A Dallas Cowboys cheerleader has shared the apology she received from kicker Brandon Aubrey after he drilled her in the back of the head with a ball during the first half of Sunday’s game against the Washington Commanders.  

Michelle Siemienowski was standing on the sidelines when Aubrey’s kick went out of bounds near the 10-yard line at AT&T Stadium. 

Despite a cameraman’s attempts to deflect the ball, it hit Siemienowski in the back of the head, knocking her over. 

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She quickly stood up as her teammates checked on her. The broadcast caught Siemienowski smiling after the incident. 

She took to social media Monday to share that she was "fine," and to thank everyone for checking in. She also shared with fans a note that Aubrey wrote to her apologizing. 

"This past 24 hours has been a whirlwind! I got a ton of messages and I wanted to thank you all for checking in and for your kind words. I am all okay, so no need to worry," she wrote in a post on her Instagram Stories. 

COWBOYS CHEERLEADER DRILLED IN HEAD BY KICKOFF MISHAP IN FINAL GAME OF SEASON

"Also… Thank you [Aubrey] for this apology note! I was told he wanted to come find me on the field after the incident, but unfortunately I kept moving around on the field. He was so kind to write me a note anyways! No hard feelings here! And now I have a souvenir for my last game of my rookie season!" 

The note from Aubrey read, "Michelle, so sorry about hitting you on (kickoff)! Hope you are doing well! Love watching y’all!" 

Despite Sunday’s loss to the Commanders and the mishap on kickoff, Aubrey set a record with 40 field goals this season to become just the fifth kicker in NFL history with at least 40 field goals. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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Experts warn that Meta’s decision to end its third-party fact-checking program could allow disinformation and hate to fester online and permeate the real world.

The company announced today that it’s phasing out a program launched in 2016 where it partners with independent fact-checkers around the world to identify and review misinformation across its social media platforms. Meta is replacing the program with a crowdsourced approach to content moderation similar to X’s Community Notes.

Meta is essentially shifting responsibility to users to weed out lies on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, raising fears that it’ll be easier to spread misleading information about climate change, clean energy, public health risks, and communities often targeted with violence.

“It’s going to hurt Meta’s users first because the program worked well at reducing the virality of hoax content and conspiracy theories,” says Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter.

“A lot of people think Community Notes-style moderation doesn’t work at all and it’s merely window dressing so that platforms can say they’re...

Read the full story at The Verge.

• In "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter," Natalia moves away from her adoptive parents.
• The DePaul family, who were interested in adopting Natalia when she was a child, took her in.
• Natalia now lives with the DePaul family in New York.

In "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter," Natalia Grace Mans leaves her adoptive parents to live with a new family — the DePauls.

In the second episode of the documentary series, which premiered on Investigation Discovery and Max on Monday, Nicole DePaul, 49, and her daughter Mackenzie, 19, travel to Nashville to pick Natalia up from church without her parents' knowledge. They then bring her to live with them in upstate New York where Nicole lives with her husband Vince DePaul, 51.

The DePauls are a family of little people, and Nicole and Natalia both have the same form of dwarfism, producer Shannon Evangelista told The Hollywood Reporter. They also have a connection dating back to Natalia's childhood, when the family considered adopting her.

Here's everything you need to know about the DePauls, and where Natalia lives now.

The DePaul family tried to adopt Natalia as a child

The DePauls were one of three families interested in adopting Natalia Grace in 2009. As part of that process, they met with Natalia at a museum and had her over to their home several times.

Natalia and Mackenzie got along well as children and bonded when Natalia visited for holidays. After Christmas, however, the adoption fell through and they weren't able to see each other again.

"Things just got really messy with the attorneys. It had nothing to do with Natalia. It was heartbreaking," Nicole said in "Natalia Speaks," the second installment of the series that aired in 2024.

Nicole says in a confessional in episode one of "The Final Chapter" that she still thought about the adoption not going through. She even kept a picture of Natalia and her daughter as kids, as well as Natalia's Christmas stocking.

"There's a lot of guilt because, well, maybe there was something we could have fought harder when we tried to adopt Natalia," she says in episode one of "The Final Chapter."

As the two previous seasons of "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace" recounted, after the DePauls' adoption attempt fell through, Natalia ultimately wound up being adopted by Kristine and Michael Barnett, the Indiana couple who later claimed she was really an adult posing as a child, legally re-aged her, and then left her on her own in an apartment when they moved away to Canada. Natalia went to live with Cynthia and Antwon Mans, another Indiana couple who had fostered and adopted multiple children, while the Barnetts were charged with neglect in relation to her abandonment (Michael was eventually acquitted, and the case against Kristine was dropped).

Nicole DePaul helped Natalia leave the Mans family

In "The Final Chapter," Natalia Grace's boyfriend Neil contacts Nicole on Natalia's behalf, asking her to help Natalia leave the Mans family, who had formally adopted her in 2023 after she'd lived with them for a decade. Though Nicole's husband, Vince, was hesitant about bringing Natalia into their home, Nicole agreed to help Natalia.

In episode two of "The Final Chapter," Nicole and Mackenzie pick Natalia up from her church without the Mans family's knowledge and bring her to live with them in upstate New York. Despite leaving her parents, Natalia's attachment to them led to some friction between herself and Nicole.

In the show, Nicole and Mackenzie also speak about the effect that Natalia being in their home had on the family. Nicole said in a confessional that she saw her daughter "a lot less" than she previously had, and Mackenzie said that Natalia's presence made the "environment kind of stressful."

Now, Shannon Evangelista, one of the docuseries' producers, says that the DePauls are Natalia's "No. 1 advocates." Nicole told People that she has no plans to adopt Natalia, who is now legally an adult, and though their relationship hasn't always been smooth, she trusts her.

"Did she probably do weird things in the past? Yeah," Nicole told People. "[But] when you take in a child, you take that child as your own. You don't just get rid of them when they don't fit into your puzzle."

Natalia says in "The Final Chapter" that while she regretted the manner in which she left her parents, she appreciated that living with the DePauls allowed her to "explore."

"Learning everything that I have about how to live with my dwarfism — it's been a great experience," she told People. "I love it. I mean, of course, I still miss my siblings and everything. But I love it. I feel free."

Nicole and Vince DePaul did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter" will finish airing on Investigation Discovery and Max on January 7.

• Tech entrepreneur Mike Johns got stuck in a wayward Waymo while headed to the airport last month.
• The malfunctioning autonomous car drove in loops around a parking lot for several minutes.
• A Waymo spokesperson told BI the problem has since been addressed by a software update.

Mike Johns was on his way to the airport last month when he decided to try something he'd only done once before: take a Waymo.

However, as soon as the autonomous vehicle picked him up, Johns told Business Insider he knew something was amiss.

"When I got in, the car went in a circle," Johns said. "At first, it was no big deal —  I figured it was gonna turn or do something — but, by circle number two, that's when I'm feeling like it's a prank."

The Waymo Johns ordered on December 9 to take him to the Scottsdale, Arizona airport back home to Los Angeles then looped around the parking lot again and again.

Johns, an AI consultant and the founder and CEO of the brand strategy agency Digital Mind State recorded the incident and his call with customer service on his phone. He posted about the experience on LinkedIn, writing: "My Waymo experience sucked."

"By lap number four, I knew this ain't a prank — and because the circle was going around this little island, I felt the nausea, the dizziness, start to happen," Johns told Business Insider. "That's the part that I really didn't like. And at that point, you know, I started to think 'What the hell's going on?'"

A Waymo spokesperson told Business Insider the incident delayed Johns' trip by a little over five minutes and that the looping issue was addressed by a regularly scheduled software update. It's unclear when the update was issued.

The spokesperson, however, declined to answer questions about how often such malfunctions are reported or about Waymo's procedure for identifying and fixing problems before they impact passengers.

Johns ultimately made it safely to the airport and to his flight on time after the Waymo got back on track. He did not have to pay for the trip.

A history of wayward Waymos

It's not the first time a Waymo has maneuvered itself in unexpected — and unwanted — ways. Passengers have regularly reported incidents since Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, launched its driverless taxi service to the public in 2020.

In 2021, a self-driving Waymo went rogue and blocked traffic in Arizona in an incident a YouTuber documented from the backseat, BI previously reported.

In 2023, a traffic jam made up of a dozen Waymo vehicles caused gridlock in Phoenix. A software glitch was to blame, The Arizona Mirror reported.

And last September, a stalled Waymo blocked Vice President Kamala Harris' motorcade, per The San Francisco Standard.

The behavior of Waymo's driverless cars has also made headlines for baffling first responders at emergency scenes, blocking public transit, and refusing to pull over for police.

"In that moment, it feels almost like a hijack. That was the longest seven minutes — especially when you're not expecting it," Johns said. "It's a really crazy feeling because it's already when you're in an autonomous vehicle. It's this ghost in the machine scenario."

A lack of liability

While troubling, Johns has not indicated any plans to pursue legal action. Even if he did, Los Angeles personal attorney Jordan Peagler told BI that it's unlikely Johns has any legal recourse over the incident.

"He likely signed an arbitration agreement as part of the user terms of service so he won't be able to sue," Peagler said.

The Waymo terms of service include limitations of liability and an indemnification clause that protects the company "from and against any loss, liability, claim, demand, damages, expenses or costs" arising from users' experience with the service.

Moreover, Waymo does not "represent or warrant that our Services or servers are free of viruses or other harmful components. You assume the entire risk as to the quality and performance of the Services," the terms state.

Technically, Johns could have a personal injury claim if he missed his flight and had to incur additional expenses or for physical suffering if he became nauseous, Peagler said. However, "it would be so trivial that no attorney would pursue it."

Peagler added that self-driving rideshare vehicles are such a new and developing field that there is no set standard for personal injury yet. Moreover, he said that a malfunction would have to substantially impair the vehicle's operation to rise to the level of negligence.

Johns said by publicizing his experience, he isn't looking to stop Waymos from accepting passengers, but he does want the company to be more transparent about these types of malfunctions and the technology's limitations.

The Waymo terms of service do not, at the time of publication, warn of potential vehicle malfunctions or any risks of using the driverless technology.

"It's a new world that we've never known before and autonomous vehicles are ushering in a new economy," Johns said. "And I'm super all for it, but the big thing that we have to be aware of is the fact that we're all a part of the experiment — and we're paying to be a part of the experiment."

CES 2025 is officially underway in Las Vegas. Monday’s press day saw keynotes from Samsung, Nvidia, Toyota, and Sony, among others, while Tuesday was all about the exciting new gadgets on the show floor. TechCrunch reporters are on the ground giving you the latest reveals at the conference.  Below, you’ll find a list of the […]

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For several years, an innovative, California-based launch company named Relativity Space has been the darling of investors and media.

Relativity promised to disrupt launch by taking a somewhat niche technology in the space industry at the time, 3D printing, and using it as the foundation for manufacturing rockets. The pitch worked. Relativity's chief executive Tim Ellis liked to brag that his first investor call was to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who cut the company's first check. Cuban invested half a million dollars.

That was just the beginning of the torrent of fundraising by Ellis, who, by November 2023, turned the privately held Relativity into a $4.5 billion company following its latest, Series F funding. This was an impressive start for the company founded by Ellis and Jordan Noone, both engineers, in 2016.

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