US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford issued a statement Monday denying weekend media reports that the US plans to leave around 1,000 troops in Syria, saying the reports are “factually incorrect.”

Dunford presented the current planned “residual force” as 200, saying that this hadn’t changed since February. The US announced 200 would stay on February 21, but on February 22 officially increased that number to 400.

It’s not clear from Dunford’s statement where the “incorrect” aspect of the new report, which came out of a Wall Street Journal, exists. That report suggested that the 1,000 figure was not yet finalized, but was being discussed. Dunford’s comments didn’t include any details on what is actually being discussed, but just that nothing was finalized.

Hollywood star Gary Sinise just opened up about why he has devoted so much of his time to helping veterans, and to lament the fact that many of his peers in the entertainment industry have politicized honoring the military.

Sinise has helped thousands of war veterans through The Gary Sinise Foundation, and he just told TIME that he does not see helping the military as a partisan matter.

“How have our defenders become a political issue? They defend us all. They are us all,” said the Forrest Gump star. “There are Democrats who serve our country, there are Republicans who serve our country.”

"Empire" actor Jussie Smollett pleaded not guilty in a Chicago courtroom Thursday to 16 charges stemming from an alleged hate crime hoax.

Smollett's lawyer, Tina Glandian, entered the plea on Smollett’s behalf just hours after Judge Steven Watkins was assigned the case. The next court date was scheduled for April 17.

Smollett was initially charged with one count of lying to the authorities on Feb. 20. Last week, a grand jury indicted Smollett on 16 felony counts of lying to authorities — eight counts for what he told the officer who responded to the report of the Jan. 29 attack in downtown Chicago, and eight counts for what he later told a detective about being the victim of a brutal racist and homophobic beating by two masked men.

The superhero blockbuster Captain Marvel is a perfect case study for how the United States military uses Hollywood to spread propaganda.

The US military is at the center of the plot of Captain Marvel. The film’s protagonist, Carol Danvers, is a former US Air Force pilot who becomes a superhero after absorbing the powers of an advanced technology created by another US military scientist. (That scientist happens to be a member of the advanced alien race known as the Kree, who for unexplained reasons decided to do groundbreaking military research for, of all the myriad places in the universe, the US of A).

As soon as the film opens, it bombards viewers with two hours of non-stop US military propaganda. And it is not even subtle; at the plot’s climax, Captain Marvel changes the colors of her suit to match those of the American flag.

If you searched “Brie Larson” on YouTube a couple of days ago, the top search results were calls for a boycott of Captain Marvel, and angry rants about Larson’s involvement in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With one small change, YouTube made all of that disappear.

This week, YouTube recategorized “Brie Larson” as a news-worthy search term. That does one very important job: it makes the search algorithm surface videos from authoritative sources on a subject. Instead of videos from individual creators, YouTube responds with videos from Entertainment Tonight, ABC, CBS, CNN, and other news outlets first.

As discussed in ‘Reclaiming An American Hero: Bobby Fischer The Fearless Genius’, Bobby Fischer was widely criticized for his controversial statements outside of chess. For example, Dick and Jeremy Schaap questioned Fischer’s sanity, while Charles Krauthammer wrote that “he’s clearly a sick man.”[34] However, it would be more accurate to state that Fischer used his prodigious intellect to read widely and deeply to discover many of the lies that pervade our society. His exposure of the Holocaust hoax is especially praiseworthy. Bobby Fischer was truly an authentic American hero.

After Rotten Tomatoes purged 54,000 negative captain marvel reviews
that had the film around 32% audience score, there was an addition of
thousands of positive bot responses with the exact same text for each
review to bring its 32% audience rating to 48%.

"I'll make it very simple and clear: Captain Marvel is really worth a watch. It's
just entertaining and visually impressive, exactly what it was meant to be."

Actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin were among more than four dozen people charged in a nationwide college admissions cheating scandal that involved wealthy individuals paying up to $6.5 million to place their children into elite universities, according to court records revealed Tuesday.

The alleged scam -- which involved students being placed into top colleges such as Yale, Georgetown, Stanford, University of Southern California, UCLA and the University of Texas -- was run by a man in California, William Rick Singer, who helped parents get their children into the schools through bribes, court documents unsealed in Boston showed. Officials have been investigating the scam for more than a year.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) announced her presidential run to the world while the Dolly Parton hit “9 to 5” played behind her.

Playing a hit song like that one — especially a tune that highlights the average American worker — can create quite a powerful moment for politicians.

Warren’s moment, however, was a bit unearned.

It turns out Dolly Parton never gave the senator permission to use her song. Her reason?

The country music star never allows her music to be used for political purposes.

“We did not approve the request, and we do not approve requests like this of [a] political nature,” Parton’s manager, Danny Nozell, recently told the Associated Press.

Rotten Tomatoes blames "a bug" for tens of thousands of audience reviews for Captain Marvel showing up within the opening hours of the latest MCU film before the site deleted them.

Within hours of Captain Marvel hitting theaters, roughly 58,000 audience reviews had flooded the critical aggregator site, plummeting the Marvel movie's Audience Score down to 33%. Captain Marvel's Audience Score now sits, at the time this article was published, at 53% with over 35,000 user ratings, while the film's critical Tomatometer score is certified "fresh" at 79%.

58,000 audience reviews hitting within hours of the film's release, as The Hollywood Reporter points out, "is more than the total of audience score reviews for Avengers: Infinity War for its entire theatrical run."

In last year’s Midterm race for seats in the United States House of Representatives, Anti-GamerGate personality and Revolution 60 developer Brianna Wu ran as a Democratic candidate in the primary election for Massachuset’s 8th Congressional District. Despite her political inexperience, Wu garnered 22.9% of the district’s vote (16,878 votes out of a total of 73,582), but ultimately lost the election to her incumbent opponent, Stephen Lynch. As the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections rapidly approach, Wu has once again announced her candidacy, which will feature a heavy emphasis on government regulation concerning internet relations.

The band has made it clear they view the contest as a political one and will seek to stage an anti-Israeli political protest onstage, despite Eurovision rules saying that such behaviour may result in disqualification.

Iceland has made its pick for Eurovision 2019 song contest: the industrial techno band Hatari whose members don BDSM-inspired outfits on stage. The band has a strong political agenda and has threatened to pull off an anti-Israeli protest during their performance at the contest.

Hatari, whose name translates as "Hater," have chosen a song entitled "Hatrid Mun Sigra" ("Hatred Will Prevail"), which features lyrics, such as "Europe will crumble", "Multilateral delusions, Unilateral punishments", and "Happiness will end For it is an illusion".

The band, which has long proclaimed that they aim to "take down capitalism," said they're planning a protest against the Israeli treatment of Palestinians during their performance.

The band has made it clear they view the contest as a political one and will seek to stage an anti-Israeli political protest onstage, despite Eurovision rules saying that such behaviour may result in disqualification.

Iceland has made its pick for Eurovision 2019 song contest: the industrial techno band Hatari whose members don BDSM-inspired outfits on stage. The band has a strong political agenda and has threatened to pull off an anti-Israeli protest during their performance at the contest.

Hatari, whose name translates as "Hater," have chosen a song entitled "Hatrid Mun Sigra" ("Hatred Will Prevail"), which features lyrics, such as "Europe will crumble", "Multilateral delusions, Unilateral punishments", and "Happiness will end For it is an illusion".

Director Steven Spielberg is facing a backlash from fellow Hollywood filmmakers after suggesting that the Oscars should no longer allow Netflix-produced films into consideration for its top awards.

The 72-year-old filmmaker, who has won multiple Academy Awards throughout his iconic career, has long been critical of Netflix’s approach to producing films as online streams, which he argues will detract from the theatrical industry.

“Steven feels strongly about the difference between the streaming and theatrical situation,” said a representative from Amblin Entertainment. “He’ll be happy if the others will join [his campaign] when that comes up [at the Academy Board of Governors meeting]. He will see what happens.”

If there is any doubt that there’s an aggressive left-leaning political bias in Hollywood, all one needs to do is look at the Jussie Smollett case — and compare it to the 2017 firing of Roseanne Barr.

Barr, an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump, was abruptly fired from her own show “Roseanne” — which had just been brought back to television and earned monster ratings — after she put out a tweet that some deemed to be racist.

The tweet targeted former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett.

Barr said Jarrett was a cross between the “Muslim brotherhood and ‘Planet of the Apes.'” Considering Jarrett is black, there was immediate backlash against the tweet. Barr apologized multiple times for the tweet and insisted she did not know Jarrett’s race at the time.

She said her tweet was more of a criticism of Jarrett’s foreign policies.

In the wake of “Roma’s” three Oscar wins on Sunday, director Steven Spielberg is taking aim at streaming films’ chances at future Academy Awards.

Spielberg will present his case to peers at an upcoming annual board of governors meeting at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where the award-winning auteur will propose rule changes that would prevent streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu from competing in the Oscars without their projects getting a full theatrical run first. The news was first reported on Indiewire.

“Steven feels strongly about the difference between the streaming and theatrical situation,” a representative of Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment told the site. (A spokesperson for the company did not immediately respond to request for comment by The Times.)

The European Broadcasting Union received official notice from the National Public Television of Ukraine (NOTU) that they will not be participating in the Eurovision contest this year.

This happened as a consequence of all three of the winners of Ukraine’s national contest (1st, 2nd, and 3rd place) unanimously refused to represent Ukraine after learning of Ukraine’s ‘career ending’ and ‘highly politicized’ terms. Those winners were Maruv, Freedom-jazz in second, and Kazka Group in third.

Sadly, not everyone could get into the movie-loving spirit and simply put politics to the side for one night. Director Spike Lee, who reportedly threw a tantrum later in the night when his “Blackkklansman” film lost to “Green Book” for the Best Picture Oscar, got up and read a rambling speech from his notes upon winning the Best Adapted Screenplay statue. While he didn’t mention President Trump by name, there was hardly any mistaking his target.

The star-studded crowd roared their approval.

Some punched the air.

A few wiped away imaginary tears.

Others hugged each other.

This was exactly the kind of stirring, unifying, inclusive message everyone had been directed to crave at the most politically correct Academy Awards in history.

But viewers in South Africa reacted rather differently.

Because what Noah actually said in Xhosa – the Bantu language related to Zulu – was this: ‘White people don’t know I’m lying.’

I burst out laughing when I found out about this, hours after the event.

To kick start the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon, 2018’s First Man—the epic story of Armstrong’s journey to become the first man to walk on the moon—would be nominated for Best Picture. Ryan Gosling would be nominated for Best Actor for portraying the heroic astronaut.

Yet it was not meant to be, as First Man was accused of being anti-American for failing to show the planting of the American flag on the moon. The conservatives the film depended on stayed at home out of patriotism, ironically boycotting a beautiful movie that depicted the finest moment in the history of our nation. It was an insurmountable hole even the powerful engines of the Saturn V rocket couldn’t help First Man escape. Despite an 87 percent fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes (meaning top-rated movie reviewers loved the movie), the movie only made $44 million domestically on a $59 million budget.

So… I tuned into the last ten minutes of the red carpet pre-game. Side boob as far as the eye could see — from women who will return to anti-rape culture activism when they get over their hangovers. Everybody on the runway was “stunning.” And they appreciated being informed of that, because they hear it so seldom. Glenn Close revealed that her gown contained four million beads and weighed forty pounds. I hope she donates it to the Clinton Foundation for HRC’s 2020 nomination acceptance speech.

Newspapers on the other side of the world are calling it “the biggest U.S. cinema event of all time.”

Critical acclaim has poured in from all corners for the BBC production They Shall Not Grow Old, a technical and emotional masterpiece on the First World War — the war Woodrow Wilson said would “make the world safe for democracy.”

The way the film brings old footage, and therefore the soldiers, to life is almost magical and powerfully moving. But because of how director Peter Jackson defined his film, a critical element is virtually invisible: the wounded.

Jackson distilled the stories of 120 veterans who spoke on some 600 hours of BBC audio tape done in the 1960s and ‘70s. His goal was to have “120 men telling a single story…what it was like being a British soldier on the Western Front.” He artfully presents it, using no narration other than the archive of BBC interviews.

Jussie Smollett was eviscerated by furious Chicago police bosses on Thursday who alleged that he mailed himself a threatening letter than staged a hoax attack on himself because he was unhappy with his Empire salary.

At an extraordinary press conference, Chicago Police Department Chief Superintendent Eddie T. Johnson abhorred him as a 'troubled young man' who has 'taken advantage of the pain and anger of racism to further his career' by allegedly lying that he was attacked by racist and homophobic assailants on January 29.

Smollett is paid $20,000 per episode on Empire but, according to the police, wanted more so 'concocted' the fake letter and attack in the hope that it would raise his profile and earn him more.

His motive 'p****d everybody off', Superintendent Johnson said, adding that Smollett's repeated 'lies' were 'shameful' and 'despicable'.

Combined ticket sales were down sharply even before the worst Presidents Day weekend in 15 years.

Accepting the Filmmaker Award at the Cinema Audio Society (CAS) awards in Los Angeles, California, the influential director praised the theatrical experience, saying “there’s nothing going to a big dark” cinema.

“I hope all of us really continue to believe that the greatest contributions we can make as filmmakers is to give audiences the motion picture theatrical experience,” he said, according to Variety. “I’m a firm believer that theatres need to be around forever.”

Police sources say Jussie Smollett likely hired two acquaintances to fake a Chicago “hate crime” assault, while conservatives are accusing liberal media outlets of accepting the actor’s story with little initial evidence.

Two Nigerian brothers were arrested and then released this week in connection with the incident on January 29. Citing law enforcement sources, CNN reported on Saturday night that they are now “cooperating fully” with the investigation, in which Smollett has become the chief suspect.

Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo are two recurring extras on the set of the TV show 'Empire,' in which Smollett stars, and know him personally.

Oscar winner Jon Voight has come out fighting to defend his controversial pro-life film Roe v. Wade, a movie about the US abortion law, insisting critics 'know nothing.'

Conservative actor Voight asserted to DailyMailTV that his 'really good' new project will educate many on the subject, which has prompted decades of heated debates and outrage.

The movie, set for release next month, was shot in secret as filmmakers feared backlash from pro-choice activists and has prompted huge outrage on social media.

But Voight, 80, who plays Nixon-nominated US Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger in the film, and writer Nick Loeb have urged critics to stay quiet until they see the movie in theaters.

The two Nigerian brothers being questioned over the Jussie Smollett attack are actors Abimbola 'Abel' and Olabinjo 'Ola' Osundairo, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.

The pair were picked up by police at Chicago O'Hare Airport on Wednesday as they arrived back in America after visiting family in Nigeria to be questioned over the January 29 attack involving the star.

Family say they went to Africa on January 29, hours after the Smollett attack. Ola appeared on Empire in 2015 and both brothers have had minor roles on Chicago PD.

Smollett follows their joint Instagram account and, according to their lawyer, sometimes goes to the gym with them.

DailyMail.com has identified photographs of one of the brothers inside the gym in Smollett's apartment building in June. The gym is private to residents of the luxury condominium building.

On Thursday night, the star was accused by anonymous police sources cited by local networks of staging the attack.

You know you’ve seriously crossed some boundaries when Megyn Kelly comes to the defense of Donald Trump.

Kelly’s star rose as an anchor at Fox News only to find herself caught up in controversy with President Trump and eventually leaving it all behind to be a top star at NBC. An endeavor that also failed.

This past June, Kelly took the animosity up a notch when she claimed First Lady Melania Trump had sold her body for exploitation through modeling just like porn star Stormy Daniels had.

It left show watchers gripped with its several shocking twists and cliffhangers as survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 attempted to survive on a mysterious island.

And now hit drama Lost could be set for a return nine years after it aired its final episode in 2010.

Talking at a Television Critics Association panel on Tuesday, ABC channel's boss, Karey Burke, admitted she dreams of a comeback and would be very 'interested' in a reboot.

President Donald Trump’s frequent Hollywood critics were predictably not a fan of his Tuesday night State of the Union address from Capitol Hill.

Some celebrities were even judging the address hours before Trump delivered it.

“The SOTU [State of the Union] can never be strong if it is headed by a pathological liar. It can never be strong if it is headed by a misogynist. It can never be strong if it is headed by a racist. And it can never be strong if it is headed by a self serving criminal. The SOTU is rancid,” tweeted filmmaker Rob Reiner (“Misery,” “Stand by Me”) on Tuesday morning.

So he made his feelings on the State of the Union clear well before Trump uttered a single word.

Comedian Bill Maher is under fire after making a comment about fried chicken to a black congressman on a recent episode of his HBO show.

On Friday’s edition of Real Time With Bill Maher, the political commentator sat down to interview Will Hurd, a Republican congressman from Texas, who is black. The discussion began when Maher asked about why Hurd is a member of the GOP.

“I’m just asking why you’re Republican. Because they’re not good at the debt, that was their big thing. You said limited government, they don’t do that,” Maher said. “What’s in it for you? What is in the Republican Party for you? You were in the CIA!”

“I was in the CIA for almost a decade. I was the dude in the back alleys at 4 o’clock in the morning collecting intelligence on threats to the homeland,” said Hurd, speaking about his background.

Far-left celebrity Cher declared Wednesday that President Trump is “Putin’s waterboy” and fantasized about him burning in hell.

“The Most DANGEROUS THREAT To America’s Safety Is The Russian Operative,Who Currently Occupies The White House,” Cher said in a social media post.

“There’s a Special Building In The After Life For Putin’s Waterboy…..TRUMP TOWER HELL.”

Celebrity activist Alyssa Milano declared at a rally in Washington, D.C. Tuesday that because she has a vagina, she doesn’t have “equality and justice” in America.

“My name is Alyssa Milano, and in 2019 I do not have equal rights in the Constitution,” the activist said, according to The Hill.

“That’s right, because I have a vagina I do not have equality and justice.”

Roseanne Barr, the comedian whose television show was canceled last year after she made a racist remark on Twitter, visited Jerusalem's Old City on Sunday as part of a tour of Israel.

'There are no proper words for me to express the connection I feel, first of all to God, to Torah (Bible), to my people,' Barr, who is Jewish, said.

Barr, 66, arrived in Israel last week with celebrity US rabbi Shmuley Boteach, after Barr reiterated earlier this month that she felt her firing from ABC was a result of anti-Semitism.

She had previously made this claim in June, one month after she and her show were pulled from the air.

Critics are raving about the new documentary, Apollo 11, which features an unearthed treasure trove of behind-the-scenes footage of the moon landing, following the movie's premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

The movie, deemed a 'masterful work of archival research' by Vulture, was created using a cache of 65mm, behind-the-scenes footage of the 1969 moon landing, and thousands of hours of vintage audio recordings of NASA employees talking about the mission.

Unlike traditional documentaries, the 93-minute-long Apollo 11 is said to not include any voice-overs or cutaways to talking heads. Instead, director Todd Douglas Miller uses a series of short, wordless montages illustrating each of the famed Apollo 11 crew's key life moments.

Attendees at this year's Sundance Film Festival are getting a first look at never-before-seen footage from the first moon landing mission.

Billed as "a cinematic event fifty years in the making," director Todd Douglas Miller's "Apollo 11" premiered Thursday (Jan. 24) as one of the festival's opening night films. The 93-minute documentary, presented by Neon and CNN Films, was crafted from a newly-discovered trove of large-format, 65mm footage and more than 11,000 hours of uncatalogued audio recordings to provide a new look of one of the most iconic and historic moments in human history.

Disclosure: The author of this article, collectSPACE.com editor Robert Pearlman, served as the historical consultant on "Apollo 11."

"'Apollo 11' tells the story of Apollo 11, the mission, in a direct cinema way," said Miller in an interview with collectSPACE. "The intention was to make an art film out of all of the archival materials that we had available."

Jack Morrissey, a Hollywood Producer who is known for projects such as Beauty and the Beast and the Twilight Saga, called for minor teen high school boys to be murdered in a violent, gruesome manner.

Mr. Morrissey joined the hate-filled media and piled on the Covington Catholic students after deceptively edited videos of the teens were posted to Twitter accusing them of harassing a Native American man.

Full video of the incident shows the teens did nothing wrong — they were ambushed by blacks calling them “crackers” and the Native Indian man is a far left activist who harassed the children.

In fact, upon further review of the entire video, many people are now apologizing to the Covington Catholic teens, admitting they were duped by selectively edited video and ‘fake news.’

Thanks to the free market, Sony Pictures has finally been forced to admit its all-female Ghostbusters remake/reboot was a catastrophe, and this admission arrives in the starkest way possible: Sony announced it has been forced to once again reboot Ghostbusters, and this reboot will have nothing to do with the studio’s disastrous 2016 attempt to use its beloved Ghostbusters franchise as a social justice statement.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, director Jason Reitman (son of original director Ivan Reitman) has been given the green light to bring to life a script he co-wrote, and as of now, the studio is looking for a summer 2020 release date.

From the sounds of it, Sony has decided to pretend 2016’s creative and financial catastrophe never happened. This new chapter will be “the next chapter in the original story [that] continues the narrative of the 1980s classic.”

Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chairman-CEO, summoned all of his folksy Oklahoma earnestness as he made an enthusiastic pitch to Wall Street analysts about the telephone company’s bold efforts to transform itself into a multimedia powerhouse. It was late November, less than six months after AT&T had wrapped up its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. But before Stephenson could wax poetic about his plans to revitalize HBO, Warner Bros. or other newly acquired AT&T subsidiaries, he felt compelled to address the elephant in the room.

“If you hear nothing else this afternoon, I want you to hear me on this,” Stephenson said at the company’s investor presentation in New York. “Our discretionary cash flow is going to go to one place. It’s going to be paying down debt.”

During one outing around Christmas, Ivanka and Kushner went to a West Palm Beach theater for a showing of Adam McKay’s acidic retelling of the life and rise of Cheney, a former vice president and tremendously consequential figure in the political party that Ivanka’s father now leads.

Partway through the showing, she and Kushner and their Secret Service detail got up and left, a witness tells PEOPLE.

It remains unclear what prompted the exit, though the witness describes it as abrupt.