BRUNEI– E. D. W. Lynch spokesman Myron Bron­stein refused today to con­firm or deny the exis­tence of a 2008 improve­ment ini­tia­tive much like last years acclaimed “2007 Yes!” cam­paign. Refer­ring specif­i­cally to a glossy two page spread in Human­i­tar­ian Fancy mag­a­zine with pur­ported details of the top secret pro­gram, Bron­stein said “I can nei­ther con­firm nor deny the exis­tence of any pro­gram or pro­grams in devel­op­ment or oth­er­wise.” He also refused to com­ment on the name of the pro­gram, reported by some sources as “2008-Great!”

Human­i­tar­ian Fancy hinted that among the 2008 pro­grams, a “stage 2″ of 2007’s ongo­ing Social Surge is immi­nent and will “be bold and unprece­dented.” Social Resources Tsar T. Argyle Funston-Nakamoto was unavail­able for com­ment, but an assis­tant noted that he is “very busy with the ongo­ing work of the surge.”

In other news, Melvin Mumps, gos­sip colum­nist for Human­i­tar­ian Fancy mag­a­zine has gone miss­ing in Zürich after wit­nesses say he was “play­fully shoved” into an unmarked panel van.

BEIRUT– E. D. W. Lynch spokesman Myron Bron­stein today announced that a covert research and devel­op­ment pro­gram to “cre­ate the ulti­mate email to respond to Craigslist apart­ment share list­ings” is cur­rently under­way at the company’s San Fran­cisco cam­pus. “We have brought together a crack team of pro­fes­sional email writ­ers, foren­sic psy­chol­o­gists, and half-Asian lady nin­jas to per­fect the ulti­mate email. This ‘V-mail’ will ensure that the user is promptly given the room he is apply­ing for with min­i­mal col­lat­eral dam­age.” Bron­stein cited grim sta­tis­tics on San Francisco’s rental boom, as well as the need to coun­ter­act E. D. W.‘s main down­side as a prospec­tive room­mate– that he is not a “29 year old les­bian vegan dog lover grad stu­dent,” as grounds for the until now secret program.

“We’ve devel­oped the email through Mark II sta­tus, but we can­not tech­ni­cally call the Mark II a true smart email. The Mark III Phoenix ‘Room­seeker’ will be have mod­u­lar upgrades for dif­fer­ent neigh­bor­hoods as well as enhance­ments that will detect and avoid pas­sive aggres­sive liv­ing sit­u­a­tions. The pay­load will be light and witty with a hard­ened subject-line war­head that will smash through all known email fil­ters, while releas­ing coun­ter­mea­sures that will gar­ble com­pet­ing room­seek­ing emails by ran­domly adding child­hood curse­words to them.”

The smart email is under final stages of devel­op­ment and is near­ing its first live test. Mr. Bron­stein declined to say where exactly the test would take place, say­ing only that “the first deploy­ment will prob­a­bly be at a top floor apart­ment in a gin­ger­bread Vic­to­rian with laun­dry and a work­ing fire­place, some­where near Dolores Park.”

ST. MORITZ– The Human­i­tar­ian world today was rocked by alle­ga­tions by Aus­trian human­i­tar­ian inter­est mag­a­zine “Welt­ge­sund­sheit­sund­men­schen­fre­undlichs­be­we­gung Zeitung” that insist that famed human­i­tar­ian E. D. W. Lynch has fallen once again under the spell of the “balmy beast.”

At a hastily arranged press con­fer­ence, spokesman Myron Bron­stein responded to the accu­sa­tions unequiv­o­cally, call­ing them “absolutely ridicu­lous.” Asked by reporters if this was a denial of the charges, Bron­stein elab­o­rated, “what I am say­ing here clearly and for the record is that the alle­ga­tions are ridicu­lous and I refuse to respond to them.” When con­fronted with alleged receipts from a Bay Area Wal­greens for a generic bee’s wax lip balm signed allegedly by Sir E. D. W. Lynch with his trade­mark gold ink pen, Bron­stein stated, “I’ve already responded to these wild alle­ga­tions and if you think wav­ing some so-called receipt is going to elicit fur­ther response from me you are sim­ply mistaken.”

Sir E. D. W. Lynch was unavail­able for com­ment as he is cur­rently “rest­ing at a reju­ve­na­tion facil­ity in the Swiss Alps,” accord­ing to infor­ma­tion from his website.