Good morning and welcome to Kidnews, I'm Tori, it's Thursday, December 16th, 2021.

And we begin with cockroaches, which are usually extremely unwelcome in most buildings,

but a team of engineers in Singapore has turned these pesky insects that can squeeze through

the tiniest gaps into potential lifesavers at disaster sites.

The idea is to attach a tiny backpack to the bug loaded with sensors that could possibly

detect if someone is inside a collapse building, for example, or could warn of the presence

of dangerous gases like carbon dioxide.

However, the engineers can't just use any garden variety cockroach.

For this type of work, they need the Madagascar hissing cockroach because it's two and

a third inches long, about 30% longer than the average one.

There is still work to be done to fine tune this effort, including ways to prolong the

battery life of the sensors, but the team hopes to be able to deploy these cyborg bugs

in the field within the next five years.

Nike is one of the first big brands to step into the fast-growing metaverse, and this

week it announced it's bought a virtual sneaker company called RTFKT, though it wouldn't

say for how much.

In the shared virtual world, users can buy virtual land and other digital assets such as

clothing for avatars by paying with a crypto asset.

Nike's CEO says this purchase helps speed up the company's digital transformation and allows

them to serve athletes and creators at the intersection of sport, creativity, gaming

and culture.

The Canadian airline WestJet has an annual tradition of making Christmas miracle videos, which

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