They typically put up a minute-or-so "news story" from each year in the time-jump between seasons as a bonus feature, to flesh out the traditional season-opening montage, and also including short text snippets comparing the alternate history to what happened in the real world around that time. All of the ones bridging season 4 and 5 are up in the Apple TV app under the bonus features for the show. This one is the 2008 story. The full list is:
Bragg Wins (2004) Al Gore loses reelection to former vice-President James Bragg, who won 349 electoral votes, carrying every state but Oregon, California, Minnesota, Illinois, New York, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. First elected governor of Idaho in 1982, Ellen Wilson pick him as her running mate in 1992, but he left the administration after Wilson came out. Bragg returned to prominence as a commentator on right-wing cable news following Gore's 2000 election, but he only gained ground in the polls after the Goldilocks heist allowed him to paint Gore as a bumbler who'd allowed unprecedented wealth and property for America and Earth as a whole to slip through his fingers.
North Korea Base (2005) North Korea sets up a separate base independent of the international Happy Valley base. International observers are skeptical of their claims that the base is intended only for peaceful research for no military purpose. North Korea was expelled from the M-7 coalition (making it the M-6) because of accusations that they supported the Goldilocks heist. Several North Korean astronauts had also been given political asylum in Happy Valley, increasing tensions.
Peacekeepers (2006) Paul Bremmer was assigned by President Bragg to serve as the first M-6 governor on Mars. Bremmer announced the arrival of the Mars Peacekeepers, the first official law-enforcement agency to serve in Happy Valley. The intent is that uniformed constables rather than undercover intelligence agents will form a stronger bond with the community in the settlement and avoid events like the riot at the end of last season. Well, I say "uniformed," but it looks more like body armor to me. They're recruiting from local police forced on Earth (or just in America?), which I'm sure won't be a problem given the high standards of behavior and training set by the average American cop.
A New Alliance (2007) An Eagle News editorial excoriating Gore's mismanagement for leading to new tensions in the wake of the Goldilocks heist as opposed to the advancement and plenty that were supposed to come about after the asteroid's discovery. The ISN (Independent Spacefaring Nations) has formed in response to the M-6 countries' control over Mars and, thus, Goldilocks. They include China, Brazil, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Thailand. Bill McGann seems curiously sympathetic towards ISN/cynical towards the M-6 for a right-wing American political pundit during a Republican administration.
Space Elevator (2008) A construction contract for a space elevator from Mars to the Goldilocks asteroid is awarded to a Russian firm, Kuragin, despite Helios Aerospace having been responsible for the vast majority of infrastructure work on Mars thus far. Some suspect this is a case of graft or pork-barrel politics on the part of the USSR. Kuragin and Helios are also both developing probes searching for signs of alien life in the outer solar system.
Radiation Shield (2009) The first school opens in Happy Valley, with about a dozen students of all grade-school ages. Helios Aerospace has recently completed construction of electromagnetic generators on towers around the base to increase radiation shielding on the base, which will allow even young children to live on the base safely. Despite conventional radiation protection measures in the base, such as underground chambers and using water tanks and pipes as shielding around inhabited areas, leukemia and bone cancer rates remained elevated in people who had spent time on Mars, especially astronauts and cosmonauts who first travelled to Mars before the base was built, leading to pressure to create additional anti-radiation measures.
A Final Journey (2010) The original Pathfinder space shuttle arrived at its new home as a permanent exhibit at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. The entire Pathfinder class is set to be retired by NASA after 27 years in operation. Minor research failure; photos (I guess artist's conceptions, if it only just arrived) show the Pathfinder on display the way the Endeavour was originally exhibited there in real life, horizontally in a hangar (which makes sense for the Pathfinder), but the exterior stock footage showed the permanent exhibit under construction, where Endeavour is mounted to a full-sized external tank and rocket booster stack in launch position, which doesn't fit with how the Pathfinder "flew" to space rather than "launching.
Refugees on Mars (2011) An Eagle News piece on undocumented workers flooding M-6 nations from countries whose economies are collapsing because of lack of access to cheap Martian iridium. Stowaways in pressurized cargo containers are even trying to make a better life at Happy Valley, where the residents have nicknamed them "crate-ers" (get it, like they came a crate, but also like a crater from an asteroid...?). The migrants live in the disused lower levels of the base and scrape out a living doing odd jobs and off-the-books work. New Happy Valley Governor Leonid Polivenov says he can't do much unless the migrants' countries of origin agree to take them back on Earth.
M-6 Protests (2012) An Eagle News opinion piece on anti-M-6 protests which began with, shall we say, an "occupation" near Wall Street in New York city, and quickly spread around the world. Cheap, plentiful iridium continues to unbalance the world economy, and is now even having negative effects in the M-6 nations that had been the main beneficiary thus far.
