NEWS HEADLINES
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Tributes paid to David Hockney, a 'giant' and 'true icon' of British art
Hockney, one of the UK's most important and influential artists, has died at the age of 88. read more
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Trump accuses Iran of leaking agreement details that 'bear no relation to the truth'
The US president's reaction came as Iranian media reported purported details from the alleged agreement that included much of what Tehran has been demanding and the US rejecting. read more
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French town buries murdered child as questions mount over police failings
The prime suspect in the killing of Lyhanna, 11, was reported to police nine months prior but never questioned. read more
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Discovery of €1.2m jewellery prompts fresh probe into former Spanish PM
José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is suspected of being unable to show proof he paid import duties on the jewellery. read more
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Taylor Swift makes tearful 21-minute speech as she joins Songwriters Hall of Fame
The singer thanks her family as she becomes the youngest woman to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. 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 things—I 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.

