NEWS HEADLINES
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Houthis claim major advance in Yemen and tighten grip on Red Sea shipping lane
The Iran-backed Houthis are also reported to have seized Perim - a strategic island on the major shipping route. read more
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Norway's Princess Astrid dies two days after attending brother King Harald's funeral
Princess Astrid "represented the Royal House in a warm and dutiful manner", the new king, Haakon VIII, said in a tribute to his aunt. read more
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Israel says it has destroyed major underground Hezbollah base
The powerful blast registered as the equivalent of a magnitude 4.1 earthquake, according to the US Geological Survey. read more
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Princess Diana's 'revenge dress' goes up for auction
Auction house Sotheby's expects the dress to sell for up to $300,000 (£220,000) when it goes under the hammer on 9 December. read more
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Buddhist monk arrested in suspected $3m embezzlement scandal
Thai police also arrested a suspected female accomplice with whom the monk, who had taken a vow of celibacy, was filmed having sex. 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.

