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: LGBT advocates praised the new recommendations for giving attention to a community that is often left out of sex education policies. But some parents and conservative groups assailed the more than 700-page document as an assault on parental rights, arguing it exposes children to ideas about sexuality and gender that should be taught at home. The guidance approved Wednesday by the California State Board of Education does not require educators to teach anything. It is designed as a guide for teachers to meet state standards on health education, such as nutrition, physical activity and combating alcohol and drug abuse. But it’s the parts about sex that got the most attention during a public hearing on Wednesday. The framework tells teachers that students in kindergarten can identify as transgender and offers tips for how to talk about that, adding “the goal is not to cause confusion about the gender of the child but to develop an awareness that other expressions exist.” It gives tips for discussing masturbation with middle-schoolers, including telling them it is not physically harmful, and for discussing puberty with transgender teens that creates “an environment that is inclusive and challenges binary concepts about gender.” “As the parent of three kids, we’re on a careful trajectory here not to be introducing things as though they are endorsed in some way,” board president Linda Darling-Hammond said. But Patricia Reyes, a 45-year-old mother of six, doesn’t believe that. She traveled more than 400 miles (about 644 kilometers) from her home in Southern California to attend Wednesday’s hearing, bringing along her 4-year-old daughter, Angeline, who held a sign that read: “Protect my innocence and childhood.” “It’s just scary what they are going to be teaching. It’s pornography,” she said. “If this continues, I’m not sending them to school.” Much of the pushback focused not on the framework, but on the books it recommends students read. An earlier draft of the document suggested high schoolers read the book: “S.E.X. : The All-You-Need-to-Know Sexuality Guide to Get You Through Your Teens and Twenties.” It includes descriptions of anal sex, bondage and other sexual activity. Several parents read from the book and held it up so board members could see the pictures, which many described as “obscene.” The board responded by removing the book, plus a few others, from the guidance. “It’s important to know the board is not trying to ban books. We’re not saying that the books are bad,” board member Feliza I. Ortiz-Licon said. “But the removal will help avoid the misunderstanding that California is mandating the use of these books.” More than 200 people signed up to speak during a public hearing on Wednesday that lasted for several hours. Supporters and opponents mingled together in the lobby of the California Department of Education, where parents handed out snacks to appease their young children while waiting for their number to appear on dry-erase board telling them it was their turn to get one minute of time at the microphone. Speakers included 16-year-old Phoenix Ali Rajah, a transgender boy who said he is rarely taught information for people like him during sex education classes at his Los Angeles area high school. “I’m never taught about how to be in a relationship with gay men,” he said, adding that the “conversation with sex starts from a different place.” Michele McNutt, 49, focused on the framework’s attention to healthy relationships and consent, something she said is never too soon to teach her two daughters in public school, ages 11 and 9. “Withholding medically accurate, scientific information from them actually causes more harm and does not actually protect innocence,” she said while wearing a purple T-shirt that read “protect trans students. “If you don’t give kids accurate information about their own body ... how are they able to make good choices?” The guidance was developed with input from teachers across the state, and several spoke in favor of the recommendations on Wednesday. But not Tatyana Dzyubak, an elementary school teacher in the Sacramento area. “I shouldn’t be teaching that stuff,” she said. “That’s for parents to do.”

SOLUTION: California overhauls sex education guidance for teachers.

PROBLEM: Turkey reported its first infection just over two weeks ago. Since then, a surge in cases to 3,629 has outstripped rates in most other countries and the government has fallen short of its target to conduct 10,000 tests per day. In interviews with Reuters, experts have urged stronger stay-at-home orders and some said it was risky for Ankara to export 500,000 kits to the United States only to turn around and order a million more from China. “Our test numbers are low. We were certainly not prepared. Countries that are ready must have high test numbers,” said Sinan Adiyaman, chairman of the Turkish Medics Association (TTB). The government has said it took timely measures to delay the outbreak. But Adiyaman said Turkey was slow on some steps, including suspending sports leagues and quarantining those coming from abroad, especially the thousands returning this month from an Umrah pilgrimage. “Around 200,000 people arrived from abroad since the outbreak began, and they were just given a simple fever test and released across Turkey in an uncontrolled manner,” he said. “You cannot fight a pandemic this way.”  The coronavirus has so far killed 75 people in Turkey, an international crossroads with one of the world’s biggest airports in Istanbul. About 40,000 tests have been done including about 7,000 in the last 24 hours, suggesting Turkey is edging toward the target Health Minister Fahrettin Koca set out a week ago, but only two-thirds of the way there. South Korea, seen as the global leader, does more tests each day than Turkey’s total. (Click here here for a graphic of global tests; click here here for its global spread.) To contain the virus, Ankara has closed schools, cafes and bars, banned mass prayers, and suspended sports matches and flights. President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey, which has a population of about 83 million, would overcome the outbreak in two to three weeks. Mustafa Cankurtaran, head of geriatrics at the Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine, said his team is following the national guidelines, testing only “risky” patients with cough and fever. But next month will be critical since the outbreak will widen, he said. Earlier this week Koca said the kits sent to the United States were locally produced PCR tests for the coronavirus. He said Turkey had a monthly production capacity of 2 million tests, and added that the tests purchased from China were “rapid tests”, not PCR. The TTB’s Adiyaman said sending the test kits jeopardised the health of the public and medical personnel. “Exporting testing kits to the United States as Turkey needs them and while they need to be used here will be an unforgivable mistake,” he said. Irshad Shaikh, the World Health Organisation’s health security program Leader in Turkey, said the country now had little room for error and must test everyone who has had contact with the virus. He said, however, that the export of test kits to the United States, which he said was in a “perilous situation,” could be seen as a form of capital investment. “From now on, it’s a very slippery slope and razor-thin margin moving forward,” he said. “Now if the U.S. succeeds in vaccine development, we already have our invested cash in the bank in the form of our IOUs,” Shaikh told Reuters. Among the containment measures, Ankara said it quarantined Muslims returning from Umrah in Saudi Arabia. But Nihat Gonul, the local administrator of a village in  Sakarya province some 120 km east of Istanbul, said two returning pilgrims continued their lives normally and attended gatherings for days before authorities came to quarantine them. “There is this atmosphere of uncertainty in the village. People are scared, not sure what to think,” Gonul said.

SOLUTION: Turkey struggles to ramp up tests as outbreak reaches critical phase.

PROBLEM: Thailand, which has a tradition of using cannabis to relieve pain and fatigue, legalized marijuana for medical use and research last year to help boost agricultural income. The Government Pharmaceutical Organization (GPO) delivered  the 5-ml (0.17 fl. oz) bottles to the public health ministry to distribute to hospitals for about 4,000 registered patients, with a further 2,000 bottles to be distributed this month. “This is the outcome of legalizing medical cannabis,” said deputy prime minister Anutin Charnvirakul, who is also the public health minister. “There is no hidden agenda. We only want to support every patient.”   Thailand has an “urgent agenda” to distribute 1 million bottles of marijuana extracts within 5 to 6 months, Anutin said, adding that the GPO and other agencies will produce 200,000 bottles of the extract every month from September. The GPO will begin planting its second cannabis crop this month, aiming to expand to greenhouse cultivation by early 2020, so as to boost its oil production to 150,000 to 200,000 bottles.

SOLUTION:
Thailand unveils first batch of medical marijuana for hospital distribution.