NEWS HEADLINES
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Oil hits $100 a barrel for first time since July after US strikes
Brent crude - the global benchmark for prices - rises after the US hit five Iranian tankers on Tuesday read more
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British-Israeli relations at lowest ebb in decades
Israel's response to London's trade ban with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank shows how important this moment is. read more
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US slaps import ban on Canadian alcohol, motorbikes and other goods
It is the latest strike in a long trade war, and comes as Canadian counter-tariffs on US goods come into force. read more
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'Constantly on my mind' - 9/11 agony endures for bereaved, 25 years on
As the 25th anniversary approaches, the wait for the alleged mastermind of the attack to be put on trial goes on. read more
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South Park creators rename show 'South America' in apparent dig at Trump
Since beginning his second term, the US president has said he wanted to use the word 'America' to rename a lake, a gulf and even a US state. 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.

