Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.

Q: Paragraph: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics said Thursday that the number of U.S. babies born last year fell 2 percent from 2016 to 3.85 million, also a 30-year low. Births have fallen for three straight years. The fertility rate dropped 3 percent last year to 60.2 births per 1,000 women ages 15 through 44. An aging society has already weighed on economic growth in the United States in the past decade, with the vast baby boom generation retiring and fewer young people replacing them. Thursday’s data suggests that the trend is likely to continue. Economic growth is generally driven by population growth and worker efficiency, both of which have slowed in the past decade in the United States. Kathy Bostjancic, an economist at Oxford Economics, a consulting firm, said that roughly 10 years ago, the number of Americans working or looking for work was growing about 1 percent annually. With birthrates declining, that figure has since fallen to about a 0.3 percent growth rate. That essentially acts as a 0.7 percentage point drag on the United States’ long-run growth. “Demographics have a really powerful impact on the economy,” Bostjancic said. The U.S. economy has grown at a 3 percent average annual rate since World War II. Yet it hasn’t reached that pace for a full calendar year since 2005. The baby boomers first reached retirement age in 2008. The Federal Reserve in March upgraded its short-term economic growth forecast to about 2.7 percent for this year and 2.4 percent in 2019, partly because of the Trump administration’s tax cuts. But the Fed kept its longer-run annual growth forecast at just 1.8 percent, reflecting the demographic headwinds. Aside from fewer workers, an aging society can hold back growth because fewer people are buying homes, cars and other costly purchases. Savings generally rise as people age and prepare for retirement. And as elderly people live longer, they also slow their spending while in retirement, Bostjancic noted. Most economists attribute the low interest rates and low inflation of the past decade, in the United States, Europe and Japan, at least in part to aging. In Japan, where adult diapers outsell those for children, the impact of fewer births has kept growth nearly nonexistent for more than two decades. The economy has picked up recently and enjoyed two straight years of growth, the longest such streak since the late 1980s, before contracting again in the first three months of this year. The U.S. accepts many more immigrants than does Japan, and that influx has boosted population growth. The Labor Department released separate data Thursday showing that last year, there were 27.4 million foreign-born workers in the United States, the most since records began in 2005. Immigrants now make up 17.1 percent of the U.S. workforce. Economic research earlier this year found that U.S. fertility fell sharply roughly nine months before the past three recessions. That suggests that such declines could signal economic downturns. But Kasey Buckles, an economics professor at Notre Dame who conducted the research with two colleagues, said that recent such declines aren’t sharp enough to point to a recession. Instead, she noted that fertility declines over the past three years have occurred mostly among women under 30. Birth rates among older women have risen or held steady. That suggests that the fertility declines largely reflect a drop in unwanted pregnancies since the 2008-2009 recession. Fertility among women of all ages fell sharply in 2008 and 2009, Buckles said, but rebounded quickly for women 30 and over. Separate data from the Guttmacher Institute, a policy organization that tracks reproductive health, shows that unwanted pregnancies have fallen since the Great Recession, Buckles said. “It’s possible that the Great Recession may have been something of a triggering event that caused people to be more intentional about their fertility,” she said. ___ Contact Chris Rugaber on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/ChrisRugaber . Claim: Lowest US birth rate in 3 decades could pose risk to economy.

A: Women in the United States gave birth last year at the lowest rate in 30 years, a trend that could weigh on economic growth in the coming decades.
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Q: Paragraph: The company said the trial will continue unchanged as per the recommendation of a data monitoring committee. The trial was testing Bristol-Myers’ drugs Opdivo and Yervoy, against Opdivo alone, in patients with advanced melanoma. The combination failed to show a statistically significant benefit in patients whose tumors had 1% or lower levels of the PD-L1 protein being targeted, the company said. The American Cancer Society estimates that about 96,480 melanoma cases will be diagnosed in the United States this year. Bristol-Myers shares were trading at $55.99 before the bell. Claim: Bristol-Myers misses main goal of late-stage skin cancer trial.

A: Bristol-Myers Squibb Co said on Wednesday a late-stage trial testing a combination of its cancer drugs missed a main goal of preventing skin cancer from recurring in a certain group of patients, sending its shares down nearly 1%.
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Q: Paragraph: Cobalt is a key ingredient in the batteries that power electric vehicles, a fast-growing sector of the auto industry, and in metal alloys used to make jet engines. It was singled out in LME proposals to embed responsible sourcing principles into metal brands deliverable against its contracts, which include copper and zinc. Most of the world’s supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, often from artisanal mines where several organizations have cited human rights abuses. The LME plan outlined last October involves suspending cobalt brands trading at a significant discount to its contract on the grounds that they may be seen as tainted. Now, objections by NGOs to a consultation on its plans could leave the exchange at risk of legal challenges from banned cobalt producers, metal industry sources say. The LME will publish its proposals this quarter. “The LME received 39 responses to its recent discussion paper on responsible sourcing,” the exchange said. “The LME’s role is now to identify a path forwards which balances the diverse views of its stakeholders (including civil society organizations), while achieving the LME’s stated aim of helping the broader metals industry embrace key principles of responsible sourcing and environmental stewardship.”  The letter from the NGOs said the LME should not immediately ban cobalt brands and that it should work with firms that produce them to ensure responsible sourcing. “It is short-sighted and irresponsible of the LME to single out cobalt and tin as higher risk metals above others, or to single out (artisanal) material as implicitly higher risk,” the letter signed by 14 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) said. All companies involved with the exchange should implement responsible sourcing practices in line with the OECD Guidance, the letter dated Dec. 3 said. The OECD Guidance says companies should report in detail about their supply chains and advises on ways in which they can uncover and address human rights and corruption issues. “Heightened supply chain due diligence on cobalt, as with all other LME metals, must be triggered by assessment of all supply chain risks, including corruption risks,” the NGO letter said. Sources say the business of an exchange is to facilitate trade between buyers and sellers. “The NGOs don’t understand the difference between end consumers and the LME. The LME is a market of last resort, you can’t choose which metal to take or reject,” a metal trading source said. “Consumers can choose where they source their cobalt from, people buying on the LME can’t, that’s why there is such a deep discount between LME cobalt prices and (Fastmarkets MB)”  Cobalt prices published by Fastmarkets MB at around $44,000 a tonne are $12,000 a tonne higher than those for the LME’s contract, which was launched in 2010. However, the NGOs say singling out low-priced cobalt typically produced by artisanal miners ignores other “serious red flags” such as corruption by large-scale miners of all metals. “Is the LME trying to create a reputational green wash that allows it to say its members source responsibly because they tick some boxes,” said Sophie Pickles, who leads Global Witness’ work on conflict mineral. The director of “mines to market” at NGO Pact, Karen Hayes, said the LME’s plan lacked detail on implementation. “We are more than willing to work with the LME or any companies seeking to comply with the LME’s responsible sourcing standards,” she said. Claim: Fourteen NGOs oppose London Metal Exchange plans to ban tainted cobalt.

A:
Fourteen non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including Amnesty and Global Witness have opposed plans by the London Metal Exchange to ban cobalt tainted by human rights abuses, a letter seen by Reuters showed.
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