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Good morning and welcome to Kid News. I'm Tori.
Today is Tuesday, August 12th, 2025. And we begin with the storm door opening to what could become the first hurricane of the 2025 season.
A system known as ARIN is currently spinning off the western coast of Africa, marching west across the Atlantic with winds of 45 miles per hour.
According to CNN, there's plenty of fuel for Aaron to tap into.
That's because sea surface temperatures are much warmer than normal.
Not quite as warm as the record levels of 2023 and 2024, but still warm enough to give it a jolt of energy.
Several models show Aaron ramping up to a Category 3 hurricane with winds topping 110 miles an hour by this weekend.
But forecasters say it's still too soon to know what impact, if any, it'll have on the U.S.
Believe it or not, connecting to the internet used to sound like this.
It was called dial-up. You actually had to use a phone line to access the web and then patiently wait out a series of high-pitched beeps, static and screeches to, hopefully, get connected.
Many of your parents won't be shocked that it's ending.
They'll be shocked that it's still in use.
But not for much longer. AOL, an internet pioneer of the 1990s, is back. pulling the plug on its once popular, now nostalgic dial-up service as of September 30th.
According to the Washington Post, in its heyday in 2000, AOL had 25 million subscribers.
Today, that number is believed to be in the low thousands.
It's a prehistoric discovery in the great state of Texas.
Cleanup following the devastating floods last July have unearthed 15 enormous three-clawed dinosaur footprints in Travis County near Austin.
Paleontologist Matthew Brown says the tracks were likely left by the 35-foot-long, meat-eating dino known as Acrocanthosaurus.
The prints date back 110 to 115 million years, and each is nearly 20 inches long.
Did your summer vacation seem to go by extra fast?
Maybe that's because it did, just by a little bit.
During several days this summer, the Earth rotated quicker than it normally does.
Usually it takes Earth 24 hours or 86,400 seconds to spin around once.
But scientists say it sometimes picks up speed due to changing friction between the Earth and Moon, which can be caused by earthquakes, tides, and melting glaciers.
These changes are tiny, like fractions of a second, and are normal.
And although we've had some faster days recently, overall, the planet's rotation is actually slowing, as are the rotations of all the planets and stars, because they're losing energy as time goes on.
But the changes are not something we perceive, and so for us Earthlings, a day will always be 24 hours, give or take a millisecond.
People who take their dogs everywhere they go may be onto something.
Science shows that those who do tend to be less stressed and more happy than the rest of us.
Researchers had groups of people give speeches and solve math problems in front of critical judges whose job was to make the situation as stressful as possible.
Some of the people were allowed to bring their dogs, others were not.
Afterwards, scientists drew blood to see how they handled the situation and found that those with dogs not only had lower stress levels, but tended to perform better as well.
The researchers concluded that our canine friends help keep stress levels in the just right zone.
Not too much, not too little. Now they want to see if the same holds true for cat owners or if it's just a dog thing.
That's it for Kid News. Now, today's Kid News quiz.
What's the name of the storm that could become the first hurricane of the 2025 season?
Aaron. Why did Earth rotate faster than normal on some days this summer? because the planet is spinning at a slightly faster rate due to changing friction between it and the moon.
Scientists found that people who take their dogs with them tend to have lower levels of what?
Stress. What internet pioneer is pulling the plug on dial-up?
AOL, as of September 30th. In today's Kid News Kicker, Elon Musk was probably pleased to hear the U.S. government wants to buy a bunch of Teslas until he found out the reason.
They're going to be used for target practice.
The Air Force Test Center says it will buy 33 Teslas, including two Cybertrucks, for delivery to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, where, because of their durability, they'll be subjected to combat scenarios.
Mr. Musk may welcome the sales no matter what the reason.
He had predicted Cybertruck sales of nearly a half million a year, but according to Fortune magazine, has so far sold a total of only 46,000.
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Have a great day. We'll see you back here for more Kid News tomorrow morning.
