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: But the number of people in intensive care units fell to 6,730 from 6,821 over 24 hours - declining for a sixth consecutive day, suggesting the national lockdown put in place on March 17 is having some success in containing the disease. On Monday, President Emmanuel Macron announced a second extension of this lockdown until May 11, saying that progress had been made but also that the country had not been sufficiently prepared early on to surmount the challenges posed by the outbreak of the new coronavirus. Jerome Salomon, head of the public health authority, told a news conference that the number of COVID-19 deaths in French hospitals and nursing homes had risen by 5% in a day to a cumulative total of 15,729, versus 4% on Monday and Sunday. He added that the total number of confirmed infections had climbed by 5.3% to 103,573, compared to a rate of increase of 2.8% on Monday and of 1.7% on Sunday. There were also 26,680 suspected coronavirus cases in nursing homes, taking the total to more than 130,000 confirmed and possible cases, the fifth highest in the world. According to various running simulations, Salomon said that, depending on calculations for different regions, 5%-10% of the French population had probably contracted the disease.

A: France's rate of coronavirus infections, deaths accelerating again.
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Q: Environmental groups strongly oppose the practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves extracting gas from rocks by breaking them up with water and chemicals at high pressure. But the government, keen to cut Britain's reliance on imports as North Sea gas supplies dry up, has tightened regulations and has given Cuadrilla permission to frack two wells at its Preston New Road site in Lancashire. Cuadrilla, 47.4 percent owned by Australia's AJ Lucas and 45.2 percent owned by a fund managed by Riverstone, said it would spend at least three months fracking two horizontal wells to test flow rates to determine whether full-scale gas extraction would be viable. The British Geological Survey estimates shale gas resources in northern England alone could amount to 1,300 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas, 10 percent of which could meet the Britain's demand for almost 40 years. "Shale gas has the potential to be a new domestic energy source, enhancing our energy security and delivering economic benefits, including the creation of well-paid, quality jobs," the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said. "We have been clear that any shale developments must be safe and environmentally sound," the department added in a statement. Attempts to extract the gas have come under fire from local communities and campaigners concerned about the potential effect on the environment and ground water. They say extracting more fossil fuel is at odds with Britain's commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "It is morally bankrupt to be heralding the start of a whole new fossil fuel industry," Craig Bennett, chief executive of environmental group Friends of the Earth said in a statement. "You can deal with climate change or you can have fracking you can't do both," he said. The government asked its climate advisers on Monday to examine whether Britain should toughen its climate targets and set a date to move to a net zero emissions goal. Britain has an existing target to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent compared with 1990 levels by 2050.

A: Britain's Cuadrilla starts fracking for gas after seven-year pause.
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Q: Democrats who control both the Senate and the House of Representatives say they have stretched out a hand to Republicans to bridge the partisan divide. Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, said lawmakers are building consensus on land use in eastern Oregon. He highlighted a Senate bill on Tuesday that allows counties in the sparsely populated, predominantly Republican region to designate up to 50 acres outside urban growth boundaries for industrial and other employment uses. The bill was sponsored by Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, Sen. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, and Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena. Courtney has said he wants legislation to benefit the entire state of Oregon. Rep. Carl Wilson, leader of House Republicans, warned on Friday that they would try to block legislation they deem dangerous to rural Oregon's economic health. Legislation to cut statewide carbon emissions is a top priority, Dembrow told reporters. Carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels is the biggest component of greenhouse gases that are warming the planet. "You'll see it as a priority for the governor, the House and as well for the Senate," Dembrow said. One of the challenges in doing a carbon pricing program is to not cause manufacturers in Oregon to move to other states with no, or more lax, greenhouse-gas emissions standards. "Global warming is a global problem, and so our preference would be to create a program where they can be kept in state, under the program, and put on a steady (emissions) reduction diet over time," Dembrow said. A third-party analysis will be incorporated into the bill that determined which high-emissions manufacturers wouldn't be able to compete if the carbon pricing program was instituted too abruptly, Dembrow said. The Legislature's joint committee on carbon reduction hopes to have draft legislation ready by the end of January, Dembrow said. Gov. Kate Brown has a $2 billion education investment package, in addition to her base budget, in her proposed state budget that would require some type of tax increase. Priorities are for early childhood education, increasing the school year to 180 days, increasing the high school graduation rate, and technical education. Payments into the unfunded liability of the state's public pension system, known as PERS, will inevitably siphon off some education funding, Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, D-Beaverton, told reporters Tuesday. "Whatever we invest in our K-12 system, or even our higher ed system, won't buy us as much in terms of teachers, in terms of classroom days because of the ever-increasing percentage of employer payments into the PERS system," Steiner Hayward said. A health care financing package for the Medicaid recipients is critical and will start in the House, Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson, D-Gresham, who is the chairwoman of the health care committee, told reporters. Speaking at the opening of the Senate, Sen. Lew Frederick, D-Portland, cited words penned by Langston Hughes that read: "Keep your hand on the plow; hold on." "I think that's appropriate for us as we begin this session," Frederick said. ___ Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselsky

A:
Education, climate change, health care on lawmakers' agenda.
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