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.
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Question: Paragraph: Analysis of powdered samples drilled out from inside an ancient and once water-soaked rock at the rover’s Gale Crater landing site show clays, sulfates and other minerals that are all key to life, scientists told reporters at NASA headquarters in Washington and on a conference call on Tuesday. The water that once flowed through the area, known as Yellowknife Bay, was likely drinkable, said Curiosity’s lead scientist John Grotzinger, who is with the California Institute of Technology. The analysis stopped short of a confirmation of organics, which are key to most Earth-like life. But with 17 months left in the rover’s primary mission, scientists said they expect to delve further into that question. Science operations currently are suspended because of a computer glitch, which is expected to be resolved this week. Whether or not Mars has or ever had life, it should have at one time at least had organic compounds delivered to its surface by organic-rich comets and asteroids. Finding places where the organics could have been preserved, however, is a much trickier prospect than finding the environmental niches and chemistry needed to support life, scientists said. In May, following a one-month interruption of radio communications caused by the positions of Earth and Mars, scientists plan to drill a second hole into the Gale Crater rock to look for organic compounds. “If there was organic material there, it could have been preserved,” said David Blake, principal investigator for Curiosity’s Chemistry and Mineralogy, or CheMin, experiment. A lack of organics, however, would not rule out the Yellowknife Bay site as suitable for life, scientists added. “You don’t have to have carbon present in a geological environment that’s habitable in order to have microbial metabolism occur,” Grotzinger said. Some micro-organisms on Earth, for example, can feed on inorganic compounds, such as what are found inside rocks. “There does need to be a source of carbon somewhere, but if it’s just CO2 (carbon dioxide), you can have chemoautotrophic organisms that literally feed on rocks and they will metabolize and generate organic compounds based on that carbon,” Grotzinger said. Analysis shows the Gale Crater rock contains carbon dioxide, in addition to hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur and nitrogen. Carbon dioxide provides a key ingredient in the building blocks for life, all of which have now been found in the Mars rock sample, Grotzinger said. The $2.5 billion, nuclear-powered Curiosity rover landed inside the giant Gale Crater impact basin, located near the Martian equator, on August 6 for a two-year mission. Scientists were drawn to the area because of a three-mile (5-km) mountain of sediment, called Mount Sharp, rising from the crater floor. But shortly after the rover’s landing, the team decided to first explore the Yellowknife Bay area, located in the opposite direction from Mount Sharp. Observations from Mars orbiters showed three different types of terrain coming together in Yellowknife Bay, plus a low elevation, all hints that water could have once flowed and pooled on the surface. That hunch was verified with the first chemical analysis of material drilled out from inside what appears to be a slab of bedrock, named John Klein, after a mission manager who died in 2011. Scientists don’t know the rock’s age, nor how it formed. They suspect, however, that the John Klein rock is at least 3 billion years old and that it spent enough time in non-acidic and not-too-salty water for various telltale clays and minerals to form. “This rock, quite frankly, looks like a typical thing that we would get on Earth,” Grotzinger said. “The key thing here is this is an environment that microbes could have lived in and maybe even prospered in.”  The habitable conditions in Yellowknife Bay appear to roughly coincide within a couple of hundred million years of the first evidence for life on Earth. “On Earth, finding organics in very, very ancient rocks is a difficult proposition,” said Paul Mahaffy, principal investigator for Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, instrument. Finding organics on Mars may be even more challenging. Without much protection from an atmosphere, ultraviolet and cosmic radiation can destroy organics. Mars also apparently is covered with chemicals, known as perchlorates, that consume organics. “The search for organic carbon is an issue for this mission and you want to do this as deliberately as possible. You don’t just want to wander around and try stuff out,” Grotzinger said. Knowing that Mars at least had the ingredients for life, however, makes the search for organics more viable. “This is not a simple problem, but I think the mission is up to it and we’re really excited to get started on that now,” Grotzinger said. Claim: Mars had the right stuff for life, scientists find.

Answer: Seven months after NASA’s rover Curiosity landed on Mars to assess if the planet most like Earth had the ingredients for life, scientists have their answer: Yes.


Question: Paragraph: "Former state Rep. Nicholas Gorham made a surprising claim last month in a commentary in The Providence Journal. ""The fact is that we have a General Assembly that has no explicit constitutional authority to impose income, sales, estate and the myriad of other taxes upon us, yet it taxes the people as if there were no limitations on its authority to tax the people,"" he wrote in the piece, published Dec. 30. The legislature can’t legally levy taxes? This called for a PolitiFact audit. First, a history lesson. When King Charles II granted a royal charter to the colony in 1663, the document, preserved in a metal and glass case at the State House, established ""a form of pure government by an elected assembly presided over by a nearly powerless, elected governor,"" according to an account on the General Assembly’s website. The Assembly’s supremacy continued when Rhode Island became a state, and was reaffirmed in the state’s first Constitution, adopted in 1842. Article VI, Section 10 spelled it out, saying ""the General Assembly shall continue to exercise the powers it has heretofore exercised, unless prohibited in this Constitution."" The state Supreme Court consistently interpreted that to mean the power of the General Assembly was unlimited unless authority to do something was specifically given to another branch of government. Things changed in 2004, when the General Assembly, responding to pressure from good government groups, passed ""separation of powers"" legislation, a set of proposed amendments to the state Constitution. The amendments made it clear the government is divided into three separate branches, banned legislators from serving on any executive-branch boards or commissions, and gave the governor power to appoint members of agency boards. And they eliminated the catch-all Section 10. Voters approved the amendments 2-to-1. So is Gorham right that, because of 2004 vote, the General Assembly lost its ""explicit"" authority to tax? On a literal level, yes. The only reference to setting taxes in the current Constitution is a section that says that the Assembly can set the manner in which property valuations are conducted. But legal experts say on a practical level, implicit can be as good as explicit. Former state Supreme Court Justice Robert G. Flanders Jr., who stepped down in early 2004, says that although much was changed by the 2004 amendments, much abides. From the days of Parliament and the English kings, he said, the power to levy taxes has rested in the legislative body, a legal tradition that was carried on in England’s colonies in the Americas. ""Inherent in the legislative power is the power to tax,"" Flanders said. ""You wouldn’t need an explicit grant."" Richard Raspallo, legal counsel to House Majority Leader Nicholas A. Mattiello, agreed, saying there are several examples of legislative power that is assumed despite a lack of specific language in the Constitution. ""Where is it explicitly stated in the Constitution that the General Assembly has the authority to require Rhode Island citizens to follow traffic rules, or have a license, or grant people the right to marry, or require people to have certain educational standards in order to work in certain fields?"" he said. ""At some point, the General Assembly has been granted power by the people to legislate for the common good,"" he said. ""That includes the imposition of taxes to pay for the welfare of the citizenry."" Gorham indirectly acknowledged that, but said the ambiguity shows the need for a state constitutional convention to settle the matter definitively. (Voters will be asked in November whether a convention should be convened.) As he wrote in his commentary: ""Of course, I plan to pay my taxes, but you really have to wonder sometimes. If the people really wanted to get taxes — and, yes, borrowing — under control and on the people’s terms, the Constitution, just the way it is, would be a great place to start. Let the revolution begin!"" Our ruling Nicholas Gorham said the Rhode Island General Assembly ‘‘has no explicit constitutional authority’’ to levy taxes. History tells us he’s right. Had he suggested that the lack of explicit language meant no one had to pay taxes, we’d view his claim in a far different light. But he didn’t, so we rule it . (If you hear a claim you'd like us to check, email us at [email protected] And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.)" Claim: "The General Assembly ""has no explicit constitutional authority to impose income, sales, estate and the myriad of other taxes upon us."

Answer: Nicholas Gorham said the Rhode Island General Assembly ‘‘has no explicit constitutional authority’’ to levy taxes. History tells us he’s right. Had he suggested that the lack of explicit language meant no one had to pay taxes, we’d view his claim in a far different light. But he didn’t, so we rule it True. (If you hear a claim you'd like us to check, email us at [email protected] And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.)


Question: 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.

Answer:
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.