Recap of the News from 2050

Here is a recap of the major news events of the year 2050.

In January 2050, Donald Rumsfeld, who had been the Secretary of Defense under American President George W. Bush, died in a tragic bungee-jumping accident at the age of 117. Rumsfeld had successfully fought extradition to Europe back in 2014 after being indicted by the EU's International Court of Criminal Behaviour, Un-Niceness and Illegal Thought (ICCBUNIT) for supervising the practice in 2005 of torturing prisoners of war by putting women's panties on their heads. These cruel and inhumane acts, along with other atrocities including the playing of rap music and Jennifer Lopez CDs, which have long been recognized to be particularly effective and brutal instruments of torture, were recognized in 2011 as crimes against humanity by New Geneva Convention on War and Un-Niceness.
In August, an activist group called People for Niceness and Ethical Treatment of Animals (PNETA) protested the military's practice of reprogramming the brains of live insects to carry nanobombs to targets.
In related news, the IEU (Islamic European Union) and America edged closer to a full-blown trade war after America refused to comply with Europe's demands to stop what it called the `barbaric practice' of animal ownership. A spokespersyn for the International Court of Animal Rights reaffirmed that abolition of pet ownership has been its principal goal since the eating of meat products was banned in 2037 and all medical and biological research was stopped back in 2032. IEU Commissioner Abu Spengel, who had been the head of the infamous Offensive Speech Police, or OSP (which later became the ICCBUNIT after the carnage of the European Civil War), warned Citizen Voters of the serious legal consequences of criticizing its new rulings.
The White House and Congress were moved to secure underground bunkers to reduce the risk of attack by nanobombs. The White House and Capitol buildings, although heavily damaged by the Great Flood of 2027, were finally turned into museums.
In March, anthropologists studying the early history of the Internet announced the discovery of an item in Wikipedia, an early online encyclopedia, that contained a true statement.
This year also marked the introduction of bullets containing tiny electronic lawyers whose purpose is to determine whether it is legal to hit the target. These replaced an earlier generation of bullets that used a satellite link for the same purpose. The greatest difficulty was in compressing the millions of volumes in the U.S. Code, all 52 state penal codes and all federal and state jurisprudence, the Congressional Record, and the tens of millions of volumes of rules from various regulatory agencies into the bullets' memory.
In October, a huge flood inundated large parts of India. This was the largest flood since the Great Flood of 2006, which was caused by a group of Muslims who, angered by news reports of American soldiers flushing parts of the Holy Quran down a toilet, attempted to flush their entire collection of the Mishnah and Rabbinic scripture, along with bound copies of the Talmud and Torah, a task that took them six weeks to accomplish and resulted in the flooding of large portions of what were then the countries of France, Belgium, and The Netherlands.
The complexity of America's tax laws was once again demonstrated when it was revealed that only 17 people had completed their tax forms correctly last year.
Former President Frank G. Bush, the grandson of President Jeb Bush, praised President Wojciechowski's plan to expand the military bases on the moon that were established to defend against interplanetary attack. The need for such bases was established back in 2005 by Canada's former Defense Minister, who won the 2009 Nobel Prize for his criticism of what was then the United States and for saying "UFOs are as real as the planes that fly over our heads."
A woman was fired from her job as a food inspector because of incurable nymphomania. She had no choice but to take a position as a schoolteacher.
This year's Nobel Peace prize was awarded for the first time ever to an animal, a dog named “Fluffy”. This produced howls of protest, with many people saying that dogs should always be given more traditional dog names like “Lance”, “Bruce” and “Steve”, which have been the three most popular dog names since the year 2035, when scientists made the surprising discovery that dogs are all gay.
Nigeria once again led the world in per capita GDP, raking in over 2.5×10¹⁴ dollars. Unfortunately, all of it was given away to American investors who had been contacted by email and offered 10% in return for providing their bank account information.

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