November 5, 2029—Pitcher Emery Ball held the Yankees to just two hits and one run on Wednesday, leading the Pittsburgh Pirates to win the World Series for the first time in half a century. But baseball fans openly refused to believe the Pirates’ victory, accusing the federal government of rigging the game to draw attention away from the scandal surrounding the end-of-the-world hoax.

“They expect us to believe anything,” said longtime Yankees fan Skip Tickel about the 6-2 victory in Game 5.  “We bought the whole story about the asteroid heading toward Earth, and the aliens that were supposedly entering the solar system. But for them to think we’d believe the Pirates actually won the Series is pretty insulting.”

Until this year, the Pirates’ 37-year streak of consecutive losing seasons was the most of any of North America’s four major sports leagues.  Under manager Ian Field, the team turned around this year with the help of a strong pitching staff that featured Ball and C.C. Sabathia III. 

FU sports analyst Bob Caustic said the public skepticism about the Pirates’ win is understandable given the government lies that have been exposed over the last week.

“The chances of two longtime losing baseball teams suddenly becoming colossal Cinderella stories is highly unlikely,” Caustic said, referencing last year’s World Series win by the Chicago Cubs.

FU’s occassional step away from the future and into the crazy present.

Galactic Suite has revealed that plans to open the first hotel in space are on schedule and The Galactic Suite Space Resort will be open for business and accepting tourists by 2012.

 But it’s not a bargain stay. The Barcelona-based architects of space resort say it will cost 3 million euro ($4.4 million) for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island before the trip.   They could make a reality show out of the training camp alone. Read more…

October 28, 2029—Homeland Security Secretary Marshall Lawe joined the scheme to fraudulently evacuate the planet in order to help enrich a California businesswoman with whom he was having an extra-marital affair, FU has learned.

Federal investigators have uncovered Lawe’s role in the scam after questioning Sela House, an Orange County real estate mogul who admitted beginning a romantic relationship with Lawe in 2027.  House admitted in an affidavit that she and Lawe volunteered to help NASA and the Pentagon perpetuate the asteroid-plummeting-toward-Earth hoax so that they could manipulate housing values. A copy of the affidavit was leaked to FU.

Lawe is the second top-ranking federal official to be implicated in the Apocalypse-gate scheme, joining NASA Administrator Cy Phiphan, who resigned under fire on Monday.  Republican lawmakers are calling on Attorney General Beau Biden to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the scandal.
 
According to the affidavit, Lawe and House knew the reports about the coming end of the world would send real estate prices plummeting as people abandoned the planet to avoid annihilation from what they were told was an incoming asteroid.  The lovers then planned to buy up real estate across the country, and wait for the value of those holdings to soar once NASA reported the asteroid scare as a false alarm.

Lawe declined comment on the matter.  A spokesman at the Homeland Security Department he is at home in Philadelphia asking forgiveness from his wife, Dee Vohrse-Lawe.

November 2, 2029—NASA Administrator Cy Phiphan resigned today as allegations mounted about his leading role in the end-of-the-world fraud scheme that sent billions of people fleeing the planet.

While denying that he engaged in any intentional conspiracy to defraud the world, Phiphan said he needed to devote full attention to clearing his name and wanted to avoid bringing down the presidency of Angelina Jolie.

“While it’s clear my earlier warnings about a massive asteroid approaching the planet were incorrect, they were based on innocent miscalculations on the part of NASA scientists,” he said. “I am guilty only of incompetence.”

Phiphan’s decision stems from an FU investigation showing that he spearheaded the massive government scheme to concoct the asteroid story in order to steer lucrative contracts to LockMartin Corp. for the construction of planetary evacuation ships.  LockMartin allegedly agreed to pay kickpacks to Phiphan and numerous government officials in exchange for the contract award.

President Jolie issued a statement saying she deeply regretted losing Phiphan as a member of her administration.

“Cy has been a devoted NASA leader, and had the planet’s best interest at heart throughout this crisis … which, uh, I guess turned out not to be a crisis after all … but if it were, we would have been in good hands,” she said. “He is a fine, albeit stupid, American.”

But FU has learned that the Federal Trade Commission has launched an investigation into the scandal, after confirming that the plummeting space rock caught on satellite video was in fact a LockMartin-constructed spacecraft built in the shape of an asteroid.  Documents leaked by a LockMartin whistleblower indicate that company executives conspired with NASA officials to build the ship so they had images to back up their story about the asteroid.  The FTC is investigating the matter because a Seattle-based space travel company charged consumers $100,000 per ticket to take tours aboard the disguised craft.

October 27, 2029—Law enforcement authorities and military troops are trying to quell rioting that has erupted in cities all over the world following news that Earth is in no danger of being destroyed by an asteroid after all.

Protests, street-fighting and looting have spread from Moscow to Los Angeles to Sydney as people demand that the United States account for what is now being called “Apocalypse-gate.”  Rioting also broke out on the Moon, where many people relocated to avoid annihilation by the asteroid.

“People are angry about being misled into thinking it was OK to make some reckless decisions,” said William Clubb, a London policeman.  “They drank and ate to excess, had unsafe sex and quit paying their bills because they figured they had nothing to lose.  Now that they know the world is safe, they have to actually account for those behaviors.”  

FU reported on Monday that top NASA, Pentagon and Homeland Security officials concocted the story about an asteroid heading on a collision course with Earth as part of a complex kickback scheme involving defense contractor LockMartin Corp.  Our investigation also revealed that the recent news about aliens entering our solar system was also false.

The asteroid scare has cost the world trillions of dollars, sent U.S. housing values tumbling below $0 and led to severe overcrowding in lunar refugee camps. About 65% of Earth’s inhabitants have left the planet.
 
The federal agencies late yesterday issued a joint statement denying the facts in the FU story, acknowledging that the planet is in no danger from asteroids or aliens, and that its earlier warnings were based on faulty—but not fraudulent—calculations.

“We simply mistook smudges on a telescope lense as being a plummeting space rock and an alien spaceship,” the agencies stated. “And we mistook some voice traffic between the Moon and Earth as a communique from approaching aliens.  It was all very innocent.”    

NASA officials had released what they said were images of the extra-terrestrials, who resembled the Geico insurance company’s gecko. But forensic analysis of those pictures have revealed them to be fake.

Meanwhile, Geico filed a trademark infringement lawsuit in federal against NASA, claiming the agency used its old spokeslizard without authorization.

SPECIAL FU INVESTIGATION

October 26, 2029—NASA concocted the story about an asteroid headed on a collision course with Earth as part of a complex conspiracy aimed at enriching its top officials,  FU has learned.

In addition, scientists and executives at the space agency concocted a story about aliens heading into our solar system, and possessing the capability to destroy the asteroid, as part of the scheme, according to terabytes of data leaked to this reporter by an anonymous source.

The records indicate that NASA made up the story about the asteroid in January, when it was a private corporation, in order to win lucrative government contracts that would help the company avoid bankruptcy.  The scheme appeared to be backfiring in late February when President Angelia Jolie ordered the government to take over the financially troubled company.

At that point, the conspiracy spiraled out of control.  When many NASA officials left the space agency to work for defense contractor LockMartin Corp., NASA Administrator (and former chief executive officer) Cy Phiphan steered lucrative space-barge construction contracts to the company, with the understanding that LockMartin would pay secret kickbacks to him and other top agency officials.  Under pressure from Congress, Phiphan subsequently cancelled those contracts because of cost overruns and mismanagement. 

At that point, NASA bribed top astrobiologists at the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute to claim that they had made interstellar contact with the aliens who were entering our solar system and had the technology to destroy the asteroid and save the Earth.   The space agency’s leaders then directed new no-bid contracts to LockMartin to develop special interspecies translators, claiming the devices were needed to help government officials communicate and negotiate with the aliens.

The data files indicate that the conspiracy trickles all the way down the lowest ranks of NASA, and also involves top officials at the Pentagon.  The documents do not provide evidence that President Angelina Jolie or Defense Secretary Maureen Corr knew about the conspiracy.

The asteroid scare has cost the world trillions of dollars, sent U.S. housing values tumbling below $0 and led to severe overcrowding on the Moon, where many people have fled to avoid the apocalypse.  It also has led to the cancellation of the Super Bowl, the 2030 Winter Olympics and the theatrical release of Seinfeld: The Movie.

Trillions of dollars have been spent on space barges designed to transport people off the planet, and the Jolie administration has been pressing Congress for more funds to accelerate terra-forming initiatives on Mars so that Earth refugees could live there.  And the news of the aliens has led to sweeping public concerns about a new wave of illegal immigration.

October 19, 2029—The story that a little boy had been hurled 140 million years into the past aboard a time machine was a hoax concocted to land a reality Web TV deal, authorities said this morning, and the boy’s father will likely face felony charges.

The stunt last week was a ploy by Conrad Mann, a self-proclaimed inventor who lives in Boise, Idaho, to convince the public that his four-year-old son, Ostrich, crawled into a first-of-its-kind time-traveling apparatus and accidentially activated it, according to the Ada County Sheriff Chase U. Downe.  Mann is suspected of concocting the entire incident to launch a self-produced reality series titled “Time Swap,” in which families from different centuries switch places and try to adapt to their new surroundings, Downe said.  

Downe said he expected to recommend that Mann be charged with making a false report to authorities and attempting to influence a public servant be brought against Mann. Federal charges are also possible.

The drama involving Ostrich played out over live streaming video over a 24-hour period on Oct. 14, after Mann made a desperate call to the sheriff’s office asking for help in rescuing his son.  Mann said  that recording data on the machine indicated Ostrich had been transported to the early Cretaceous period.  Mann’s statements had prompted the authorities to gather leading physicists and technologists from around the world to gather in Boise to rescue the boy.

The experts eventually programmed the device to return Ostrich to the present, but when they opened the machine to pull him out, all they found was a Protoceratops egg. Officials thought the boy had possibly been eaten or trampled by a dinosaur, but Ostrich was subsequently found in the family’s hologram room, playing with a 3D image of Elmo from Sesame Street. 

In fact, the machine — which was nothing more than a souped-up clothes dryer — would not have the power to launch the the 27-pound-boy back in time, Idaho State University physics professor Molly Cule said, adding that the scientists involved in the rescue should have realized the story was a hoax since Mann, who has a high-school education, was not likely to have invented time travel.

The Mann case bears a striking resemblance to the “balloon boy” case that gripped the nation 20 years ago. In that incident, a Colorado man named Patrick and Mayumi Heene were accused of fraudently convincing authorities that their six-year-old son Falcon was aboard a runaway balloon when the boy was in fact hiding in the attic of the family’s home.  Charges against Mayumi Heene were eventually dropped, and Patrick Heene was acquitted by reason of insanity in a 2010 jury trial.

Asked by FU to comment on the similarities between the balloon incident and the time-machine stunt, Falcon Heene, now 26 and living in Utah, promptly threw up.

October 16, 2029—The New York Yankees will begin Game 1 of the American League Championship Series tonight without designated hitter Grant Slamm, who is under a three-game suspension for bashing a robotic umpire beyond repair during Monday’s division championship game against the Texas Rangers.

Doug Autt will fill the DH spot tonight as the Yankees take on the  Mariners in Seattle.

Major League Baseball also fined Slamm $20 million for the destruction and ordered him to cover the costs of replacing the umpire, which costs roughly $75 million. 

The incident occurred in the seventh inning of the fourth and final game of the division series, when Umpire R16 called Slamm out on strikes. Slamm angrily protested the third-strike call. When the robot ejected Slamm from the game for his behavior, the DH beat the machine repeatedly with his bat.      

“There was no reason for Grant to argue the call,” said FU sports analyst Bob Caustic. “These umpire devices are programmed to identify balls crossing the strike zone with 99% accuracy. Protesting their calls is like arguing with your vomit about where it came from.”

Baseball Commissioner Alberto Gonzales said the league simply can’t afford to tolerate umpire vandalism.

“These umpires are very expensive devices,” he said. “I mean, each unit costs almost as much as a typical player’s annual salary.”

FU’s occassional return from the future to examine our crazy present.

From Wired.com: Two Chinese scientists have successfully made an artificial black hole. Since you’re still reading this, it’s safe to say that Earth hasn’t been sucked into its vortex.

But if only they could find a way to push Jon and Kate Gosselin through it.

October 8, 2029—Forget hoop earrings, navel studs and tongue jewelry. Today, body piercing has reached its zenith, with young people increasingly piercing their skulls to wear big hoop headrings.  

“This is the ultimate form of body jewelry,” said FU fashion analyst Dee Zein. “Essentially there’s not really any other new body part to pierce. Young people have already tried piercing everything from their navels to their genitals to their knee caps. The head was about the only thing left.”

Zein warns that consumers should always visit a licensed skull-piercer, and should keep studs in their head holes for two weeks to avoid infection.