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.

Dr. Ann McKee, director of Boston University’s CTE Center, stressed she could not “connect the dots” between the brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy and the behavior of the 27-year-old who hanged himself in April while serving life in prison for murder. But McKee said CTE had significantly impacted key parts of Hernandez’s brain, including the hippocampus — which is associated with memory — and the frontal lobe, which is involved in impulse control, judgment and behavior. “We can say collectively, in our collective experience, that individuals with CTE — and CTE of this severity — have difficulty with impulse control, decision-making, inhibition of impulses or aggression, often emotional volatility and rage behaviors,” said McKee, who has studied hundreds of brains from football players, college athletes and even younger players, donated after their deaths. Hernandez hanged himself in prison days after he was acquitted in the 2012 drive-by shootings of two men in Boston and just hours before his former teammates visited the White House to celebrate their latest Super Bowl victory. Prosecutors contended he gunned the two men down after one accidentally spilled a drink on him in a nightclub — and then got a tattoo of a handgun and the words “God Forgives” to commemorate the crime. He had been serving a life sentence without parole in the 2013 killing of semi-professional football player Odin Lloyd when he killed himself. Hernandez, who said he was innocent, did not raise CTE in his defense at either trial. CTE, which can only be diagnosed in an autopsy, has been found in former members of the military, football players and boxers and others who suffered repeated head trauma. BU researchers confirmed in September that Hernandez was diagnosed with Stage 3, out of 4, of the disease. But McKee had not publicly discussed her findings until a conference at the university on Thursday. After Hernandez’s CTE diagnosis, his attorneys filed a lawsuit against the NFL and football helmet maker Riddell, accusing them of failing to warn Hernandez about the dangers of football. The lawsuit, which seeks damages for Hernandez’s young daughter, said he experienced a “chaotic and horrendous existence” because of his disease. While the outside of Hernandez’s brain appeared normal, the inside was riddled with CTE, said McKee, who showed images of Hernandez’s brain next to those of a typical 27-year-old. In Hernandez’s brain, there was evidence of previous small hemorrhages, which is associated with head impacts, she said. Other parts, like the hippocampus, had begun to shrink and large holes were found in his brain’s membrane, McKee said. Before Hernandez, the youngest brain they’ve examined that showed such severe CTE damage was 46 years old, McKee said. “These are very unusual findings to see in an individual of this age,” McKee said. “We’ve never seen this in our 468 brains, except in individuals some 20 years older,” she said. Hernandez inherited a genetic profile that may have made him more susceptible to the disease, McKee said. ___ Follow Alanna Durkin Richer @aedurkinricher . Read more of her work here .
Doctor: Hernandez’s brain was severely damaged by disease.

Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHO, due to objections from China which claims the island as its own, has infuriated the Taipei government during the coronavirus outbreak. Taiwan says it has been unable to get timely information and that Taiwanese lives have become political pawns. The WHO denies this. Taiwan has long described this as a pattern of behaviour that puts it at risk because of Chinese pressure to exclude it from international bodies. On Wednesday, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus rejected “racist slurs” against him, which he said had originated in Taiwan. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said Taiwan opposed any form of discrimination. “For years, we have been excluded from international organisations, and we know better than anyone else what it feels like to be discriminated against and isolated,” she said in a statement. “If Director-General Tedros could withstand pressure from China and come to Taiwan to see Taiwan’s efforts to fight COVID-19 for himself, he would be able to see that the Taiwanese people are the true victims of unfair treatment.”  Tedros is not a popular figure in Taiwan due to suspicions he is too close to China and the WHO’s listing of Taiwan’s virus case numbers under China’s, despite it being totally separately governed. U.S. President Donald Trump sharply criticised the WHO on Tuesday, accusing it of being too focused on China and issuing bad advice during the coronavirus outbreak. Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said Tedros’ accusations were groundless and “imaginary” and Taiwan had not made any racist comments nor encouraged anyone to do so. Tedros’ comments were irresponsible and he should clarify them and apologise to Taiwan, Ou said. “The concept of racism does not exist in Taiwan. We do not have a problem of racism,” she told reporters. In Beijing, China’s Foreign Ministry did not directly say whether it believed Taiwan was responsible for racist attacks on Tedros, but said the island was trying “to use the epidemic to seek independence” and that its plots would not succeed. Taiwan has been proud of its early and so far effective measures against the coronavirus, logging just 380 cases and five deaths to date, far lower than many of its neighbours. Taiwan reported just one new case on Thursday. The WHO said last month it was closely following the development of the coronavirus in Taiwan and learning lessons from how they are fighting it. However, Taiwan says the WHO ignored its questions at the start of the outbreak and has not shared with member states information Taiwan has provided, including details on its coronavirus cases and prevention methods. Under the slogan “Taiwan can help”, the government last week announced the donation of 10 million faces masks to the United States, Europe and the 15 countries that still maintain formal diplomatic ties with the island. Ou said Taiwan would donate another six million masks, to northern and eastern Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia and U.S. states hardest hit by the pandemic.
Taiwan rebuffs accusations it racially attacked WHO chief.

Amid warnings from public health officials that a 2020 outbreak of a new coronavirus could soon become a pandemic involving the U.S., alarmed readers asked Snopes to verify a rumor that U.S. President Donald Trump had “fired the entire pandemic response team two years ago and then didn’t replace them.” The claim came from a series of tweets posted by Judd Legum, who runs Popular Information, a newsletter he describes as being about “politics and power.” Legum’s commentary was representative of sharp criticism from Democratic legislators (and some Republicans) that the Trump administration had ill-prepared the country for a pandemic even as one was looming on the horizon. Legum outlined a series of cost-cutting decisions made by the Trump administration in preceding years that had gutted the nation’s infectious disease defense infrastructure. The “pandemic response team” firing claim referred to news accounts from Spring 2018 reporting that White House officials tasked with directing a national response to a pandemic had been ousted. Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer abruptly departed from his post leading the global health security team on the National Security Council in May 2018 amid a reorganization of the council by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Ziemer’s team was disbanded. Tom Bossert, whom the Washington Post reported “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks,” had been fired one month prior. It’s thus true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it, eliminating Ziemer’s position and reassigning others, although Bolton was the executive at the top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time. Legum stated in a follow-up tweet that “Trump also cut funding for the CDC, forcing the CDC to cancel its efforts to help countries prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics in 39 of 49 countries in 2018. Among the countries abandoned? China.” That was partly true, according to 2018 news reports stating that funding for the CDC’s global disease outbreak prevention efforts had been reduced by 80%, including funding for the agency’s efforts in China. But that was the result of the anticipated depletion of previously allotted funding, not a direct cut by the Trump administration. And as the CDC told FactCheck.org, the cuts were ultimately avoided because Congress provided other funding.

The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs.