NEWS HEADLINES
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Melania Trump urges ABC to 'take stand' on Jimmy Kimmel after widow joke
In a parody aired days before the White House Correspondents' Dinner, Kimmel called Melania an "expectant widow". read more
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Trump says King will be 'very safe' during US visit after security talks
The state visit will go ahead despite concerns raised after a gunman targeted an event attended by the president. read more
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Pakistan accused of attacking Afghan university
Air attacks on the province of Kunar have killed at least seven people and injured 75, sources tell the BBC. read more
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Venice opera house drops incoming music director after nepotism remarks
Beatrice Venezi's appointment had been marred in controversy since being announced last September, prompting orchestra members to go on strike. read more
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Gunmen raid Nigerian orphanage and kidnap children
The attack saw 23 children and the facility's proprietress kidnapped by gunmen on Sunday. 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.

