Clueless America: 26 percent don't know we split from England

This should be shocking news. However, considering America is the country that wanted to elect a Vice-President who did not know Africa was a continent, and who could not list a series of publications she regularly read.

26 percent of Americans do not know that the U.S. split from Great Britain when it declared its independence, according to a Marist Poll. That 74 percent do know the correct answer is small comfort.

20 percent were unsure of which country the U.S. split from. Meanwhile, the other 6 percent mentioned France, China, Japan, Mexico, and Spain, among others. Don't imagine it's senility, either: the youngest group was the worst, with 18-29 year olds only answering correctly 60 percent of the time.

Escaped Convict Taunts UK Police Via Facebook

Craig "Lazie" Lynch, 28, escaped from the minimum-security Hollesley Bay Prison near the village of Woodbridge in southern England three months ago. Since then, he's been mocking police via Facebook, and he's also managed to gain a huge number of Facebook "fans." His Facebook photo isn't exactly family-friendly, so I had to modify it some, by the way.

In fact, Lynch has 27,000 fans at the time of this writing. Strangely, a number of posts from his fans seem positive, although a few chime in every now and then to remind people they are "cheering for" a felon. Lynch had been serving a seven-year sentence for committing a burglary with a weapon.

Meanwhile, police have appealed to his Facebook fans to help track him down. How well that's going to work is unclear. Reportedly, when the authorities first made their entreaties to his fans, he only had about 3,800. Now he has the aforementioned over 27,000. In fact, according to his Facebook page, the company deleted his first page, when it had 4,000 fans. Now he has a new one and 27,000 fans.

Strange how the U.K. authorities can't close in on him via his IP address. With Facebook's help, they should be able to catch him. His latest post is further taunting, noting he was on the news being interviewed, via the phone.

i'm messaging you all to tell you to check out channel 5 news uk at 19.30 uk time i just gave them an exclusive phone interview so all you supporters and HATERS out there tune in thank you all love your favourite facebook fugitive Lazie

Copper Bracelets, Magnetic Wrist Straps Worthless for Arthritis: Study

A U.K. study shows what most of us already knew: that copper bracelets, aside from turning your skin green, aren't really any good for anything. Neither, said the study, are magnetic wrist straps.

Those "devices" have been said to be effective at relieving arthritis pain, but the new study, which appears in the British journal Complementary Therapies in Medicine, found that the reported therapeutic benefits from them "are most likely attributable to non-specific placebo effects."

In other words, any curative effects are all in your mind!

Stewart Richmond, a research fellow in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York, led the study. He said:

"People tend to buy them when they are in a lot of pain, then when the pain eases off over time they attribute this to the device. However, our findings suggest that such devices have no real advantage over placebo wrist straps that are not magnetic and do not contain copper."

He added, however, that the devices don't harm anyone, and might give wearers some degree of hope.