NEWS HEADLINES
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Italian officials handed jail terms for Genoa bridge disaster that killed 43
The ex-head of Italy's motorway operator Giovanni Castellucci was handed a 12-year term over the 2018 bridge collapse. read more
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Protests in Ukrainian cities against Zelensky's removal of defence minister
Ukraine's president has not explained Mykhailo Fedorov's dismissal, which is causing great upset among civil society and the military. read more
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Teenager accused of carrying out sabotage actions in Poland for Russia
Polish security services say the aim was to incite ethnic tensions between Poland and Ukraine. read more
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Iran targets military bases as US launches wave of strikes
Explosions were heard across Iran overnight, shortly after neighbouring Gulf states began to report attacks. read more
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More than 800 Canadian wildfires burning as air quality alerts extend to US
The air quality in large parts of Michigan, Minneapolis and Minnesota is deemed "hazardous" by authorities. 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.

