NEWS HEADLINES
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Trump cancels US envoys' trip to Pakistan for talks on Iran war
Iran had earlier said there were no plans for a direct meeting with a US delegation led by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. read more
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Explosions and gunfire as armed groups launch co-ordinated attacks across Mali
Witnesses report clashes in the centre and north, in what has been described as the largest jihadist attack in years. read more
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Mexico says US agents killed in crash weren't permitted to operate there
The two Americans who reportedly worked for the CIA died in a car crash after a Mexican-led operation to destroy a drug lab. read more
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Palestinians in West Bank and some in Gaza vote in local elections
Local elections have been held in the occupied West Bank and in one Gazan city, though Hamas and other groups are not taking part. read more
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Rights groups critical as Venezuela prisoner release scheme 'coming to an end'
More than 500 political prisoners are thought to still be in jail, despite the releases since the amnesty law was brought in. 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.

