TASK DEFINITION: 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.
PROBLEM: Paragraph: Whimpering and badly malnourished, they are among the most vulnerable in a country that remains one of the poorest in the world. Now an expected United States-Taliban agreement to end nearly 18 years of fighting raises questions about whether the foreign aid largely propping up the country will drop as troops withdraw. Much depends on the Taliban, who have indicated they want that aid to continue even as they call for armed “invaders” to leave. But if the insurgent group that already controls roughly half of Afghanistan tries to assert a harsh form of Islamic law across the country or continues its attacks, some donors could walk away. The urgency of aid is seen in Jebul Siraj, a mountainside community north of the capital, Kabul, where a burqa-clad woman held a gaunt, startled-looking boy named Abdullah, just 7 months old. Days ago, he was at an emergency ward. Now he sipped curiously at a supplement as part of a new nutrition monitoring program at a clinic in Parwan province supported by the United Nations children’s agency. Mothers and children lined up outside. Some 2 million children in Afghanistan face acute malnutrition, according to UNICEF, about 600,000 of them so severely malnourished that without urgent treatment they could die. The hospital in nearby Charikar city treats more than 1,000 children a month for malnutrition and the problem is growing, nurse Fariba Hashimi said. “It’s mostly an economic issue, for mothers as well,” she said. “They can’t breastfeed because they don’t have enough income to feed themselves.” Aid has dropped in recent years, with supplemental biscuits and wheat flour that was once provided for patients now unavailable. Health care and other basic services are precarious in a country where the World Bank says grants finance some 75% of total public expenditures. This year it warned against the dire consequences of “any rapid decline in international aid flows.” Afghanistan has been the largest single recipient of American aid since the U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban in 2001, but despite billions of dollars in assistance more than half of its people still live in poverty. Much of the aid has gone to security efforts, and frustrated Afghans assert that untold amounts have been lost in corruption and mismanagement. U.S. aid to the country was cut in half in 2014, the year that U.S. and NATO forces formally ended their combat mission. About 20,000 forces remain, largely to train and support Afghan counterparts. If a U.S.-Taliban agreement on ending America’s longest war brings badly needed peace, Afghanistan could see an increase in aid, said Alex Thier, who once directed assistance for the country with the U.S. Agency for International Development. But if the peace process drags out or fails, that could “depress enthusiasm for giving,” he warned after a visit to Kabul this month. Some donors could be reluctant to fund a government in which the Taliban wield power and don’t respect the rights of women and others. The Taliban have indicated they want international aid to continue, and understanding how to keep it flowing is part of talks with the U.S., Thier said, citing what he has heard from diplomats, Taliban proxies and people who met with Taliban leaders in intra-Afghan dialogues in Moscow and Qatar this year. “Part of the Taliban motivation in the peace process is, they clearly want to avoid being a pariah state as before,” he said. But no one knows what they will give up to keep receiving support. The local U.N. humanitarian coordinator, Toby Lanzer, who has spoken with “all of the authorities across Afghanistan,” said he believes aid won’t drop, calling the country’s case so compelling that efforts must continue, whatever happens. He has spoken with the United States and other “particularly generous” countries and believes donors are in Afghanistan for the long haul. Asked how the interest of President Donald Trump’s administration in cutting overall foreign aid complicates the situation, Lanzer paused for more than 10 seconds before saying that “when it comes to a strategic location such as Afghanistan, everybody has to chip in, and everybody has been chipping in. And I would very much count on the continued generosity of the people of the United States of America, of institutions such as USAID, to stay the course.” Next year could be Afghanistan’s most pivotal, he said, as the latest round of international aid pledges ends. He expects another pledging conference in 2020 for “the new government, whichever government that might be.” At the Indira Gandhi children’s hospital in Kabul, which treats 70 to 80 malnourished children a month, director Dr. Mohammad Bashir Qurishi worried about how doctors will be paid and medicine purchased if aid follows troops out of the country. Everyone is afraid of losing the progress made since 2001, he said, as the U.S. and the Taliban negotiate the country’s future while excluding the Afghan government. “If Trump wants to take us back to Stone Age time, then it is their policy,” he said. In the ward for malnourished children, decorated with aid stickers from UNICEF and Japan, a nurse pointed out fragile toddlers. One 2-year-old, her face covered in tape to keep a nasal feeding tube in place, breathed with discomfort, a Barbie-like doll next to her on her pillow. Nearby was Bibi Warai. Her 2-year-old granddaughter had just died at home outside the eastern city of Jalalabad, and now the girl’s 3-year-old sister, Humaira, was undergoing treatment. After their hours-long journey to the capital she wished for more such wards so that all Afghans can reach help in time. “My son told me, ’How can you leave us at this time of mourning?”″ she said. “I told him, ‘I can’t stay, I have to take my child for treatment.’ Maybe God will help us, and she will survive.” She placed her hand gently on the girl’s forehead and began to cry. ___ Associated Press video journalist Ahmad Seir in Kabul contributed to this report. Claim: As troops prepare to leave Afghanistan, will aid stream out?.

SOLUTION: The children will inherit any peace that comes to Afghanistan, if only they can live to see it.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: Three of the other five patients are in either a serious or a critical condition in hospital, while the remaining two have mild symptoms, the United Nations health agency said in a disease outbreak update. H7N9 bird flu emerged last year in China and has infected around 150 people so far there and in Taiwan and Hong Kong, killing at least 46 of them. The latest death was a 38-year-old man from China’s Fujian Province who became ill with H7N9 on January 3, was admitted to hospital on January 8 but died 2 days later. He had underlying illnesses, including tuberculosis and pneumoconiosis. China’s state news agency Xinhua reported another death from H7N9 in the southwestern Guizhou province on Monday, but this has yet to be confirmed by the WHO. A 65-year-old man infected with H7N9 also died in Hong Kong, the government said on Monday. The WHO reiterated there is no evidence as yet of any easy or sustained person-to-person transmission of the strain, and that the source of the human infections is still under investigation. Researchers in the United States said last month that while it is not impossible that H7N9 could become easily transmissible between people, it would need to undergo multiple mutations to do that. Scientists around the world are keeping a watchful eye, on alert for any sign the virus might develop that potential and start to spread rapidly. Claim: Death toll from new China bird flu rises: WHO.

SOLUTION: Six more people in China have been confirmed as infected with the new H7N9 strain of bird flu and one of them has died, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: "As his campaign revs up, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White is pointing voters to his record as mayor of Houston from 2004 through 2009. On his campaign Web site and in a thank-you letter published Jan. 2 in the Houston Chronicle, he brags about the city’s crime rates. Though White in his public statements has stopped short of claiming he reduced crime in the nation's fourth-largest city, his Web site biography notes that during his tenure as mayor, he ""saw Houston’s crime rates drop to the lowest levels in more than 25 years."" White's critics have accused him of being soft on crime, and the issue is likely to emerge in the governor's race. We decided to investigate whether White's statement about the decrease in Houston crime was . Statistics provided by his campaign confirm that the crime rate overall hit a 25-year low during his administration. That measure includes three nonviolent property crimes (such as burglary) as well as four major violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault). The White campaign's numbers, which were generated by the Houston Police Department for the years 1980 through 2008, show that the city’s 2008 total crime rate -- 6,080 offenses per 100,000 residents -- was the lowest of any of those years. In fact, 2006, 2007 and 2008 had the three lowest total crime rates in the 29 years of data offered by the campaign. To double-check the numbers, we compared White’s statistics with those of the Texas Department of Public Safety, which collects data from local law enforcement agencies for the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program. The DPS numbers for Houston did not perfectly match the police department’s because the agencies use different population estimates in their calculations. However, the discrepancies were small and did not undermine White’s assertion: In the DPS data starting with 1980, 2008 was also the year with the lowest total crime rate: 6,053.7 offenses per 100,000 residents. Looking only at violent crime in Houston, the picture changes somewhat. There was at least one year -- 1998 being the most recent -- when the violent crime rate was lower than any year during White's tenure. And both the White campaign and Clete Snell, chairman of the Criminal Justice Department at the University of Houston Downtown, note that Houston experienced an uptick in violent crime in 2005, White’s second year in office, that they attribute to the influx of Hurricane Katrina evacuees. These days, few public officials can legitimately take credit for reducing crime locally. That's because crime rates have been trending down all across the country for years, in some cases to record lows. According to FBI data, the nation's total crime rate in 2008 was down 29 percent from 1983, 25 years earlier. Experts don't agree on the reasons for the persistent trend, but have suggested such factors as rising incarceration rates, the aging of the population and improved police practices. It is important to note that crime trends do not follow straight lines — they can fluctuate year-to-year. Still, according to the DPS data, total crime in Houston has dropped 31 percent since 1983. And the decline was under way before White took office. Nevertheless, when the Houston FBI office gave White the FBI Director’s 2007 Community Leadership Award, his efforts to combat crime were among the reasons cited. ""Mayor White is being recognized for his outstanding contributions toward improving the quality of life in the City of Houston through his commitment to law enforcement and the prevention of crime,"" a statement from the FBI said. Summing up: Although experts debate the reasons for the downward trend in crime nationwide, White is right that the total crime rate in Houston hit a 25-year low during his time as mayor. We give him a ." Claim: "During his tenure as mayor, he ""saw Houston’s crime rates drop to the lowest levels in more than 25 years."

SOLUTION:
White says crime hit 25-year low during his tenure