TASK DEFINITION: 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.
PROBLEM: Farmers from southern Italy presenting their wares at a London food festival this week say their hemp pasta, oil and bread won’t get you high, but do provide a healthy, tasty alternative to the traditional, wheat variety. “Hemp food is truly organic,” said Marzio Ilario Fiore, 30, whose farm in the Molise region produces hemp oil and flour. “Hemp requires no pesticides, no fertilizers, and only moderate amounts of water.”    Cannabis is most often associated with the psychoactive effects of marijuana, but some strains of the plant can also be cultivated for food. High-growing varieties called hemp, which contain negligible levels of the drug THC, have long been grown to produce food and other products. Italy lifted a ban on hemp cultivation in 1998. “My crop gets regularly checked by Italian police inspectors to ensure that THC is within the legal limit,” said Fiore, one of some 200 Italian food artisans in London for the three-day Bellavita (“Beautiful Life”) Expo. As well as spaghetti made from hemp flour, he provided tastings of hemp taralli - hard savory biscuits from southern Italy - and hemp oil, which has a distinctive, nutty flavor. Hemp seeds are one of the richest sources of vegetarian protein, with high concentrations of omega fatty acids, growers say. While most pasta makers have yet to venture into the hemp market, they are finding new ways to present the staple, patenting new pasta shapes and sizes. La Molisana, for example, showed off its square-shaped variety of spaghetti, the so-called ‘spaghetto quadrato’. Wine makers, too, are looking for ways to differentiate their products, with one producer aging its bottles on the sea bed for up to a year before selling them, encrusted with algae. “The lack of light and constant temperature combined with the ‘massage’ effect of the tides produces great results,” said Gianluca Grilli, co-founder of the Tenuta del Paguro which won Bellavita’s best beverage business award, worth 10,000 euros. Tenuta del Paguro uses the wreck of the Paguro oil drilling platform, which sank in the Adriatic Sea in 1965, to store its wine underwater. The three reds and one white are produced in Riolo Terme, near Ravenna, in central Italy, before being sent to mature under the waves. The bottles sell in Italy for 100-150 euros  ($110-160) each, Grilli said. Bellavita offered a maze of hanging salami and cheese from across Italy, including provolone from the milk of the Agerolese cow, a protected crossbreed from the south, as well as cookies flavored with lavender and rosewood extract called ‘Furezze’, from the Venetian dialect word ‘sfureso’, meaning delicacy.

SOLUTION: High on the menu: cannabis spaghetti features at Italian foodfest.

PROBLEM: From January to May, 42 cases of syphilis, a reportable sexually transmitted disease, were identified. That’s an increase compared with the past five years, when an average of 20 cases were reported during those months. Health officials say between 2012 and 2016, there were on average about 80 total cases per year of the disease reported in New Hampshire, with 2016 having the highest number of 104 cases reported for the entire year. They say the outbreak in New Hampshire is consistent with national trends. Approximately 60 percent of cases have been in Hillsborough and Rockingham counties. Dr. Benjamin Chan, state epidemiologist, says it can be cured when a person is given the right antibiotics.

SOLUTION: Health officials: Number of syphilis cases have doubled.

PROBLEM: The 52 deaths in 26 states are among the 2,409 hospitalized cases that have been reported across the nation this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Hospitalized cases have been most common in the Midwest, with some of the highest rates in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. The median age of the people who died is 52, but most people who suffered lung damage have been much younger, with half in their teens or early 20s. The outbreak appears to have started in March. The bulk of the cases occurred in August and September, but new cases are still being reported, including 118 in the past week, the CDC said. Some of the newly reported illnesses happened more than a month ago but were only recently reported. However, 43 percent of the latest batch of cases were people hospitalized since Nov. 17, the agency said. Most patients have said they vaped products containing THC, the ingredient that produces a high in marijuana. CDC officials have gradually come to focus their investigation on black-market THC cartridges. Last month, CDC officials said they had narrowed in on a culprit — a chemical compound called vitamin E acetate that has been commonly found in the lungs of sick patients and in the products they vaped. It’s a thickening agent that’s been added to illicit THC vaping liquids. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

SOLUTION:
Vaping illness death count surpasses 50 in US.