- In August two British couples were given sanctions by local councils because their loud, long sex sessions disturbed neighbors.

Steve and Caroline Cartwright were issued a noise abatement order by the Sunderland City Council (Caroline: "I do admit I scream and make lots of noise"), and Kerry Norris was fined by the Brighton and Hove City Council for violating a previous sex-noise order with her boyfriend Adam Hinton (a neighbor said their headboard bangs against the wall until 6 a.m.).

Also in August, a neighbor of a swingers' party house in Des Moines, Wash., told a Seattle Times reporter than cries of ecstasy from the house sometimes sound "like a raccoon dying."

Also, some animals have good sex lives

Officers responding to a neighbor's report of domestic violence in a subdivision near Payson, Ariz., in September decided that the "fight" the neighbor heard was the high-pitched mating scream of a male elk.

And an August police search near Linz, Germany, was called off after the "bloodcurdling" screams reported as a woman in distress were actually the mating cries of a badger.

And officials at the Bristol Zoo in England promised neighbors they would temporarily house gibbons inside during the night because of their loud mating duets.

Rookie criminal mistakes

-Kody Merrival, 21, was arrested in Iowa City, in September after he used an alleged stolen credit card in three different establishments. At a coffee bar, he asked for points on his personal account while using the card; at another store, he absentmindedly signed his own name; and in the third, he offered his own ID to accompany the card (leading the merchant to confiscate the card and notify police).

-Tommy Patterson, 41, vacationing in Ormond Beach, Fla., in July, decided to do some impromptu shoplifting at a Wal-Mart, according to police, but was caught after a chase that was brief because he was still wearing flip-flops from the beach.

Update

The brain "fingerprinting" work mentioned in News of the Weird in 2000 and 2003, whose hypothesis is that different areas of the brain are active when a person recalls an actual experience, as opposed to recalling merely learned information, was used in June in Pune, India, to secure a woman's murder conviction.

A neuroscientist convinced the judge that the suspect's responses to questions could only have come had she actually made a purchase of the arsenic in question and traveled the exact route taken by the alleged killer.

Hey, want to go hang out?

Daytime burglar John Pearce, 32, was arrested in Dartford, England, in August after getting his foot caught in a window and hanging upside down for over an hour in full view of congregating (and taunting) neighbors before police arrived.

However, in Chester Township, Pa., in July, scrap-metal burglar Charles Ancrum, 50, beat that record, hanging from a window for an entire weekend, dead, after he broke his neck attempting to climb into a residential garage. (While sticking his head through a small window, he fell off the sawhorse he was standing on.)

Goldfish have feelings too

The world's most extensive array of animal "rights" took effect in Switzerland in September. Dog owners must take, at their own expense, classes in pet care (and anglers must take a class in humane treatment of fish). Animals listed as "social" (including goldfish, hamsters, sheep, goats, yaks) must be kept with or near another of their species. Goldfish must have some "privacy," e.g., no completely transparent tanks, and can only be killed humanely (never flushed alive). Even mud-loving pigs are entitled to showers.

Yet, Swiss animal rights activists complained that the country still permits trading in cat fur (supposedly a pain-reliever for rheumatism), and that some new protections (for example, for rhinoceroses) are still inadequate.