Squeeze Kids acknowledges the traditional owners of the lands on which we podcast the Turrbal and Combermary people.
Squeeze Kids!
It's your daily news fix.
Fun, free, fresh.
Hello and welcome to Squiz Kids Today, your fresh take on what's happening in the world around you.
I'm Bryce Corbett.
It's Thursday, October 30.
In Squiz Kids Today, Storm of the Century smashes Caribbean.
Duke crowned top dog, rise of the AI fakes, and Halloween at the zoo.
That's what's making news, kids style.
The Lowdown.
Spare a thought this morning for the people of Jamaica and Cuba, two countries in the Caribbean Sea which have been slammed by a hurricane that weather experts have called the storm of the century.
Hurricane Melissa, as Christy was telling you yesterday, has caused enormous damage in the region, smashing into Jamaica and Cuba as a Category 5 hurricane, which is basically the biggest category there is.
Hurricanes, or cyclones as we call them down here in the southern hemisphere are measured from 1 to 5 according to the speed and intensity of the winds that they whip up, with a category 1 being a mild storm and a category 2 being an absolute whopper.
Yesterday, the island country of Jamaica, home to the world's fastest man, Usain Bolt, and almost 3 million others, was mopping up after Melissa cut a destructive swathe across it, leaving towns flooded, buildings destroyed and trees uprooted.
And this morning Cuba was taking stock of the damage Melissa had caused there, after a wild night of winds in excess of 350 kilometers an hour.
Whoa.
And more rainfall and flash flooding than United Nations weather experts say they have ever seen in a hurricane before.
With electricity wiped out, airports closed and the internet down in both countries.
It will be days now before we know the full extent of the damage that's being caused, but already neighboring countries are lining up to offer help with the cleanup.
And if you're keen to learn more about the how and the why of hurricanes, Be sure to be listening this coming Sunday when, in our new Squiz Kids series from the vault, we dust off a shortcut classic and revive our ever-popular Squiz Kids shortcut on cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons.
Spin the globe.
Each day we give the world globe a spin and find a news story from wherever it stops.
And today we've landed in San Francisco in the United States, where the residents of the local zoo have been celebrating Halloween early.
Called Boo at the Zoo.
The event has seen skeletons, gravestones and jack-o'-lanterns pop up in the enclosures of lemurs zebras, monkeys and snow leopards.
And the animals have been having a spooky old time.
From the inquisitive lemurs sticking their heads inside pumpkins to fish out the vegetable goodies hidden inside, to the snow leopard munching on a gourd, which is a vegetable that's a little bit like a pumpkin.
The animals are clearly loving it.
And speaking of Halloween, it's only one sleep now to go.
Have you got your costume ready?
And to make sure you get into the spooky spirit of things, we've produced a very special Squiz Kids spooky Halloween tale called Squizzy and the Haunted Headphones.
You can hear it tomorrow on this very podcast channel.
Just keep listening after tomorrow's weekly news quiz and it will play automatically afterwards.
Or keep an eye out for it on the Squiz Kids website or on your favourite podcasting app.
Trick or treat, people!
Animal Kingdom.
We love us a muster dog here at Squiz Kids.
As the proud owner of a Border Collie myself, Louie the Wonder Dog I happen to think that they're the smartest, most loyal pups in the world.
So I was very happy to come across the story of Duke, winner of the 2025 Cobber Challenge for working dogs.
Now, Duke is a Border Collie who works on a farm in Queensland with his proud owner, Beck.
She entered him into the Cobber Challenge, which recognises working dogs who put in the hard yards for their owners.
During the challenge, Duke had a GPS tag attached to his collar which recorded that he ran 556 kilometers during three works of working dog life.
Wow.
Second place went to Buck, the Kelpie Cross, who ran an impressive 316 kilometers over the three weeks of the challenge.
So impressive.
News Hounds.
Every Thursday, Squizzy the News Hound sticks his snout into Squiz Kids HQ to report back on fishy things he's sniffed out on the internet.
And, this week being Media Literacy Week, here in Australia and around the world, his nose is twitching with the rise of AI misinformation.
So, what's AI misinformation?
Well, you know what AI is, right?
It's artificial intelligence, which is where a computer mimics the human brain, which is another way of saying that a machine does the thinking that a brain would otherwise do.
So think chat GPT or AI summaries on Google or LM notebook.
These are incredible computing tools that allow us to create or discover or to research in seconds.
But the problem is.
With the rise of AI has come.
The rise of AI generated fake news, meaning that we have to be extra careful when we're on the internet to check that the video we're watching or the story we're reading or the photo we're looking at is real.
This week's International Media Literacy Week has the theme Minds over AI, meaning we should always rely on our own inbuilt computers, also known as our brains, to make sure that we separate stuff online that's true from stuff that's not.
And what better way to hone those skills than by joining the more than 5000 classrooms around the country that have already signed up to do News Hounds SquizKids' very own totally free media literacy program for primary school kids.
Join Squizzy the News Hound in this nine-session podcast series as he ventures out into the internet and sniffs out myths and disinformation, teaching us along the way to stop, think and check before believing everything we see online.
Check it all out at squizzkids.com.au.
And yes, you're welcome.
Time for the quiz.
This is the part of the podcast where you get to test how well you've been listening.
Question number one.
Name one of the animals included in San Francisco Zoo's Halloween fun.
I will accept lemurs, snow leopards, zebras or monkeys.
Question number two.
What's the name of the two countries in the Caribbean that have been smashed by Hurricane Melissa?
Well done if you said Jamaica and Cuba.
Question number three.
What's the name of the cattle dog who won this year's Cobber Challenge?
Yeah, that's right.
His name is Duke.
Shout outs.
It's Thursday, October 30.
On this day in 1952, a man called Clarence Birdseye sold the first ever frozen pea.
And that invention has been haunting generations of kids ever since.
Eat your veggies.
Today is also a special day for these squiz kids celebrating a birthday today.
Sophie from Fernvale, Owen from Canberra, Henry from Toowong, Amelia from East Melbourne and Fleur from Newcastle.
And classroom shout-outs today go to Class 4W at Glen Iris Primary School, Year 3-4 with Miss Nicholls and Miss Drummond at Seduna Crossways Lutheran School, Class Malala with Miss Toms and Miss PG at St Luke's Catholic College in Marsden Park and Class 5L with Mrs By at Thomas Hassell Anglican College in Middleton Grange.
Don't forget if you've got a birthday coming up and you want a shout-out, or if you're after a classroom shout-out, drop us a line at squizkids at thesquizcomau, or fill out the form on our website.
Well, that's all we have time for.
Thanks for listening to Squiz Kids today.
We'll be back again tomorrow with the Kids vs Adults weekly news quiz.
Your chance to prove who's been paying the most attention to the week that just was.
In the meantime, get out there and have yourselves a most excellent day.
Over and out.
