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.
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Question: The nation’s disaster risk management office says 1,192 cases have been identified. More than two-thirds of cases are of the more virulent pneumonic form. The office says less than 30 percent of people who have had contact with plague patients can be traced, making it more difficult to control the spread of the disease. Plague is endemic in Madagascar. This year’s outbreak is unusual because it has reached the nation’s two largest cities, Antananarivo and Toamasina.

Answer: Madagascar’s plague deaths up to 124, island nation says.


Question: Irish-born William Campbell and Japan’s Satoshi Omura won half of the prize for discovering avermectin, a derivative of which has been used to treat hundreds of millions of people with river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, or elephantiasis. China’s Tu Youyou was awarded the other half of the prize for discovering artemisinin, a drug that has slashed malaria deaths and has become the mainstay of fighting the mosquito-borne disease. She is China’s first Nobel laureate in medicine. Some 3.4 billion people, most of them living in poor countries, are at risk of contracting the three parasitic diseases. “These two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually,” the Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said. “The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable.”  Today, the medicine ivermectin, a derivative of avermectin made by Merck & Co, is used worldwide to fight roundworm parasites, while artemisinin-based drugs from firms including Novartis and Sanofi are the main weapons against malaria. Omura and Campbell made their breakthrough in fighting parasitic worms, or helminths, after studying compounds from soil bacteria. That led to the discovery of avermectin, which was then further modified into ivermectin. The treatment is so successful that river blindness and lymphatic filariasis are now on the verge of being eradicated. Omura, 80, said the real credit for the achievement should go to the ingenuity of the Streptomyces bacteria, whose naturally occurring chemicals were so effective at killing off parasites. “I really wonder if I deserve this,” he said after learning he had won the prize. “I have done all my work depending on microbes and learning from them, so I think the microbes might almost deserve it more than I do.”  Omura is professor emeritus at Kitasato University in Japan, while Campbell is research fellow emeritus at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. “This was the work of a team of researchers so it is by no means my work, it’s our work,” said Campbell, 85, who learned of his prize in a pre-dawn phone call from Reuters that woke him at his home in North Andover, Massachusetts. “In the first decade, there were 70 authors that I co-authored papers with. That gives you some idea of the number of people involved,” he said. Tu, meanwhile, turned to a traditional Chinese herbal medicine in her hunt for a better malaria treatment, following the declining success of the older drugs chloroquine and quinine. She found that an extract from the plant Artemisia annua was sometimes effective but the results were inconsistent, so she went back to ancient literature, including a recipe from AD 350, in the search for clues. This eventually led to the isolation of artemisinin, a new class of anti-malaria drug, which was available in China before it reached the West. Tu, 84, has worked at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine since 1965. World Health Organization spokesman Gregory Hartl said the award of a Nobel prize for the discovery was a great tribute to the contribution of Chinese science in fighting malaria. “We now have drugs that kill these parasites very early in their life-cycle,” said Juleen Zierath, chair of the Nobel Committee. “They not only kill these parasites but they stop these infections from spreading.”     Death rates from malaria have plunged 60 percent in the past 15 years, although the disease still kills around half a million people a year, the vast majority of them babies and young children in the poorest parts of Africa. The 8 million Swedish crowns ($960,000) medicine prize is the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each year. Prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were first awarded in 1901 in accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel. Last year, the medicine prize went to three scientists who discovered the brain’s inner navigation system.

Answer: Beating parasites wins three scientists Nobel prize for medicine.


Question: A booming dairy farming industry, along with a surge in tourists seeking unspoiled natural attractions, has taken its toll on the country’s environment, heavily marketed as ‘100% Pure’. Particularly affected is its vast network of once pristine rivers and lakes, which are now some of the most polluted among OECD countries, according to some experts. About 60 percent of them are unfit for swimming, the Environment Ministry said in a report in 2014. Experts say water quality has deteriorated further since. In a Colmar Brunton survey conducted last month, 82 percent of respondents said they were “extremely or very” concerned about the pollution of rivers and lakes, more than any other issue including living costs, child poverty and climate change. “(New Zealanders) are extremely worried that they are losing their ability to swim, fish and gather food from their rivers, lakes and streams,” said Martin Taylor, the chief executive of Fish & Game New Zealand, a non-government agency that commissioned the survey. “People see those activities as their birthright, but over the last 20 years, that right is being lost because the level of pollution in waterways has increased as farming intensifies.”  With an election coming next year, political experts say water pollution could be a key issue for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Ardern led a coalition to power in 2017 promising social reforms and laws to protect the environment, but business confidence has suffered under her government. More than 13,000 people signed a #toomanycows Greenpeace campaign on Twitter launched last week calling for a ban on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. “New Zealand already has way too many cows, and synthetic nitrogen is the key driver of the dairy intensification and expansion that leads to the dangerous double whammy of harm to rivers and climate,” said Nick Young from Greenpeace. New Zealand has nearly five million cows, more than its human population of about 4.7 million. Popular swimming holes near the famed Mt Taranaki in the west of New Zealand’s North Island were shut this month due to high E.coli bacteria, an indicator of faecal contamination. Tests are underway to determine the cause, but effluent from nearby dairy farms has been blamed in the past for contaminating these waters. DairyNZ Chief Executive Tim Mackle says dairy farmers have been doing their bit, with 97 percent of waterways on dairy farms fenced off from cows, and significant work done to establish riparian margins and wetlands. “The reality is that all types of land use contribute to water quality – and that farming, whether it’s vegetables, fruit, beef, sheep, dairy, deer or even wine – must all work together to make sure waterways are protected,” Mackle said in a statement. “The most polluted rivers actually run through urban centers, and this is where the public can do their bit too.”   Only about 15 percent of New Zealand’s streams run through dairy farms, he added. Dairy and tourism directly contribute about 3.5 percent and 6.1 percent respectively to New Zealand’s $200 billion GDP. Both industries rely on the country’s clean, green image with cascading rivers, unspoiled forests and lush pastures that made it the ideal backdrop for the popular Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movie series. The sparsely populated country is spread over a mountainous area about the size of United Kingdom or California, more than a quarter of which is set aside for reserves and national parks. Hoards of tourists are expected to arrive in the country next month during the Chinese New Year, a peak travel season, which residents feel will take a further toll on the natural environment. Chinese are the second largest source of tourists to New Zealand after neighboring Australia, according to 2018 data. Apart from polluting the water, residents also fear mass tourism and freedom campers may destroy the country’s iconic landscape, as seen in places like Venice, Boracay and Bali. Overcrowding in Venice forced the local administration to restrict access to tourists while Boracay was shut down last year, after mass tourism turned the famed Philippines island into a “cesspool”. Richard Davies, tourism policy manager at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, said the increase in the number of campers has caused problems in some areas, waste being one of them. “We have a collective duty to care for our environment and for New Zealand, and there have been a number of initiatives to help educate local and international campers on how to camp responsibility, and funding for infrastructure to help local bodies to address the issues that can arise,” he said. Mike Joy, a senior researcher at Victoria University of Wellington’s Institute for Governance and Policy Studies says the environment is paying the price for hands-off governance and  the intensification of dairy and tourism industries. “It’s an own goal…they are shooting themselves in the foot. The biggest value add this country can have is its clean, green image and they are just ruining that image,” Joy said. The government has said it is committed to improving water quality. In 2017 it set a national target of making 90 percent of New Zealand’s large rivers and lakes swimmable by 2040, with an interim target of 80 percent swimmable by 2030. Joy, who is a member of some government working groups, said change will only happen if governments take on the powerful dairy and tourism industries. “Right now, a lot more money is spent on spin and propaganda but there’s been very little change.”

Answer:
100% Pure? New Zealand's deteriorating water raises a stink.