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: "Ed Stafford of Leicestershire, England walks in between trees as he walks through the Amazon jungle in Brazil in this undated handout photo. Former British army captain Stafford became on Monday the first known person to walk from the origin of the Amazon river, the world's second-longest river, to its mouth, after withstanding ""50,000"" mosquito bites, scorpion attacks and skin disease in his 859 day odyssey. REUTERS/Handout Ed Stafford, a 34-year-old from Leicestershire, England, dived into the Atlantic Ocean after taking 859 days to walk the length of the world’s second-longest river, starting at the peak of Mount Mismi in Peru in April 2008. “It’s just phenomenal to be here at the end of the journey after 2-1/2 years slogging our way through the jungle,” he told Reuters after arriving at the beach about 90 miles northeast of the Brazilian city of Belem. “It was really difficult to envisage how this was going to feel and I’m completely overwhelmed.”   Stafford briefly collapsed from exhaustion with only 52 miles of the 6,000-mile journey to go, passing out by the roadside after breaking out in a rash. “I feel slightly humbled that my system just decided to shut down so close to the finish,” he wrote on his blog at www.walkingtheamazon.com. Stafford has aimed to use the walk to raise awareness about the threats to the Amazon rain forest and its people, using a portable satellite video to blog about his trek. He had planned to complete the walk in about a year, but the journey was prolonged by floods that forced him to walk a roundabout route that was 2,000 miles longer than the 4,000-mile (6,400-km) length of the Amazon, which is exceeded in length only by Africa’s Nile river. He began the journey with fellow British adventurer Luke Collyer, but the pair had a falling out early in the trek and Stafford continued alone. He was joined in July 2008 by a Peruvian forestry worker, Gadiel Cho Sanchez Rivera, who pledged to walk with him for five days and has been with him on the walk ever since. A statement from Stafford’s media team said that the Briton had been: “wrongly accused of murder on two separate occasions, been imprisoned, had concrete stuffed in his mouth by hostile tribes people, been chased by Ashaninka Indians with bows and arrows, been stung by hundreds of wasps and watched as his guide ‘Cho’ removed a botfly from Ed’s head with superglue and a tree spine.”   It said he had endured “50,000” mosquito bites, lived on a diet of piranha fish, rice and beans, and dodged a variety of snakes, electric eels, scorpions, and ants, as well as contracting a skin-disfiguring disease. Famed British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes was quoted as saying in the statement that Stafford’s feat was “truly extraordinary.”   “No one has ever done this before and the pundits considered the route impossible,” he said." Claim: British man becomes first to walk Amazon length.

SOLUTION: A former British army captain became on Monday the first known person to walk from the origin of the Amazon river to its mouth, after enduring “50,000” mosquito bites, attacks by hostile Indians and tropical disease in his nearly 2-1/2 year odyssey.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: Members of the New York delegation, joined by first responders, survivors and family members, lamented an announcement by the Justice Department that the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund is running low on money and future payments may be cut by up to 70 percent. Comedian Jon Stewart, a longtime advocate for 9/11 responders, called the Feb. 15 announcement by the fund’s special master “unconscionable” and said Congress has a moral obligation to step in. At a news conference at the Capitol, Stewart said it was “nonsense” that first responders and their families again have to “beg” Congress for money nearly 18 years after the attacks. “This is nonsense. This is theater. You know it and I know it,” Stewart said. “If the American people in their busy lives had any sense that these shenanigans were going on, they would be outraged.” He and other speakers urged Congress to act quickly to restore the fund and ensure it has enough money to pay benefits for the next 70 years — or as long as victims need it. Anything less than full and permanent funding is “shameful,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., adding the death toll from the 2001 attacks “is still growing.” “It should not be a fight to pass this bill again,” Gillibrand said. The collapse of the World Trade Center in September 2001 sent a cloud of thick dust billowing over Lower Manhattan. Fires burned for weeks. Thousands of construction workers, police officers, firefighters and others spent time working in the soot, often without proper respiratory protection. In the years since, many have seen their health decline, some with respiratory or digestive-system ailments that appeared almost immediately, others with illnesses that developed as they aged, including cancer. Nearly 40,000 people have applied to the federal fund for people with illnesses potentially related to being at the World Trade Center site, the Pentagon or Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after the attacks. About 19,000 claims are pending. Nearly $5 billion in benefits have been awarded out of the $7.3 billion fund. Rupa Bhattacharyya, special master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, said she was “painfully aware of the inequity” of the potential cuts, but said awarding some funds for every valid claim would be preferable to sending some legitimate claimants away empty-handed. Fund officials estimate it would take another $5 billion to pay pending claims and claims that officials anticipate will be submitted before the fund’s December 2020 deadline. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said the cost of restoring the program is minimal compared to the cruelty of failing to do so. “A great nation cannot nickel-and-dime people that have sacrificed their health on our behalf,” he said. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said the 9/11 attacks “were not just a New York event” or an East Coast event, but were an attack on all Americans. “This is a sea-to-shining-sea moment, a sea-to-shining sea promise, a sea-to-shining-sea obligation,” Gardner said. The victims’ fund should “not be extended for a moment but for a lifetime,” he added. Stewart, reverting to comic form, said the victims’ fund was “like a Starbucks card. We’re just asking to get a little more money.” Claim: Lawmakers, first responders sound alarm on 9/11 fund.

SOLUTION: More than 17 years after the 9/11 attacks, first responders and their advocates were back at the Capitol Monday urging Congress to ensure that a victims’ compensation fund does not run out of money.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: John Flickner was staying at a Niagara Falls shelter Thursday, after an hourslong eviction ordeal Tuesday that ended with him steering his electric wheelchair in freezing temperatures to a center about a half mile away. “Cold, wet, windy,” Flickner recalled of the trip, which was photographed by The Buffalo News . “All I wanted to do was get out of the wind,” Flickner told The Associated Press  on Thursday inside Community Missions, the facility he transferred to the next day. Niagara Towers, where Flickner lived for two years, is subsidized by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Although New York state has legalized medical marijuana, HUD says it gives landlords discretion on whether to evict residents for using it. Marijuana use remains illegal under federal law. Flickner’s problems with his landlord started in June, when inspectors found marijuana in his apartment and called police. Responding officers declined to charge Flickner — who said he got the marijuana from a doctor in Canada — but advised him that he needed a prescription to possess it. Flickner said he had no trouble quickly getting a doctor’s prescription and had it long before this week’s eviction. “I didn’t know about getting the card. I just knew it was legal,” he said. “I wasn’t hiding anything.” Still, the Tennessee company that owns the complex, LHP Capital, moved forward with ending his lease. “The basis of the eviction was they have a zero-tolerance (policy) and he had marijuana in his apartment and at that time he did not have medical marijuana,” said Niagara Falls attorney Jason Cafarella, who represented LHP at a November hearing in Niagara Falls City Court. “It was a lease violation and the tenant had known what the rules of the property were, had known the rules of the lease and violated those rules.” A judge issued a Nov. 29 eviction order. “What really swayed the judge, the be-all, end-all factor, was a regulation which basically gives management the ability to impose this zero-tolerance rule regardless of medical marijuana or otherwise,” said attorney Kevin Quinn of the Center for Elder Law and Justice, who represented Flickner. “If it’s being used, they have that ability to terminate a lease.” It’s not unusual for people to be evicted from federally subsidized housing for medical marijuana use, though few are as old as Flickner, said David Mangone of Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group. “It’s really a clear evidence of discrimination, and medical marijuana should be treated like any other medication when it comes to living in subsidized housing,” said Mangone, the Washington-based group’s director of government affairs. HUD responded to a request for comment by forwarding the agency’s 2014 guidance giving landlords discretion on whether to evict current residents for the use medical marijuana. The memo said landlords are supposed to deny new applicants for subsidized housing if they use medical marijuana. There was no immediate comment from HUD specifically on Flickner’s eviction. LHP did not respond to two telephone messages seeking comment. The company has 55 properties in eight states, according to its website. Flickner on Thursday was waiting for a friend to help him make arrangements for a new place to live. In the meantime, Community Missions spokesman Christian Hoffman said the facility wouldn’t stop him from using the odorless, pen-like vaporizer that delivers his medicine. Flickner, a former tool-and-dye worker, said he injured his back in a skydiving mishap 50 years ago. Medical marijuana relaxes his muscles better and more safely, he said, than addictive opioids. “We’re going along with state guidelines,” Hoffman said. Although Flickner is the first client to arrive at the shelter under these circumstances, Hoffman said he wouldn’t be surprised if others followed. “Hopefully, everyone is able to get on the same page, whatever that looks like,” he said. “But until then, places like ours are going to be picking up some of the pieces.” ___ Associated Press writer Michael Hill contributed from Albany. Claim: Medical marijuana user, 78, evicted from subsidized housing.

SOLUTION:
A 78-year-old man who relies on medical marijuana for back pain finds himself homeless after being evicted from federally subsidized housing in a case complicated by conflicting state and federal marijuana rules.