31/10/2011 Newsround

Happy Hallowe'en! Hayley and Sonali here with your top stories tonight.

Lots going on around the world today, including... The American

weather that is freaking everyone out. And if you're getting ready

for Hallowe'en, we've got some faces that will spook you! But

first, the planet now has a record 7 billion people living on it.

Population experts reckon the 7 billionth person was born today,

which means there are more humans living on earth than ever before.

The world's population has been growing very quickly in the past

few years - and it's likely to get even bigger. The world's population

even bigger. The world's population has been growing steadily for years.

In 1804 - so 200 years ago - there were 1 billion people living on

Planet Earth. It took about another 100 years to hit 2 billion. 30

years later it leapt up again. Since then it's more than doubled,

rising by a billion about every 10 years. Experts reckon that a baby

born today will be the 7 billionth person in the world. And it's still

going up. It's not just that there are more babies - people are living

longer, too. So what does that mean for kids growing up around the

world now? There are 62 million of us living here in the UK. And

people are living longer, which means that there are more old

people around, and kids being born here today are likely to live

longer than their parents. It's a different story in Zambia, in

Africa - which has one of the world's fastest-growing populations

and half of the people living in the country are under 16. The high

number of children makes it hard to provide them all with a place at

school and a good education. While Zambia's population is growing fast,

it has a long way to go before it could catch up with India. The

population there is huge, at over 1 billion, and it goes up by about a

million a month. That means more people competing for places to live,

jobs and the basic money to survive. For kids like Shamma, who has lots

of brothers and sisters, life can be pretty hard - at seven, she's

already working to help her family. And India's population is expected

to be the biggest on record. Somewhere in the world today the 7

billionth baby has been born - the population is still rising, and is

only going to get bigger. With us in the studio is Kathryn Raw from

the charity Save the Children. Why the charity Save the Children. Why

the charity Save the Children. Why has the global population been

has the global population been growing so fast? It is partly

because people are living longer, children are more healthy, and also,

of those 7 billion people, around half of them part of an age where

they are having babies themselves. Some people think it is going to

peak at the end of the century - why is that? As children become

healthier, as governments invest in health, it means that parents can

be more confident that those children will grow up to live for a

long time and be able to look after them in their old age. So it means

that as children are more healthy, families will be smaller. We hope

that means the population will eventually stabilise. The number of

children being born will fall, and eventually, puppet Haitian will

stabilise and eventually come down again. -- population. Thanks,

Kathryn. Let's get the day's other news for you now - charity workers

in Thailand are warning the country needs to be better prepared in the

future. They're still battling floods which have killed nearly 400

people. The centre of the capital, Bangkok, has so far escaped the

worst of the flooding, but the outskirts have been swamped by

water. Food and drink is running low in many areas and there are

fears that it could be months before the flooding stops. Next, to

what Americans are calling "Shocktober" - and it has nothing

to do with Hallowe'en. No, this is serious. Freak snow storms across

north-east parts of the United States have caused lots of damage -

at least 12 people have died. Some areas have seen almost 70cm of snow.

Not exactly what you'd expect to wake up to on a weekend in October.

But for thousands of Americans, battling through snow to get across

their front drive has become a reality. More than three million

homes on the east coast of the country have lost their electricity

supply and many won't get it back for days. I hate it, I cannot even

express how much I hate it. This weather is blowing us away, we are

shocked. Flights have been grounded and trains have been brought to a

standstill. Trees have been crashing down in the blizzard - one

woman in New Jersey had a very lucky escape. Someone was watching

over me because I was not hurt at all. And in nearby New York, a

record was set as snow fell in Central Park, something which has

only happened in October four times in 135 years. Emergency crews have

started clearing the streets. But for many Americans, tonight will be

one of the strangest Hallowe'en Now all of you will have seen

plenty of these over the weekend. I love carving pumpkins for

Hallowe'en - in fact this is one I carved just yesterday! But today we

got sent in some pictures that I think are way cooler than the usual

spooky faces. These have been spooky faces. These have been

carved by Simon in Walsall - aren't they great? In the past people

thought pumpkins would scare away evil spirits - these ones would

certainly do the trick! You've been telling us what you'll be getting

up to this Hallowe'en. Lily in Somerset says she's going trick-or-

treating with her sisters and is looking forward to having loads of

fun. Bobby in Belfast says he's going bobbing for apples and then

he's going to munch his way through some sweets before having a party -

sounds like a good night! Have fun bobbing, Bobby. And Katie has got

her outfit sorted - she's going as a corpse bride with cobwebs and

spiders all over her. Katie - this is me as a corpse bride, just in

case you need a bit of last-minute inspiration. And finally - check

out this baby orangutan born in Indonesia earlier this month. It's

been called Damai, which means Peace. She was rejected by her

mother but she's being well looked after at a zoo nursery. She's just

three weeks old and is a real boost to the population of orangutans

because the animals are under threat of extinction. That's all

we've got time for today. We've got lots of Hallowe'en stuff on our