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: The doctors went on strike on Sept.3 to protest against poor wages, in some cases less than US$100 a month. President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government, which responded to the job boycott by firing 448 doctors and pursuing disciplinary action against more than 1,000 others, on Thursday offered to reinstate them if they returned to work within 48 hours. Zimbabwe is experiencing its worst economic crisis in a decade that has seen resurgent inflation soaring to three-digit levels, eroding salaries and bringing back bitter memories of the hyperinflation era of a decade ago. According to the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association (ZHDA), the last wage offer by the government would see the doctors earning a total package, including allowances, of Z$3,900 (about US$240) per month. “Sadly, the moratorium has come without a new offer on the table having been communicated to us,” ZHDA said, explaining its rejection of the offer. The strike by junior and middle-level doctors has paralyzed state hospitals, used by Zimbabwe’s poor majority. Even before the strike, the hospitals had already been struggling with shortages of drugs and other basic products. Critics say President Emmerson Mnangagwa has failed to keep promises he made in last year’s election campaign to revive the economy by pushing through reforms, attracting foreign investment and rebuilding collapsing infrastructure. On Thursday Parirenyatwa Hospital, the country’s biggest, was deserted, with only a handful of desperate patients being attended to by nurses. Sheila Muzanenhamo, who lives in one of Harare’s poorest townships, Epworth, grimaced as she explained how she had been turned away from the hospital because there was no doctor to attend to her. “I have been here since dawn, hoping to get assistance but the nurses said they could not help me,” said Muzanenhamo. “They told me to go to private doctors, but I have no money to pay for that.” Claim: Fired Zimbabwe state doctors reject offer to return to work.

SOLUTION: Zimbabwe state doctors who were fired for going on strike have rejected a government offer to return to work, their union said on Friday.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: Given that the premise of the story is explaining there is no benefit to taking these supplements, we’ll rate this N/A. That said, it would have been interesting to explore the cost-savings for people if they decide to stop buying calcium and vitamin D. The story does a good job of letting readers know that there was no statistically significant benefit to taking calcium and vitamin D, based on the researchers’ systematic review of the evidence. The story cited one instance of harms, saying: “… for people who started out with at least 20 nanograms of vitamin D per milliliter of blood, adding more vitamin D through supplements was associated with a greater risk of hip fractures.” We also wanted to see a mention of potential harms of calcium, such as kidney stones. Another common side effect is excess gas and one potential harm of high doses is cardiovascular complications such as heart attack. The story hits some key points including the number of studies reviewed, potential confounding factors accounted for, and details about selection criteria. For instance, women on hormone replacement therapy, for whom there’s evidence for the benefits of supplementation were excluded from the current analysis. That’s a key point for postmenopausal women reading the story. Also the story makes clear that this study examined older adults who live in their own homes and therefore does not apply to older adults who live in nursing homes or similar institutions. Well done. The story does not engage in disease-mongering. It correctly states the risk of broken bones in people over age 50 and the risk of death in older people who break a hip. This story will also help reduce over-treatment and over-medicating of older adults, which is common. The only source quoted for the article is the study itself. There are no quotes from independent expert sources. The story references getting calcium from one’s diet and getting vitamin D from sun exposure. We think it’s safe to presume that readers know that vitamin and mineral supplements are widely available. The story does a good job of making clear previous claims of benefit from calcium and vitamin D supplementation. This large meta-analysis will provide some clarity of the questions surrounding using these supplements for bone health. The story does not appear to rely on a news release. Claim: Do you take calcium and vitamin D to protect your bones? A new study says it doesn't help

SOLUTION: Getty Images Reporting on a large review study, this Los Angeles Times article walks readers through the conflicting advice and evidence about calcium and vitamin D supplements. Both compounds play roles in bone health and the routinely accepted claim is that supplementation can help prevent bone breaks in older people. This new meta-analysis shows that claim is not supported by evidence: not for calcium pills, vitamin D pills, or the two in combination. The story is well-done on several points, particularly on explaining how this study worked and what it found. The story would have been stronger if it had included some commentary from experts in the field who were not associated with the study to help put this recent, apparently strong finding, into context for readers. More than two million so-called fragility fractures — breaks that wouldn’t happen in a younger person, often related to the bone loss of osteoporosis–occur every year in the US. Preventing fragility means attending to bone health, which currently centers around exercise and getting enough calcium and vitamin D. Supplementation is an easy way to make sure a person takes in enough of the mineral and the vitamin, and yet, it’s important to understand whether routine supplementation actually prevents bone breaks.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: In April 2019, several news articles from around the world reported that the Australian government had a plan to cull millions of feral cats using poisoned sausages dropped by air. CBS News published an article with the headline “Australia is Trying to Kill Millions of Stray Cats by Airdropping Poisoned Sausages,” which went on to report that: “The Australian government wants to kill two million feral cats by next year — and it wants to do it by airdropping poisonous sausages. There are currently an estimated 2 to 6 million free-roaming cats across the country, and officials say they are threatening native wildlife populations.”  On 29 April, the UK Independent published an article with the headline “Australia Plans to Kill Millions of Feral Cats by Airdropping Sausages Laced With Poison” and on 26 April CNN reported that: “Australia is at war — with feral cats. By 2020, the government wants to kill two million free roaming cats, a large chunk of the total feral cat population, which is estimated to be between 2 and 6 million.” We received multiple inquiries from readers about the accuracy of these reports, and in particular about the claim that the primary or exclusive culling method was to be sausages laced with poison. The Australian government has indeed begun an initiative aimed at culling millions of feral cats, which they have described as “one of the greatest threats to Australia’s land-based mammals” and blamed for driving some species into extinction. However, the culling project was first announced in 2015 and was already well underway when reports happened to emerge about it in April 2019. In 2015, Australia’s government launched the Threatened Species Strategy. One of its four key strategies related to feral cats, and the policy outlined a target of culling 2 million such cats by the year 2020 and eradicating feral cats entirely from five of Australia’s islands, among other goals. A government report launching the initiative stated that: “The scientific evidence is unequivocal that feral cats are one of the greatest threats to Australia’s land-based mammals. They have been a major contributor to the extinction of at least 27 mammals since they were first introduced to Australia. Today, they imperil at least 142 species or more than one third of our threatened mammals, reptiles, frogs and birds. As an extinction driver for so many of our native animals, and a threat that has been relatively neglected in the past, tackling the threat of feral cats is the highest priority of this Action Plan.” By the end of 2016, researchers from RMIT University in Melbourne reported that an estimated 211,000 feral cats had been culled as part of the initiative, but also estimated that 83 percent of those animals had been shot, rather than poisoned. More up-to-date figures were not included in the progress report relating to the period ending in December 2017. In order to achieve the goal of eradicating 2 million feral cats, the first action listed by the government was the “development and deployment of Curiosity, the new humane feral cat bait.” Australia’s Department of Environment and Energy had spent years developing and testing Curiosity, a new form of sausage bait that, according to the government, is less likely than existing baits to be consumed by other animals: The Curiosity bait for feral cats has been a long-term $5.1 million project to develop a humane, broad-scale toxic bait to control feral cats in conservation areas. The Curiosity bait for feral cats comprises a small meat-based sausage containing a small hard plastic pellet encapsulating a humane toxin. Cats do not have molar teeth and tend to chew their food less so they may swallow portions of the sausage including the pellet. Most Australian native animals nibble and chew their food and are likely to reject the pellet. The pellet is designed to dissolve in the cat’s stomach and deliver a rapid dose of the toxin. The Curiosity bait for feral cats uses a new humane toxin called para-aminopropiophenone, or PAPP, which is considered best-practice world-wide. In brief, the toxicant, PAPP, converts the animal’s red blood cells to a form that cannot carry oxygen, causing death through oxygen starvation to the brain and other vital organs. It is considered to be humane and death takes minutes to hours. The RSPCA [Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] have indicated that PAPP is a clear improvement in humaneness over previous toxins. The mode of action means that secondary poisoning of any other animals from consuming a carcass of a cat that ate a Curiosity bait containing PAPP is much less likely than when using previously employed toxins. (Although the excerpt serves to explain the Australian government’s reasoning in favoring the Curiosity bait, it does contain a factual error: cats do have molar teeth, albeit only two, and they are used for tearing flesh rather than grinding, so the overall claim that cats tend to chew less and swallow more readily than other animals, appears to stand). In government-commissioned field trials of Curiosity, the bait has been distributed on the ground in target areas using both aircraft and ground vehicles. As of April 2019, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority was still assessing the PAPP variant of Curiosity. But the national government appeared confident it would be registered as a pest-control product, because in November 2018 the Department of the Environment and Energy solicited applications for a commercial partner to manufacture and sell the bait. Although no significant developments in relation to the culling program took place in the spring of 2019, interest in the initiative was revived by a 25 April article published by The New York Times, which bore the headline “Australia is Deadly Serious About Killing Millions of Cats,” and mentioned the existing use of another kind of sausage-borne cat bait containing the active ingredient sodium fluoroacetate, known as “1080.”  In February 2019, a group of Australian scientists questioned the basis of the government’s target of culling 2 million feral cats by 2020, in part saying the government had not given a clear metric or scientific rationale for that number; had failed to indicate how or whether the cull would lower the overall population of feral cats (given the rapid rates at which they reproduce) and also increase the populations of endangered species; and because estimates vary widely over how many feral cats actually live in Australia. In a paper published in the journal Conservation Letters, the researchers wrote: Claim: The Australian government's Threatened Species Strategy has as one of its aims the culling of 2 million feral cats by 2020, largely using a sausage bait carrying a lethal toxin. 

SOLUTION:
“The focus on killing cats runs the risk of distracting attention away from other threats to biodiversity, most prominent of which is widespread, ongoing habitat loss, which has been largely overlooked in the Threatened Species Strategy. The culling target is a highly visible symbol of a broader campaign around feral cat research and management in Australia, rather than a direct indicator of conservation action and success. We are concerned that progress toward the 2 million target could be misinterpreted as progress toward conserving threatened species, when the link between the two is not clear.”