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: The 6.6 magnitude quake hit early on Tuesday, damaging buildings, toppling power lines and triggering landslides in the central area of the Philippines’ southern island. A seven-year-old child and his 44-year old father were among those who were killed in the North Cotabato province after they were struck by a boulder, disaster officials said. Authorities said the death toll could rise further because many injured were not immediately brought to hospitals. “It was depressing to see the damage left by the earthquake,” Abril Espadera, a disaster official in North Cotabato, told Reuters, as he recalled seeing collapsed homes and demolished buildings in the province, including schools. Smaller tremors rattled nervous residents throughout the day and those who were afraid to return to their homes set up tents to shelter near school yards, Espadera said. In Magsaysay town in Davao del Sur province, rescuers were trying to recover three bodies after landslides in two separate towns swallowed parts of agricultural areas, police said. The quake, whose magnitude was initially put at 6.7 by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre, was the second powerful quake to strike Mindanao in two weeks. Authorities had flagged the risk of landslides after the 6.3 quake on Oct. 16 in central Mindanao that killed seven and injured more than 200. Earthquakes are common in the Philippines, which is on the geologically active Pacific Ring of Fire. Power cables swayed in Davao city, the home town of President Rodrigo Duterte, where people rushed to open spaces, and some fainted out of fear. The quake also triggered power cuts in nearby General Santos city, media said. Some schools in the area have suspended classes. Duterte’s office has called for calm as it mobilized all government agencies to undertake damage assessment and to coordinate rescue and relief operations.

SOLUTION: Death toll in southern Philippines earthquake rises to seven.

PROBLEM: The company said the trial will continue unchanged as per the recommendation of a data monitoring committee. The trial was testing Bristol-Myers’ drugs Opdivo and Yervoy, against Opdivo alone, in patients with advanced melanoma. The combination failed to show a statistically significant benefit in patients whose tumors had 1% or lower levels of the PD-L1 protein being targeted, the company said. The American Cancer Society estimates that about 96,480 melanoma cases will be diagnosed in the United States this year. Bristol-Myers shares were trading at $55.99 before the bell.

SOLUTION: Bristol-Myers misses main goal of late-stage skin cancer trial.

PROBLEM: "Liquid chocolate is prepared in the workshop of the ""Felicitas"" chocolate shop in Hornow, south of Berlin, December 2, 2009. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch The study, which combined the results of 42 smaller studies and was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, also found that participants had small improvements in blood vessel function and a dip in their insulin levels. A number of past studies have found that chocolate lovers seem to have lower rates of certain heart risks, such as high blood pressure. “My take-away message would be that if people like dark chocolate, then eating a little in place of other ‘treat’ foods is fine, and may be beneficial,” said study leader Lee Hooper, at Norwich Medical School in the UK. “However, the evidence is not yet good enough to suggest that we should all be doing this.”   She cautioned that the studies involved were neither large enough nor long enough to show whether eating chocolate has any effect on a person’s risk of having a heart attack or stroke. In contrast to past studies, which were largely observational and couldn’t prove cause-and-effect — that chocolate itself caused the changes — the current study focused on clinical trials, where researchers assigned people to eat chocolate or not and then watched for changes in blood pressure, cholesterol and other heart risk factors. Hooper and her team pooled data from 42 small clinical trials involving about 1,300 people and found that chocolate eaters had a few points knocked off their blood pressure readings, along with lower insulin levels and other benefits. Though it’s not clear why chocolate has this affect, it’s believed to be due to compounds known as flavonoids, which are also present in foods such as nuts, soy, tea and wine. But researchers acknowledged shortcomings in their study, including differences in the people involved in the trials — some healthy, some with chronic health problems — and different ways of testing chocolate’s effects. Some studies used cocoa drinks, some solid chocolate and some cocoa supplements. They also varied in how long people were “treated,” though most trials lasted less than six weeks. The biggest question may be whether any benefits would be worth the downside of chocolate. Based on the studies they used, Hooper’s team writes, it could take several hundred calories’ worth of chocolate to see effects on insulin and blood vessel function — and that could mean trouble for your waistline. “From a practical perspective it is premature to advise individuals to consume chocolate or cocoa to decrease their risk of cardiovascular disease,” said Alice Lichtenstein, director of the cardiovascular nutrition lab at Tufts University in Boston, who was not part of the study. For now, she added, if you enjoy a little chocolate in your life, you can probably keep doing so. Just don’t add it in the hopes of helping your heart."

SOLUTION:
Chocolate may be good for your heart: study.