Your precious hot sauce is safe for now. A judge has denied a request to halt production at an Irwindale, California, Sriracha plant accused of emanating an odor that burns residents' eyes and throats. The judge instead set a hearing for November 22 to decide whether the factory should be temporarily shuttered.

At Halloween parties across this dreaded land tonight, people will set up Ouija boards and tarot decks for the traditional drunken fortune teller's table of occult items. At least a few people will freak out when the Ouija board spells out something maniacal like "KILL YOU FOREVER GOOD-BYE DADDY," and again we will wonder why we keep these apparent portals to Hell in our closet alongside Connect Four and Monopoly.

Ellen Degeneres has pulled off the ultimate Halloween trifecta: She managed to come up with a spot-on celebrity costume that's both funny and sexy; she garnered costume approval from the celebrity herself; and she did it all without an ounce of blackface.

Last night, for the first time in 95 years, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series at home in Fenway Park. Fuck the city of Boston, in general.

Better luck next year to the woman who will be handing out fat-shaming letters to overweight trick-or-treaters because America's Worst Neighbor officially resides in Norfolk, Virginia.

Michael Hayden, the former head of the NSA and the CIA, is the official mouthpiece of the American surveillance state. His blithe, unquestioning acceptance of the idea that privacy is a foolish notion is horrifying. And for that, he is valuable.

Halloween descended on New York like Hallowe'en upon a city Thursday, which meant the goons and goblins over at the Today show were up at dawn, peeling off their flaky reptile hides and stretching the skin of real people over their spikey, misshapen bodies. On top of that: a Halloween costume, as is appropriate for the day.

There are terrifying Halloween pranks and there are terrifying Halloween pranks.

"The Toronto Police service is now in possession of a video digital file" with "images consistent with those reported in the press," Chief Bill Blair just said at a news conference being streamed here. In other words: The cops have the Rob Ford crack tape. Blair says he's "disappointed."

Banksy's newest NYC piece (and perhaps the last of his month-long stay here) is on the side of a warehouse in Queens. It's made out of balloons. And here is the inside story of Banksy's first NYC show a decade ago. The fuss was somewhat smaller then.

The twelve jurors in Britain’s phone-hacking trial against several staffers of the shuttered Murdoch tabloid News of the World were told on Thursday that former editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, both charged with several counts of conspiracy to intercept communications and impede a police investigation, had maintained a six-year-long affair over the course of their employment at News International. The relationship apparently lasted between 1998 and 2004, during which both were married to other people.

Halloween digs itself out of the chilly autumn ground for a few weeks each year, too weird and primal for governments or religions to claim. It is an ancient pagan harvest festival and a leering plastic skeleton in a front-yard cemetery of styrofoam tombstones. It is candy and liquor, sex and death, and the only "moral lesson" of Halloween is a sneering threat from a child in the night: Give me mine or you'll get yours, mister. It is the only honest American holiday.

The Federal Aviation Administration today made historic changes to its longstanding Portable Electronic Devices (PEDs) policy, officially allowing airlines to grant passengers permission to use PEDs "during all phases of flight."

This morning the Toronto Police Department released a 500-page application for a search warrant used in the arrest of Sandro Lisi, a drug dealer who served as a driver to Mayor Rob Ford. It makes clear that Rob Ford uses drugs, and the police are pursuing a criminal investigation into his behavior.

Everyone's got a hidden talent. Some of those hidden talents are extremely useless, others are surprisingly useful. But it's not every day that someone has an extremely useless hidden talent that is surprisingly superior to all the useful ones.

Happy Halloween.

Buffalo bus driver Darnell "Big Country" Barton says he only did what he felt he was supposed to do when he stopped his bus to rescue a woman threatening to jump from an overpass above the Scajaquada Expressway.

Avonte Oquendo, a 14 year-old autistic boy, went missing from his school in Queens almost four weeks ago. Fliers with his picture are everywhere in New York City. And now—finally—he may have been spotted (Update: nope). But!

The New York City Council voted Wednesday to raise the minimum age for buying tobacco from 18 to 21. The new minimum age will take effect six months after Mayor Michael Bloomberg signs the bill into law.

[With a score of 6-1 the Boston Red Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals in Game Six to win the World Series in Boston Wednesday night. It's been 95 years since the Red Sox won the World Series at Fenway Park. Photo by Matt Slocum via AP]