NEWS HEADLINES
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Trade, Iran and Taiwan on the agenda as Trump arrives in China for high-stakes talks with Xi
The US president says his first request to Xi would be to "open up" China, while Beijing is expected to press Trump on the status of Taiwan. read more
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Court overturns Alex Murdaugh's murder convictions and orders new trial
The court has ordered a new trial over the June 2021 killings of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh. read more
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Woman isolating on British island in South Pacific after hantavirus contact
The woman who was on a virus-hit ship shows "no signs of illness", the government of Pitcairn Islands, a British Overseas Territory, says. read more
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'They shot my neighbour in the head' - the lakeside city traumatised by war
Rebel fighters and Rwandan troops are accused of committing atrocities after capturing the DR Congo city of Uvira in December. read more
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Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon kill 22 people, health ministry says
Eight children are among those reported dead after a series of air strikes hit the south of Beirut. 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.

