caring for rescued animals that have been abused or neglected (as well as temporarily caring for the pets of owners who have checked into domestic violence shelters):  Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s no-kill animal shelter, MASH, was created to house and care for animals that have been abused or neglected by their caretakers and rescued by the Animal Cruelty Investigative Unit. The purpose of the shelter is to provide a safe, healthy and healing shelter for these tragic animals, who must necessarily await the outcome of their owners’ cruelty cases in court. Hopefully, their ultimate outcome will be adoption into loving, permanent homes. The first shelter opened by Sheriff Arpaio is in the First Avenue Jail, located at First Avenue and Madison Street, Phoenix, Arizona. This 30-year-old jail previously held inmates, but was closed for repairs to plumbing in December 1999. Though no longer suitable for housing inmates, the jail looks like paradise to the four-footed victims now housed and recovering there. The MASH location in the First Avenue Jail is air-conditioned, and the cells have been reconditioned to comfortably house animals. In July 2007 Sheriff Arpaio launched a hot line for calling in tips and information about people living and working in Maricopa County illegally. Then in September 2007 he unveiled “moving billboards” in the form of four trucks and eight inmate passenger vans plastered with the hot line number and signs reading “Do Not Illegally Enter” and “Help Sheriff Joe Arpaio Fight Illegal Immigration and Trafficking.”  Critics contend that this move constitutes racial profiling; Sheriff Arpaio maintains that his signs say nothing about ethnic backgrounds: “It says illegal immigration and trafficking. I don’t care where they’re from.” Sheriff Arpaio finally stepped down after losing a re-election bid to Democrat Paul Penzone in 2016.

Ex Output:
An Arizona sheriff dismissed prisoners' bellyaching about the heat by pointing out that soldiers serving in Iraq cope with similar conditions.


Ex Input:
Trudeau told a briefing that 500,000 N95 surgical masks from Saint Paul, Minnesota-based 3M Co - part of a batch of 4 million ordered by the province of Ontario - should arrive on Wednesday. Canadian officials pressed their U.S. counterparts after Ontario complained the shipment had been blocked. U.S. President Donald Trump signed an order last week to stop personal protective equipment from being exported. “We have had constructive and productive conversations that have assured that this particular shipment comes through but we recognize there is still more work to do,” Trudeau said. “We are going to continue to highlight to the American administration the point to which healthcare supplies and services go back and forth across that border.”  The Canadian death toll rose to 345 from 293 on Monday, officials said. The total number of cases was 17,063, compared with 15,822 a day earlier. The coronavirus outbreak looks set to cripple the economy, especially in Alberta, which was already suffering from low oil prices before authorities ordered a shutdown. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said that unemployment could increase to 25% from the current 7.2%. “That’s before we even fully account for the impacts of the crash in energy prices,” he told reporters. “This will be the most challenging period in our economy, in relative terms, since the Great Depression.”  He added in an evening address that the province’s budget deficit may almost triple to C$20 billion ($14.27 billion) in this fiscal year. The province’s energy patch needs up to C$30 billion in liquidity, he said. The federal government says it is working on an aid package for the sector. Ottawa says more than 3.7 million people have filed unemployment claims since March 16, including for an emergency benefit that launched on Monday. Canada’s workforce is around 20 million people, according to Statistics Canada. More than half the country’s coronavirus cases are in Quebec, the second-most populous province, which forecast on Tuesday between 1,263 and 8,860 deaths from the respiratory disease by the end of April. Officials said the toll was likely to be closer to the more optimistic prediction. Alberta forecast the coronavirus spread to peak in mid-May under its probable scenario and kill between 400 and 3,100 people by the end of summer. Once it passes the peak, Alberta will gradually reopen its economy with stepped-up testing, contact tracing and additional screening of international arrivals, Kenney said. Ontario, the most-populous province, says it is running out of personal protection equipment. Procurement Minister Anita Anand said Canada had commitments to companies around the world to buy more than 230 million face masks, of which more than 16 million had been delivered. It has also ordered 75 million N95 surgical masks and expects to have 2.3 million by end of the week.

Ex Output:

Canada to press U.S. further on medical supplies, Trudeau says.