NEWS HEADLINES
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Iran sends tankers loaded with oil past US military blockade
Three Iranian tankers loaded with crude oil have passed the US blockade line in the Gulf of Oman, ship-tracking data shows. read more
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Status quo at Jerusalem's holiest site under threat as Israeli nationalists flout rules
Israeli nationalists are increasingly flouting a convention on how faiths share the al-Aqsa mosque compound. read more
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Search for six-year-old Ebola patient after armed men storm DR Congo hospital
Health facilities have come under attack during the current outbreak as a result of misinformation and fear. read more
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Israel launches fresh strikes on Lebanon despite Trump criticism
Speaking on Tuesday, Trump said Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu needed "to be more responsible with respect to Lebanon". read more
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Serial killer who murdered eight women in Long Island town imprisoned for life
In fiery exchange, judge sentenced him to three life sentences plus 25 years to life on four other charges, all running consecutively. read more
BIOGRAPHY
Stephen Jay Gould was born and raised in the community of Bayside, a neighborhood of the northeastern section of Queens in New York City. His father Leonard was a court stenographer, and his mother Eleanor was an artist whose parents were Jewish immigrants living and working in the city’s Garment District.[6] When Gould was five years old his father took him to the Hall of Dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural History, where he first encountered Tyrannosaurus rex. “I had no idea there were such thingsāI was awestruck,” Gould once recalled.[7] It was in that moment that he decided to become a paleontologist.
Raised in a secular Jewish home, Gould did not formally practice religion and preferred to be called an agnostic. Biologist Jerry Coyne, who had Gould on his thesis committee, described him as a “diehard atheist if there ever was one.

