NEWS HEADLINES
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Iran steps up claim to control Strait of Hormuz
Iran publishes a map claiming "armed forces oversight" across more than 22,000 sq km of the waterway. read more
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Gaza flotilla activists deported from Israel as backlash over treatment grows
A video showing a far-right Israeli minister taunting activists who were kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs has been widely condemned. read more
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Russia and China condemn US over indictment of former Cuban leader
It comes after the US charged Raúl Castro with murder, the latest move putting pressure on the regime. read more
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Air France and Airbus found guilty of manslaughter over 2009 plane crash
The companies were found guilty by a French court over an air disaster which killed 228 people. read more
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Charges dismissed against official at school where six-year-old shot teacher
The child fired a single shot at a teacher, who had to have surgery after the incident in 2023. 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 things—I 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.

