Derren Brown performed a trick in which he appeared to predict the results of the UK national lottery on live TV. This immediately led to much speculation about how he did it. Of course, he didn’t disclose his “prediction” until after the lottery results had been announced, which makes it meaningless as a prediction. But it was still a clever publicity stunt.

Maggot therapy (also known as maggot debridement therapy (MDT), larval therapy, larva therapy, larvae therapy, biodebridement or biosurgery) is a type of biotherapy involving the intentional introduction by a health care practitioner of live, disinfected maggots (fly larvae) raised in special facilities into the non-healing skin and soft tissue wound(s) of a human or animal for the purposes of selectively cleaning out only the necrotic tissue within a wound (debridement), disinfection, and promotion of wound healing.

A rare parasite which burrows into host fish before eating and replacing their tongues with itself has been found off the Jersey coast. Fishermen near the Minquiers – islands under the jurisdiction of Jersey – found the isopod, a type of louse, inside a weaver fish.

Marine researcher Paul Chambers, from the Société Jersiaise, was one of the fishing party and identified the find. He said he was surprised to find the isopod away from the Mediterranean sea. Isopods are normally about 2cm (1in) long and live in fish, surviving on the animal’s blood, in warm waters.

Mr Chambers said: “When we emptied the fish bag out there at the bottom was this incredibly ugly looking isopod. Really quite large, really quite hideous – if you turn it over its got dozens of these really sharp, nasty claws underneath and I thought ‘that’s a bit of a nasty beast’.

“I struggled for weeks to find an identification for this thing until, quite by chance I stumbled across something that looked similar in a Victorian journal. Apparently there’s not too much ill effect to the fish itself except it’s lost its tongue.”

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A 60-year-old woman, blind for nine years, has regained useful vision in one eye following a rare operation in Miami in which surgeons removed one of her teeth, drilled a hole in it, inserted a plastic lens into the hole and implanted the tooth-lens combination into her eye.

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An woman is recovering after she was impaled in the neck by the branch of a tree while driving with her husband.

Michelle Childers and her husband, Daniel, were taking a recreational drive on a rural road in Idaho on Sept 5 when a spruce tree crashed through the passenger side window of the vehicle.

The twenty two-year-old said she then felt a “strange” pressure on her neck and shoulder. “I asked (my husband) ‘what where is it?’ “she said.

Her husband, twenty two-year-old Daniel Childers, told her that the tree limb had impaled her. The branch was more than an inch in diameter and 18 inches long. However, Mrs Childers said she felt no pain.

The couple drove to the Lochsa Lodge near the Idaho-Montana border to call for help and was flown by helicopter to St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Mont. Childers said the 13-inch tree limb was removed from her neck during a six-hour surgery.

Doctors discovered that the branch had somehow missed her jugular vein and her windpipe. The branch penetrated its way to the back of her left shoulder.