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An NYU student was randomly attacked Monday in Greenwich Village … and now a suspect has been arrested for the bizarre butt-slapping on a sidewalk, TMZ has confirmed.
Watch the video … a man wearing a light-blue scarf follows a 20-year-old woman across a busy street to sneak up behind her and strike her hard on the behind. He follows up by knocking her to the ground with another vicious blow to the head.
This all took place in broad daylight in lower Manhattan as the poor woman was just trying to make her way to a 9:30 AM class.
The video also shows passersby — clearly stunned by the occurrence — tend to the woman after her fall.
Thankfully, the school is on top of it, and so are the police.
NYU spokesperson John Beckman tells TMZ … “The University is deeply disturbed by the attack on one of its female students that took place yesterday morning on a Broadway sidewalk. We take this incident very seriously; we are offering support to the student, and NYU’s Campus Safety Department is working with the police in investigating the incident.”
TMZ.com
He continued … “The incident was reported to our Department of Campus Safety yesterday afternoon. The department’s victim services unit promptly reached out to the student; they have assisted her in connecting with detectives from the local precinct.”
Police sources confirmed to TMZ officers responded to a 911 call … they identified the suspect and arrested 45-year-old James Rizzo. Rizzo was booked for persistent sexual abuse, forcible touching, and assault … we’re told Rizzo has 16 prior arrests.
Ray J had a few things to get off his chest about Jay-Z and Beyoncé.
The singer hopped on Instagram to call out the couple for never showing love to Brandy when they visit “The Boy Is Mine Tour.”
As you know, Bey’s bestie Kelly Rowland is also on the tour.
Is Ray speaking facts or being dramatic?
Tamar Braxton and her legal team are shutting down a viral accusation made by Funky Dineva, calling it nothing more than a “completely untrue rumor.” The commentator recently alleged Tamar was involved in an inappropriate relationship with Mendeecees, a claim her camp says is entirely fabricated. In a firm statement shared with fans, Tamar’s attorney stressed that the story had no basis in truth and was being addressed immediately.
Tamar echoed that message directly, telling the public, “I’m letting my lawyers take it from here,” making it clear she plans to let legal action speak louder than online speculation.
Dineva broke the internet Monday night, when he claimed that Tamar and Mendeecees were making out in a car?
Y’all believe Dineva on this one?
Published
LiAngelo Ball’s third child was born recently … something his ex, Rashida Nicole, said he didn’t get to witness at her request.
Nicole shared the news via Instagram on Tuesday … explaining in a “transparency post” that she spent the final five months of her pregnancy alone before welcoming Lilo Legacy to the world.
“I chose for my child’s father not to be at my delivery,” Nicole said. “That decision came after months of emotional pain, hurtful words, and complete absence during the most vulnerable season of my life.”
“For the last five months, I’ve done everything alone — every appointment, every milestone, every challenge.”
The model also revealed in the post that she apologized to Nikki Mudarris — Ball’s ex and the mother of his other two children.
Nicole explained that their feud over the hooper-turned-rapper ended when she learned later on that Ball was allegedly lying about the status of his relationship with Mudarris.
“Thank you to her and her family for supporting me during this pregnancy — your grace means more than you know,” Nicole said.
“I won’t protect someone who never protected me,” Nicole continued. “Someone who disrespected me, lied on me, and pushed a one-sided narrative to avoid accountability, continue to inflict pain and build broken homes.”
“So no, I wasn’t going to allow a 5-minute delivery room photo-op for the internet.”
Nicole also confirmed their divorce — something she said isn’t easy, but she’s ready to embrace this new chapter.
After seven years of marriage, Nick Jonas is still a sucker for Priyanka Chopra.
In a sweet post on his Instagram Story on Monday (Dec. 1), the Jonas Brothers star shared a photo of his famous wife lounging on a towel by a luxurious pool. “7 years married to my dream girl,” he wrote in awe.
Reposting it on her own Story, the Bollywood icon added, “You’re what dreams are made of.”
The two stars first connected in 2016, after which they attended the 2017 Met Gala together as friends. But come 2018, Jonas and Chopra were fully a couple, with the pair both getting engaged and tying the knot that year.
In January 2022, they welcomed their first child together, daughter Malti. “Thank you @priyankachopra for the incredible Father Daughter sneakers and for making me a daddy I love you so much,” Jonas wrote on Instagram on Father’s Day that year.
The couple’s anniversary comes just a couple of days after Chopra shared photos of her adorable family and reflected on their life together in a Thanksgiving post on Instagram. “Sometimes I catch myself being in complete awe of the beauty, wonder and love all around me,” she wrote on Saturday (Nov. 29). “This thanksgiving I’m so grateful for health, joy, togetherness and the simple pleasures of life that we tend to take for granted sometimes … I’m just reminding myself one of the best things in life is being able to be surrounded by your loved ones.”
Fans of the Chopra-Jonas family can catch all three of them in Hulu’s new A Very Jonas Christmas Move, which premiered on Nov. 14 alongside a corresponding soundtrack. The Quantico alum makes a brief cameo with little Malti at the very end, appearing alongside the rest of the Jonas family to help welcome Nick, Joe and Kevin home for the holidays after a tumultuous world tour.
The life Nick and Chopra have built together will now inform the former’s first solo album in five years, Sunday Best, which is set to drop Feb. 6 next year. Featuring 11 tracks, the project will find the musician sharing his perspectives as a husband and father.
“I’m so excited to share these new stories, candid thoughts, quiet walks home in the city, and snapshots of my life over these past few years,” he said in a statement at the time of the album announcement on Monday. “And while this album was made over the course of the last two years, it was truly 33 years in the making.”

Kendrick Lamar knows a thing or two about diss tracks — and it sounds like he won’t have to worry about one from Jussie Smollett anytime soon.
During an episode of Cam Newton’s Funky Fridays podcast over the weekend, the Empire star reflected on Lamar’s controversial 2022 “The Heart Part 5” music video, in which the rapper morphed into deepfaked versions of embattled Black male celebrities such as Smollett, Will Smith, O.J. Simpson, Ye (formerly Kanye West) and Nipsey Hussle.
“Maybe I’m completely naive, so don’t f—ing fill me in about anything… but I don’t know. I don’t know what Kendrick meant by the video. I really don’t,” Smollett said with a laugh. “I respect him as an artist, and that’s about as far as it can go. You ain’t going to see me putting out no diss track against him, I’m not doing that!”
When Lamar dropped “The Heart Part 5,” which won 2023 Grammys for best rap song and best rap performance, he neglected to provide a statement contextualizing the immediately divisive and intensely political music video. Given his selection of Black male celebrities battling various scandals, some viewers interpreted the Dave Free-co-directed video as a commentary on hypocrisy, fame and public perception. “Heart Part 5” earned additional Grammy nominations for best music video, as well as song and record of the year.
The music video, which also picked up two MTV Video Music Awards nods, arrived three years after Smollett was arrested for staging an alleged hate crime, sued by the city of Chicago, and sentenced to 150 days in jail. He ultimately served six days behind bars before being released on bond and having his conviction overturned in 2024. Due to the scandal, Empire writers removed Smollett’s character from the final two episodes of the series’ fifth season. Through the show, Smollett reached the Billboard Hot 100 with soundtrack singles such as “Keep Your Money” (No. 99), “You’re So Beautiful” (No. 47, with Yazz) and “Conqueror” (No. 42, with Estelle).
“Most people have made up their minds about what they want to believe,” the vocalist told Newton. “Either way, okay. Because at this point, my people know. My mother has always known. My siblings have always known. My love has always known.”
For his part, Lamar is up for another nine Grammy nominations at the 2026 awards show. At February’s ceremony, Lamar will contend in a slew of categories, including album of the year (GNX) and song and record of the year (“Luther,” with SZA). At the 2025 Grammys, the Pulitzer Prize winner took home five trophies for his searing Drake diss “Not Like Us.”
Watch Smollett’s full conversation with Cam Newton below.
Aubrey O’Day was never one to bite her tongue when it came to Diddy.
In the new #Netflix docuseries, she said she received “emails with pictures of [Diddy’s] p3nis,” and soon after, she was let go from Danity Kane, claiming the firing was directly tied to her refusal to engage with his advances. Aubrey shared one of the alleged emails from Diddy out loud, which read, “‘I don’t wanna just f*ck you. I wanna turn you out. …I make my woman do what I tell her to do, and she loves it. I just want — and like — to do things different. I’mma finish watching this p*rn and finish m@$turbating. I’ll think of you, happy face. If you change your mind and get ready to do what I say, hit me.”
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Aubrey described how #Diddy allegedly singled her out within the group and set expectations beyond music: “Diddy made it clear that I was ‘the looker,’” she said. Aubrey added that when she declined to comply with his demands, she was dropped from #DanityKane, saying plainly, “I absolutely felt that I was fired for not participating s3xually.”
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Later in the doc, she addressed one of the multiple civil lawsuits filed against Diddy, where a woman alleged that she accidentally walked into a room where Aubrey was “sprawled out on a leather couch, looking very inebriated. …[Diddy] was penetrating in her v@gin@, and there was another stalky light-skinned man with his p3nis in her mouth.” Addressing the serious claim, Aubrey said, “I didn’t have a recollection of this.” She added, “Does this mean I was r@ped? … I don’t want to find out any more that that woman has to say.”
#AubreyODay’s full claims are featured in the docuseries “Sean Combs: The Reckoning,” executive produced by #50Cent.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is currently in the crosshairs of some members of the military and Congress after details of a September strike on alleged drug boats went wide. With President Donald Trump’s backing, SecWar Pete Hegseth appears shifty yet defiant on the orders to take out the boats, raising more questions than providing concrete answers.
At the root of the discussion is a September 2 operation near Venezuela involving alleged drug trafficking boats that was struck once, with some surviving the hit. It was reported by the Washington Post that a “kill them all” order came from Hegseth, which some consider a violation of international convention.
In a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday (December 2), Hegseth spoke with confidence that the strikes will continue under his orders, but curiously wouldn’t pin the aforementioned order to his vest. In fact, Hegseth said he wasn’t present for the second strike that killed the survivors, adding that he entrusted Admiral Mitch Bradley’s leadership on the matter in a social media post on Monday (December 1).
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Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support. I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since.
America is fortunate to have such men protecting us. When this @DeptofWar says we have the back of our warriors — we mean it.
During the Cabinet meeting, Hegseth clarified his position.
“I watched that first strike live. As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do, so I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs. So I moved on to my next meeting,” Hegseth said to reporters as reported by The Hill.
Hegseth claims Bradley made the kill order to take out the survivors, despite it going against the very laws in a manual first administered by the Department of Defense (now War).
Republican Party Senator Roger Wicker, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Democratic Party Senator Jack Reed issued a joint statment last weekend stating that they will investigate the order.
According to reports, 11 people were killed in the September 2 strikes, according to the Trump administration, an operation that was widely shared on the president’s social media accounts as a show of might.
While it appears that SecWar Pete Hegseth is attempting to move beyond the controversy and forge ahead, former military members such as Sen. Mark Kelly, who has drawn the ire of Trump and other GOP members for telling military members to deny illegal orders.
Further, many see Hegseth’s words as an attempt to pin the strike on Bradley to avoid international war crime charges. Adding to this, Admiral Alvin Hosley, who is Black, announced that he was retiring in October amid tensions with Hegseth over the drug boat strike operation and will leave his post at the end of 2025.
On social media, some are looking at the maneuvers of the Department of War and Hegseth in particular. We’ve got some of those reactions below.
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Photo: Getty
Last month, it was announced that Pharrell would be awarded Shoe of the Year at the 2025 Footwear News Achievement Awards (FNAAs) for his Virginia Adistar Jellyfish collaboration with Adidas. Now Billboard can exclusively announce that the award will be presented by none other than fellow Virginia Beach native and frequent collaborator Pusha T.
“Virginia is my home. It’s the origin,” Pharrell told Footwear News in their brand-new FNAAs issue (see the cover below). “So, when we create under the Virginia umbrella with Adidas we’re talking about roots, culture and identity —not just the shoe, but the ecosystem around it: the story, the place, the community.”
He added: “The Adistar Jellyfish was never about playing it safe. It was about expanding the idea of what movement could look like. I see it as freedom. There’s expectation, but really there’s an invitation to go a little further, to explore a little beyond.”
Pharrell and Pusha T met in the early ’90s and have always repped Virginia Beach throughout their stellar careers, so it only makes sense that Pharrell would be presented this award by another hometown hero. “Virginia Beach is already a cultural destination – where community comes together, where artists collaborate and new ideas are born – but there’s so much more to come,” he told Footwear News.
He concluded: “‘Go bigger’ was a mindset. If we’re going to do it, let’s really do it.”
This will cap an excellent year for Pharrell and Push, as they’re each nominated at the 2026 Grammys for their work on the Clipse album Let God Sort Em Out — including the top prize of album of the year — plus Pharrell snagged a best music film nod for the LEGO biopic Piece by Piece.
The 2025 FNAAs will take place Wednesday (Dec. 3) at Cipriani 25 Broadway in New York City.
The event will also honor Tommy Hilfiger with a Lifetime Achievement Award, Coco Gauff as Style Influencer of the Year, and Ronnie Fieg as Person of the Year. Other honorees include Jordan Brand (Brand of the Year), New Balance x Miu Miu (Collaboration of the Year), and Nordstrom (Retailer of the Year).
See the new cover below:
