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: Exploring online was easy, with hashtags like #scars, #hurt and #brokeninside. Nothing made sense back then, but Theo absorbed what he saw on websites like a religion. All he could focus on was how the exterior he was born with — that of a girl — didn’t look or feel right. That was six years ago, when he had another name and a different gender. Back then, Theo felt that his body was rebelling in disturbing ways. He developed breasts and got his period. He felt like a boy, but every month, the cramps reminded him of reality. He became a child at war with his body. He wasn’t aware of words like gender dysphoria or transgender; those would come later. So would the national debates, the furor over bathrooms, and discussions of how to help children who didn’t feel right in their own skin. “When you’re 10 years old, you really shouldn’t be worried about who you are,” Theo would say years later, in a moment of reflection. “You shouldn’t be having that existential question when you’re in fifth grade. You should be worried about homework and the fifth-grade dance coming up.” He knew he was different from other kids in class. One day in the girls’ bathroom at his South Florida elementary school, Theo made the first of many gouges in his arm, using a paperclip. Pricks of blood bloomed on his fair skin. A teacher and a school nurse whisked Theo to safety. Theo’s mother, Lori Ramos, got the call from the principal. Her child was in the hospital. Ramos burst into the ER: Was it a fall, a fight, a shooting? “What’s going on here?” Ramos demanded of doctors and school staff. The answers were confusing: Her child had asked a teacher to call her by a different name, use different pronouns. Her child didn’t feel normal and wanted to be a boy. Ramos was bewildered — she saw no prior clues her child felt this way. And she was no stranger to transgender, gay, lesbian and bisexual issues — she worked in a clinic for HIV patients. When she’d given birth in 2001, in a hot tub on the family’s back porch in a Florida suburb an hour south of glitzy Miami Beach, she was thrilled. “I had my older son, and I had my girl, and my family was complete,” Ramos said. Her baby. Her “sunshine girl.” One who was no longer filled with light. Theo was involuntarily committed for 72 hours so doctors could determine whether he was a danger to himself or others. Soon, therapists and doctors had a diagnosis: gender dysphoria, a conflict between a person’s physical or assigned gender and the gender with which they identify. But a diagnosis didn’t solve Theo’s problems or make him feel better. When he tried to look like a boy, everyone at school noticed. His mother was accepting; his father wasn’t. He threatened to disown Theo. Theo again turned to the internet. He started cutting around his thighs and hips — his “problem areas.” When Theo saw thin kids online, he looked at his own baby fat and, once again, didn’t fit in. He wouldn’t eat for days, or he’d force himself to throw up. Cutting and vomiting weren’t painful, not exactly. They were more of a stress release, a way to match physical pain to what he felt inside: “I just know that it isn’t right, that the body I have isn’t supposed to be this way.” Small aggressions at school led to outright bullying. Other kids asked what was in Theo’s pants, if he had a penis, if he could show them. Theo started missing school. A therapist diagnosed depression and anxiety disorder. If only Theo could become a boy through hormone therapy — that, he thought, would solve his problems. “It’s just like every time I’m misgendered it feels like a wrench clamping around my heart and it slowly grows tighter and tighter,” he explained. “Being addressed as female or identifying as female never felt right to me; it always gave me this acute sense of discomfort and pain.” Hormone therapy for transgender children is a recent, controversial practice. It hasn’t been studied much. The concept that children can be transgender has been discussed in the open only recently; previously, it was something to be hidden, squashed and ignored. About 150,000 teenagers in the U.S. identify as transgender, according to a 2017 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA’s School of Law. About 1.4 million U.S. adults identify as transgender. Medical professionals have come up with protocols for children and teens. They recommend that some kids with gender dysphoria essentially pause puberty with hormone blockers until they’re certain they want to live as a different gender. But the child must be prepubescent. It was too late when Theo and his parents learned about the option. Theo could take testosterone, but rigorous counseling sessions were recommended first. This annoyed Theo: Why not become a boy right away? Experts say impatience is common: Transgender children want to transition, and waiting is frustrating. Even under regular circumstances, teens and patience aren’t usually mentioned in the same sentence. Doctors say going slow when treating trans teens is essential for physical and emotional well-being, and note that if a teen’s feelings last until age 16, the desires are probably permanent. Theo insisted testosterone could bring peace with his body: “If I could just start T therapy, I would know I was on the way to being who I’m supposed to be.” His parents, though, worried about the effects on their growing child. Theo wanted testosterone, but his anxiety sometimes made him question his desires. It became a regular topic of conversation between mother and son. “I’m nervous,” Theo said in the spring of 2016. He was 14. “What if I do change my mind?” “Well, what if you do?” asked his mother. “I can always stop,” Theo said. Ramos shook her head. “The changes are permanent.” ____ EDITOR’S NOTE: The Associated Press followed Theo Ramos for more than a year as he grappled with his gender dysphoria. This is the first installment of a three-part story. PART ONE: As a child grappling with gender dysphoria, Theo Ramos found himself at war with his body. PART TWO, coming Tuesday: Living with a transitioning transgender child “is anything but a straight line,” as his mom says. PART THREE, coming Wednesday: Visibility of transgender issues is at a high, but all the talk in the world doesn’t make life any easier as a gender-fluid or transitioning kid. ____ Follow Tamara Lush on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tamaralush .

SOLUTION: Trans teen’s war with his body started when he was just 10.

PROBLEM: Researchers from Durham University and the British Museum discovered the evidence of tumors that had developed and spread throughout the body in a 3,000-year-old skeleton found in a tomb in modern Sudan in 2013. Analyzing the skeleton using radiography and a scanning electron microscope, they managed to get clear imaging of lesions on the bones which showed the cancer had spread to cause tumors on the collar bones, shoulder blades, upper arms, vertebrae, ribs, pelvis and thigh bones. “Insights gained from archaeological human remains like these can really help us to understand the evolution and history of modern diseases,” said Michaela Binder, a Durham PhD student who led the research and excavated and examined the skeleton. “Our analysis showed that the shape of the small lesions on the bones can only have been caused by a soft tissue cancer ... though the exact origin is impossible to determine through the bones alone.”  Despite being one of the world’s leading causes of death today, cancer is virtually absent in archaeological records compared to other diseases - and that has given rise to the idea that cancers are mainly attributable to modern lifestyles and to people living for longer. According to the World Health Organisation’s cancer research agency, new cancer cases rose to an estimated 14 million a year in 2012, a figure seen rising to 22 million within the 20 years. Yet these new findings, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLOS ONE on Monday, suggest cancer is not only a modern disease, but was around in the Nile Valley even in ancient times. Binder said the discovery should help scientists explore the underlying causes of cancer in ancient populations and give fresh clues about the evolution of cancer in the past. Ancient DNA analysis of skeletons and mummies with evidence of cancer can be used to detect mutations in specific genes that are known to be associated with particular types of cancer. The skeleton is of an adult male estimated to be between 25- and 35-years-old when he died. It was found at the archaeological site of Amara West in northern Sudan, on the Nile, 750 km downstream from the capital Khartoum. The researchers said they could only speculate on what may have caused of the young man’s cancer, but it may have been as a result of environmental carcinogens such as smoke from wood fires, or due to genetic factors, or from an infectious disease such as schistosomiasis, which is caused by parasites. Schistosomiasis would be a plausible explanation, they said, since the disease has plagued inhabitants of Egypt and Nubia since at least 1500 BC and is now recognized as a cause of bladder cancer and breast cancer in men.

SOLUTION: Archaeologists discover earliest example of human with cancer.

PROBLEM: “At this first stage, 100,000 face masks will be produced and ready for delivery on April 2. Half will go to Italy and half to Spain. It is a factory in China that makes the masks,” a H&M spokeswoman said in an email. H&M said last week it was looking into using its supply network to source personal protective equipment for hospitals to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. The masks are of the N95/FFP2 standard that protects from the droplets through which the virus spreads.

SOLUTION:
H&M starts protective face mask production at Chinese supplier.