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 total number of infections climbed to 41,495. "In the past 24 hours we had 117 new deaths and 3,186 new confirmed cases of people infected with the coronavirus," Kianush Jahanpur told state TV, calling on Iranians to stay at home. Iran has had an intercity travel ban since Thursday and the government has extended the closure of universities and schools and the suspension of all cultural, religious and sports events. "If necessary, we might impose tougher measures as our priority is the nation's safety and health," said Iran's first Vice President, Eshaq Jahangiri, according to state TV. Iran last week warned of a surge of cases as many Iranians ignored calls to avoid traveling for Persian New Year holidays that started on March 20. To stem the spread of the virus in crowded jails, Iran's judiciary on Sunday extended furloughs for 100,000 prisoners. On March 17, Iran said it had freed about 85,000 people from jail temporarily, including political prisoners. Iranian media on Monday, citing the governor of Iran's Fars province, Enayatollah Rahimi, reported that prisoners at one prison "broke cameras and caused other damage in two sections of the prison where violent criminals are kept". The state news agency IRNA said similar riots had erupted in other prisons since March 20. Families have called for the release of all prisoners. Claim: Iran plans tougher restrictions as coronavirus toll rises.

SOLUTION: Iran had 117 new coronavirus deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 2,757, a health ministry spokesman said on Monday, prompting the Middle East's worst hit country to consider tougher curbs on movement.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: The release does not mention cost. The FDA evaluates drugs without consideration of cost, so it's understandable that they wouldn't comment on it and that's why we're rating this Not Applicable. But let's be real here: The value of a new drug is a function not just of how well it works, but its cost-effectiveness. So we look forward to the day when any news release about a new drug even one from the FDA will include some mention of cost in its message. This release gives the preliminary results from a single study of 310 patients. Because the drug is experimental, long-term results haven't been studied. Of the 310 patients enrolled in the lone trial upon which the approval is based, 14.8 percent showed some shrinkage of tumors during the assessment period lasting from 2.1 to about 13.8 months. For a subset of patients who were classified as having a positive response to PD-L1 expression, the response was 26 percent. As noted above, tumor shrinkage doesn't always lead to improvements in survival or quality of life. It is a surrogate endpoint a substitute for the main outcome which is survival. Although this drug looks promising, to be fully transparent about its benefits as currently known, the release should have explained this. As noted in the "Summary," another larger study is underway to assess the drug's impact on extending life and improving quality of life. The release includes a description of side effects of this treatment. The most common ones included fatigue, decreased appetite, nausea, urinary tract infection, fever (pyrexia) and constipation. The release also mentions that patients taking the drug have an increased risk of infection and serious side effects that are "immune-mediated." We would have liked a bit more context on what this term means for patients. The release outlines that this is the very first clinical trial of this compound for safety and efficacy, and under which regulatory paths the drug was assessed, including "breakthrough therapy designation, priority review status and accelerated approval." We're giving this release the benefit of the doubt and rating it Satisfactory for its bare bones description of the trial (and since we already addressed the lack of long-term survival data in the "Benefits" section.) As it stands, the results from the small trial were preliminary and short-term and did not reflect long-term survival. We would have liked to see a reference or link to the completed trial where one could look at the results to assess independently or learn more about the outcomes. We think the release should have provided more data on the patient demographics, the treatment regimen (dosing amount and schedule) as well as the range in tumor reduction. There is no disease mongering. This release describes the approval of a new drug by a regulatory agency, but we'd still like to know who sponsored the study that's the basis for the approval. It's not enough to state who markets the drug. The release does not give us very much information about alternatives. These patients had already received other therapy and their cancer had recurred, so it is implied that they had no other alternatives. But this isn't stated very clearly. We can assume (and it seems evident) that the platinum-based therapy that the patients didn't respond to initially is the usual treatment. The FDA's approval of a drug clears the way for the drug sponsor to scale up production and begin marketing and selling the product. (The FDA doesn't state this explicitly but it can be inferred.) A NYT article said the drug would be available in about two months. The release clearly states this product is first of its kind for this type of cancer. We found no unjustifiable language. Claim: FDA approves new, targeted treatment for bladder cancer

SOLUTION: The Food and Drug Administration approved a new immunotherapy drug that acts as a "checkpoint" inhibitor in patients whose bladder cancer (urothelial carcinoma) has not responded to other chemotherapy. The drug, atezolizumab (marketed as Tecentriq), showed effectiveness in about 14 percent of 310 patients in a very preliminary study. The release notes that the trial measured tumor shrinkage as the main outcome. It didn't note, as a NYT article did, and important for this type of trial, that it is unknown whether the treatment makes a difference in survival. A larger study is being done to examine this. Whether it makes a difference in quality of life is also important and will presumably be examined in the larger trial. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates 76,960 new cases of bladder cancer and 16,390 deaths from this disease in 2016. This approval of a new drug for treating bladder cancer is part of a wider area of research into immunotherapy, in which drugs target mechanisms of the human immune response. Patients with the PD-L1 protein highly expressed in their tumors appear to be responding best to the drug. This drug is an example of targeted chemotherapy which is becoming more important as treatments can be fine-tuned to the cancers of individual patients. In patients with intractable cancers, immunotherapy appears to offer some new hope while also bringing sobering questions about affordability and disparity of access by income. The drugs are typically very expensive with some estimates putting the treatment cost for a single patient as high as $1 million. When the FDA gives a compound a "breakthrough" designation, some physicians and patients can misunderstand what that means. That's a topic recently explored in this post.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: "Washington and the nation were captivated a week ago by the controversy over Shirley Sherrod, a once-obscure U.S. Agriculture Department official who became a villain, and then a victim, over the course of 24 hours. Because the story began and ended so quickly, we were unable to fact-check it at the time, but here's a recap of what happened. Andrew Breitbart, a conservative provocateur, started things off July 19, 2010, when he posted a video on one of his websites, BigGovernment.com, that seemed to show Sherrod, who is black, telling an NAACP audience that she had discriminated against a white farmer. After conservative bloggers raised an outcry about Sherrod's apparent revelation, the NAACP moved to condemn Sherrod, and senior Agriculture Department officials quickly pressured Sherrod to resign. But within hours, it came out that the video had been selectively edited, and the uncut version made clear that Sherrod had actually been telling the story about the white farmer to explain how she had overcome her own prejudices. She ended up helping save the family's farm, and the farmer and his wife took to the airwaves to defend Sherrod. The Agriculture Department then reversed itself, with Secretary Tom Vilsack making a heartfelt apology and asking Sherrod to return to the department. Sherrod also received a personal call from President Barack Obama. This whirlwind of charges and counter-charges prompted a round of soul-searching by most of those involved in the episode, including those in government, advocacy groups, the blogosphere and the media. One question that quickly emerged was how culpable Fox News was. In the past, Fox news commentators have often beaten the drum on stories critical of Democrats, liberals and the Obama Administration, so to some who were sympathetic to Sherrod, Fox seemed like a plausible villain. They took as evidence a July 20, 2010, CNN interview with Sherrod, in which she explained how, while driving through Georgia, she was forced out by Cheryl Cook, the deputy undersecretary. When Cook called her cell phone, Sherrod recalled telling Cook, ""'Cheryl, I've got a three-and-a-half-hour ride to get into Athens.' She called me a second time, (saying,) 'Where are you now?' I said, 'I'm just going through Atlanta.' She called me again and I said, 'I'm at least 45 minutes to an hour from Athens. She said, 'Well, Shirley, they want you to pull over to the side of the road and do it (formally resign), because you're going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.'"" Beck, of course, is an outspoken conservative commentator with popular talk show on Fox. The question of Fox's role came up during the July 25, 2010, edition of ABC's This Week. Host Jake Tapper cited a commentary by Josh Marshall of the liberal website Talking Points Memo. ""Breitbart got a piece of video he knew nothing about and published it with a central claim that he either made up or made no attempt to verify,"" Tapper quoted Marshall as writing. ""To use terminology of infectious disease, Fox was the primary vector of this story. And to the best of my knowledge, there's been not only no disciplining of anyone in the newsroom, but as far as I can see, no retraction, apology, or even discussion of their primary role in an obvious smear. This is a journalistic felony, really, the worst kind of thing that journalists can ever do, a reality only compounded by the fact that they refuse to admit not only culpability but even that they did anything wrong."" For a reaction, Tapper turned to Stephen Hayes, a senior writer with the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, who was a member of the show's roundtable that week. ""Stephen, do you think that ... liberals are unfairly using this to try to discredit conservative journalists?"" Hayes responded, ""Yes, of course, they are. Look, the timeline doesn't work. I mean ... Howard Kurtz, at CNN and the Washington Post wrote that the timeline simply doesn't work. She actually resigned before or was forced to retire before anybody on Fox said a word about this."" We thought it would be worthwhile to check the transcripts and see whether it's correct that Sherrod ""actually resigned before or was forced to retire before anybody on Fox said a word about this."" The earliest on-air comment we could find came the toward the end of the 8 p.m. hour, during an airing of The O'Reilly Factor, a talk show hosted by pugnaciously conservative host Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly told viewers that ""speaking at an NAACP event in March, Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod was caught on tape saying something very disturbing. Seems a white farmer in Georgia had requested government assistance from Ms. Sherrod."" He then showed a clip of Sherrod saying, ""I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland. And here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So I didn't give him the full force of what I could do."" When the clip ended, O'Reilly said, ""Wow. Well, that is simply unacceptable. And Ms. Sherrod must resign immediately. The federal government cannot have skin color deciding any assistance. We are requesting an explanation from the agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, and will keep you posted. By the way, the full transcript of Ms. Sherrod's remarks is posted on BigGovernment.com."" While it's safe to assume that O'Reilly was unaware of Sherrod's ouster at the time he aired those comments -- why would he call for her ouster if it had already happened? -- his producers apparently found out as the segment was underway, because as O'Reilly was speaking, Fox aired an on-screen notice that said, ""Sec. Vilsack has accepted Sherrod's resignation."" A few minutes later, during the 9 p.m. hour of Fox, O'Reilly's fellow conservative host, Sean Hannity, began his show with an alert that Sherrod had resigned. So, based on the Fox transcripts as well as Sherrod's own account in the CNN interview, Hayes appears to be correct that Sherrod ""was forced to resign before anybody on Fox said a word about this."" Indeed, Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post's media critic, reported that ""after a news meeting Monday afternoon (July 19), an e-mail directive was sent to the news staff in which Fox Senior Vice President Michael Clemente said, 'Let's take our time and get the facts straight on this story. Can we get confirmation and comments from Sherrod before going on-air. Let's make sure we do this right.'"" But we think it's worth mentioning two additional points. First, it's clear from O'Reilly's on-air comment that at least one Fox commentator was preparing to make hay over the Sherrod controversy before she resigned -- it's just that the Agriculture Department beat Fox to the punch by ousting her first. If officials above Sherrod had spent more time reviewing her case instead of forcing her to the side of the road, O'Reilly at least, and possibly other Fox hosts, were ready to take up the call for her to be ousted. Second, Fox's television network may not have discussed Sherrod before she was ousted, but there's evidence that two of its web affiliates did mention the story. Media Matters for America -- a liberal group that tracks alleged media bias and regularly spars with both Fox and Breitbart -- located a FoxNews.com story posted around noon on July 19 that began, ""Days after the NAACP clashed with Tea Party members over allegations of racism, a video has surfaced showing an Agriculture Department official regaling an NAACP audience with a story about how she withheld help to a white farmer facing bankruptcy."" Media Matters wrote that FoxNews.com credited BigGovernment.com with posting the video, and added that ""FoxNews.com is seeking a response from both the NAACP and the USDA."" While Media Matters said that the article is no longer available on FoxNews.com, it provided a screenshot. Not long after that post went up at FoxNews.com, Media Matters said, Fox Nation -- an online community for news and commentary that's affiliated with Fox News -- posted the link to the Sherrod clip on BigGovernment.com under the headline, ""Caught on Tape: Obama Official Discriminates Against White Farmer."" All told, it seems clear to us that the USDA ousted Sherrod in order to forestall the possibility that commentators on Fox's cable channel would start calling for her resignation, not because Fox commentators had actually begun to do so. Still, two Fox web affiliates mentioned the controversy before Sherrod's ouster, and the fact that O'Reilly called for her resignation without knowing that she was already out of a job suggests that Fox was already beginning to pounce. On balance, these two caveats persuade us to drop Hayes' otherwise accurate statement that Shirley Sherrod ""was forced to resign before anybody on Fox said a word about this"" by a notch to ." Claim: "Shirley Sherrod ""was forced to resign before anybody on Fox said a word about this."

SOLUTION:
Fox News handling Sherrod story defended by 'Weekly Standard's' Stephen Hayes