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: An image graphic purportedly featuring an excerpt from a speech President John F. Kennedy was scheduled to deliver on the day that he was assassinated was recirculated on social media in November 2018:  These lines were part of a speech JFK was slated to make to the Texas Democratic State Committee in the Municipal Auditorium in Austin, Texas, on the evening of 22 November 1963. President Kennedy never had the opportunity to deliver that speech, however, as he was assassinated earlier that day while his motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. A transcript of this undelivered speech is available via the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. The excerpt included in this meme comes from the penultimate paragraph of that text: Finally, I said in Lubbock in 1960, as I said in every other speech in this State, that if Lyndon Johnson and I were elected, we would get this country moving again. That pledge has been fulfilled. In nearly every field of national activity, this country is moving again — and Texas is moving with it. From public works to public health, wherever Government programs operate, the past 3 years have seen a new burst of action and progress — in Texas and all over America. We have stepped up the fight against crime and slums and poverty in our cities, against the pollution of our streams, against unemployment in our industry, and against waste in the Federal Government. We have built hospitals and clinics and nursing homes. We have launched a broad new attack on mental illness and mental retardation. We have initiated the training of more physicians and dentists. We have provided 4 times as much housing for our elderly citizens, and we have increased benefits for those on social security. Almost everywhere we look, the story is the same. In Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, in the councils of the world and in the jungles of far-off nations, there is now renewed confidence in our country and our convictions. For this country is moving and it must not stop. It cannot stop. For this is a time for courage and a time for challenge. Neither conformity nor complacency will do. Neither the fanatics nor the faint-hearted are needed. And our duty as a party is not to our party alone, but to the Nation, and, indeed, to all mankind. Our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace and freedom. So let us not be petty when our cause is so great. Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our Nation’s future is at stake. Let us stand together with renewed confidence in our cause–united in our heritage of the past and our hopes for the future — and determined that this land we love shall lead all mankind into new frontiers of peace and abundance. Kennedy was expected to deliver two speeches in Texas on the day that he was assassinated. The other, which was scheduled to take place at the Trade Mart in Dallas, was “recreated” by the Times of London and the creative Irish agency Rothco in March 2018: It took eight weeks to bring to life the 2,590 words John F Kennedy never got to speak. Sound engineers pulled 116,777 sound units from 831 of his speeches and radio addresses. These units were then split in half and analysed for pitch and energy. The half units, known as phones, were each about 0.04 seconds long and had to be tested next to each other to ensure that they did not clash. The W sound in weapons, for example, is not the same as the W sound in words. A portion of “JFK Unsilenced” recreation can be glimpsed below: Claim: "A passage from a speech JFK was supposed to deliver on the day he was assassinated stated that ""our duty as a party is not to our party alone, but to the Nation, and, indeed, to all mankind."

SOLUTION: The words of President John F. Kennedy that the world never got to hear.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: A bottle of prescription medication rests on a counter at a pharmacy in New York December 23, 2009. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson Medical negligence cases in the United States are typically handled in civil court, with the victim or victim’s family seeking money damages from the doctor. In the case of Jackson’s doctor, Conrad Murray, prosecutors allege his negligence was so extreme that he should be charged with involuntary manslaughter and punished with prison time. Fatal overdoses from prescription painkillers more than tripled to 13,800 in the United States in 1999 through 2006, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Consequently, more doctors are finding themselves in the sights of prosecutors as states like Florida and Georgia confront the growth in abuse of prescription drugs. The prosecution of doctors is seen as more effective than bringing cases against their patients. There were just over two dozen reported criminal cases against doctors for malpractice in the two decades from 1981 to 2001, according to Westlaw research by James Filkins, a doctor and lawyer who has written about the criminal prosecution of physicians. Replicating Filkins’ research, Reuters tallied around 37 reported criminal cases in the decade from 2001 to 2011, with most recent cases against doctors for over-prescribing painkillers and other controlled substances. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration information suggests a similar trend. For 2003, the agency reported 15 physician arrests that resulted in convictions. By 2008, the most recent year with comprehensive data, the number had grown to 43. While the number of criminal malpractice cases is not large, the American Medical Association has cautioned that the trend has interfered with the practice of medicine. Civil prosecutions for monetary damages were sufficient to hold doctors accountable, the organization said. In 1995, the group adopted a resolution opposing the “attempted criminalization of health care decision-making especially as represented by the current trend toward the criminalization of malpractice.”   The trend is, in part, due to an expansion in white-collar criminal law and drug control laws to include unintentional violations by doctors, said Diane Hoffmann, a law professor at the University of Maryland School of Law. Many recent cases have been brought under the Controlled Substances Act, enacted in 1970, and similar state laws. To establish guilt under the act, the prosecution must prove the physician knowingly and intentionally prescribed the medication outside “the usual course of professional practice” or not for a “legitimate medical purpose.”   Prosecutors faced this question in the much-publicized case against Anna Nicole Smith’s physician, Sandeep Kapoor, on charges of violating the controlled substances law. The case hinged on whether Kapoor believed in good faith there was a medical purpose for providing the celebrity with an array of prescription drugs that led to her overdose and death in 2007, according to his lawyer Ellyn Garofalo. The jury acquitted Kapoor last year. In the Michael Jackson case, California prosecutors are not charging Murray with violating a controlled substances law. Propofol, the anesthetic Murray is accused of giving to Jackson, is not a controlled substance. The drug, administered intravenously, is used to induce anesthesia and has rarely been abused as a narcotic. Prosecutors instead allege Murray breached the standard of care when he administered the anesthetic to Jackson at home and that his gross negligence caused the singer’s death at age 50. Murray faces up to four years in prison if convicted. Murray also faces a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Jackson’s father. The legal standards in civil and criminal negligence cases are similar. Jackson’s family and prosecutors must prove Murray deviated from accepted medical practices, although the standard for a criminal conviction is “much greater” than for civil cases, said attorney Ed Chernoff, who represents Murray. Chernoff declined to discuss the Murray case specifically. Observers said one tactic he might take is to argue Jackson was addicted to sedatives and painkillers and could have given himself the fatal dose of propofol when Murray was out of the room. Prosecutors will have to prove Murray’s conduct actually caused Jackson’s death. Florida, which has a reputation as the “epicenter” of prescription drug abuse according to state Attorney General Pam Bondi, has indicted dozens of doctors and clinic operators for unnecessarily prescribing pills. The Drug Enforcement Administration says 28 of its 226 successful convictions of doctors — around 12 percent — were in Florida. Bondi and the state’s governor have launched a strike force to address the problem and, under a new law, Florida doctors generally can no longer dispense pills at clinics. “Our marching orders are that we will not turn down a pill case coming into this office,” said state prosecutor Nick Cox. It is more efficient to pursue the source of the pills — the prescribing doctors — than patients abusing the drugs, he said. Critics say the scorched earth assault glosses over tough questions doctors face, especially physicians who treat patients with chronic pain. Because pain is subjective, doctors must rely on the accounts of patients who are sometimes addicted and seeking drugs. “Doctors are not supposed to be law enforcement agents. They’re supposed to believe their patients,” said Hoffmann, the law professor. Murray’s lawyer Chernoff said it is a mistake to prosecute doctors who are not running pill mills but legitimately trying to help their patients. He blames the trend for having a “chilling effect” on the medical profession as doctors change treatment plans out of fear of facing time in prison. Claim: More U.S. doctors facing charges over drug abuse.

SOLUTION:
Michael Jackson’s doctor, accused of killing the pop star with a powerful anesthetic, has joined a small but growing number of U.S. physicians facing criminal charges over their handling of prescription drugs.