NEWS HEADLINES
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Trump warns Taiwan against declaring independence, hours after summit with China's Xi
The US president says he wants Beijing and Taipei to "cool down" tensions over the self-governing island. read more
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Trump and Xi conclude 'very successful' talks but no deals confirmed
There were plenty of choreographed ceremonies but no trade breakthroughs after the two-day visit. read more
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Israel and Lebanon agree to extend ceasefire, US state department says
President Trump announced the truce last month, but Israel and Hezbollah have continued to exchange fire since then. read more
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Prisoner swap goes ahead as Kyiv mourns 24 killed in Russian strike on flats
Among the victims in Kyiv was 12-year-old Lyubava Yakovleva, whose father was killed during the war. read more
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AI vigilante trap snares alleged paedophile ex-teacher in France
The 66-year-old handed himself in after an influencer used AI to pose as a 14-year-old girl and broadcast their conversation online. 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.

