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    How Heidi Klum Transformed Into E.T. for Halloween

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    The model and television host dressed as the alien from Steven Spielberg’s 1982 film for her annual New York City costume party.This Halloween, Heidi Klum is wearing an adult diaper.It’s a first for her, the model and former “Project Runway” host said.Ms. Klum, who has become known for her elaborate Halloween costumes, transformed into the character E.T. this year for her annual bash held at the Hard Rock Hotel in New York City.The costume, inspired by the alien from Steven Spielberg’s 1982 film “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” included a glowing fingertip and motorized headpiece with a movable mouth and eyes, controlled remotely by a member of Ms. Klum’s team. The red carpet was also built several feet in the air, so when Ms. Klum stood on the ground behind it, her brown, knobby, otherworldly toes appeared to be on the floor.“Maybe I never need to use the diaper, but at least that way I don’t have to think about it,” Ms. Klum said, explaining that the look, is difficult to put on and take off.The idea for the costume came to Ms. Klum a few weeks after last year’s event, she said, explaining that “E.T.” was one of her favorite movies as a child. (Coincidentally, Janelle Monáe, another celebrity with a fondness for Halloween, also dressed as E.T. this year.)“They have no genitals,” Ms. Klum said of the aliens in Mr. Spielberg’s movie. “I like the whole idea of, like, we’re all the same.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      China’s Latest Security Target: Halloween Partygoers

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      Last year, the Shanghai government said Halloween celebrations were a sign of “cultural tolerance.” This year, the police rounded up people in costume.Social media videos verified by The New York Times showed police in Shanghai escorting away people dressed in costumes.The police escorted the Buddha down the street, one officer steering him with both hands. They hurried a giant poop emoji out of a cheering dance circle in a public park. They also pounced on Donald J. Trump with a bandaged ear, and pushed a Kim Kardashian look-alike, in a tight black dress and pearls, into a police van, while she turned and waved to a crowd of onlookers.The authorities in Shanghai were on high alert this past weekend, against a pressing threat: Halloween.Officials there clamped down on Halloween celebrations this year, after many young people turned last year’s festivities into a rare public outlet for political or social criticism. People had poured into the streets dressed up as Covid testing workers, to mock the three years of lockdowns they had just endured; they plastered themselves in job advertisements, amid a weak employment market; they cross-dressed, seizing the opportunity to express L.G.B.T.Q. identities without being stigmatized.At the time, many on Chinese social media celebrated the revelries as a joyous form of collective therapy. The Shanghai government even issued a news release saying the celebrations were proof of the city’s “cultural tolerance” and the “wisdom of its urban managers.”“There is an absence of festivals in China solely dedicated to the simple pleasures of having fun,” it said. “Halloween has filled the void.”But the authorities have grown increasingly restrictive toward personal expression in recent years, including seemingly apolitical expression. They are also wary of impromptu crowds, especially after the anti-lockdown protests in 2022. And so, for all their praise last year, this year they seemed determined to prevent a repeat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Spirit Halloween Will Experiment With Spirit Christmas

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      Known for its pop-up stores — and its army of seasonal workers — Spirit Halloween will try its hand at a longer run and a bigger holiday.For many fall enthusiasts, the season’s start is marked by the arrival of autumn leaves and apple picking. For others, it is marked by the emergence of the Borg-like retail empire that is Spirit Halloween, a Halloween goods purveyor that opens more than 1,500 locations across North America, only to shutter them in the days after Halloween.The script has remained constant: Spirit Halloween outlets appear in strip malls, and just about any abandoned storefront, selling vast inventories of costumes, wigs, vampire fangs, fake blood, devil pitchforks and ghoulish animatronics. Year after year, its stores create a dependable seasonal economy for thousands of workers before disappearing as quickly as they materialized.But this week, Spirit, which was founded in 1983, announced that it intends to test the waters of the Christmas season, too, with the introduction of a new retail concept, “Spirit Christmas.” Ten test locations will open across the Northeast, starting on Oct. 18 with a store in Mays Landing, N.J., which will be followed in November with outlets in locations like Albany, Poughkeepsie and Erie.At these locations, Spirit’s Grim Reaper-like mascot will be replaced with a winking Santa, and its stock will be replaced with gingerbread houses, wrapping paper, ugly sweaters, elf hats, reindeer ears and stocking stuffers. Locations will also offer family photo ops with resident bearded Santas.“Spirit Christmas is a new concept for us, and we’re hopeful it will resonate with our customers,” Kym Sarkos, Spirit’s executive vice president, said in a statement. Her statement added that customers will be able to wander through a “life-sized gingerbread village, where you can mail your letter to Santa at the North Pole and find out whether you’ve been naughty or nice.”The storefronts change, but the Spirit Halloween signage remains the same.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn recent years, as Spirit Halloween’s seasonal retail empire has grown, the ephemerality of its business structure has made it the subject of endless parody. In the recent season premiere of “Saturday Night Live,” the sketch show aired a prerecorded spot that poked fun at Spirit Halloween’s impending, yet ultimately temporary, emergence.In the skit, an employee played by Heidi Gardner walks through the aisles of a busy Spirit store while she tells viewers about the company’s seasonal aid to depressed local economies around the nation.“Since 1983, Spirit Halloween has been helping our struggling communities by setting up shop in every vacant building in the country for six weeks,” she says. “And then bouncing.”After the skit aired, Spirit shot back at “Saturday Night Live” in a post on X.“We are great at raising things back from the dead @nbcsnl,” Spirit’s social team wrote alongside a photo of a Spirit costume package titled “Irrelevant 50-year-old TV show.” The package’s description noted that the outfit came with “Dated references,” “Unknown cast members” and “Shrinking ratings.”The joke landed well online, and now the company will find out if its customers are interested in having Spirit stick around through the holiday season. More

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      5 New Horror Movies to Stream for Halloween on Hulu, Max and More

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      Out this week, a period possession movie starring Sarah Paulson, a chef-driven supernatural thriller starring Ariana DeBose and more.‘Hold Your Breath’Stream it on Hulu.A mother braves the elements, and evil, in this busy but hackneyed feature debut from the directors Karrie Crouse and Will Joines.Sarah Paulson plays Margaret, a loving mother trying to shield her two daughters, Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins), from sinister entities that she suspects lurk outside their isolated Dust Bowl home. Among them is a mysterious drifter (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) with questionable healing powers.Crouse’s script hurls horror conventions against the wall — possession, survival, eco-disaster, home invasion, folk horror, body horror, religious mania — in hopes that something sticks. But nothing does, so what’s left is a movie about a grieving mother protecting her children from dust and wind for 94 minutes — a scary scenario for 1930s Oklahoma, the film’s setting. But not here.Instead, there are predictable jump scares, creaking floorboards, silhouetted figures in the distance and every 10 minutes another fire for Margaret to put out. It’s “The Mist” but silt, “The Babadook” minus a Babadook, “The Night of the Hunter” with no edge.‘V/H/S/Beyond’Stream it on Shudder.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Your Monday Briefing: Seoul Mourns Halloween Crush Victims

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      Plus Russia halts Ukrainian grain shipments and Brazilians vote for their next president.A man paid his respects at the memorial site of the crowd crush in Seoul on Sunday.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesAt least 150 dead in SeoulAt least 150 people were killed in Seoul after they were crushed in a Halloween crowd on Saturday. Most were in their teens and 20s, and women significantly outnumbered men among the victims. South Koreans are trying to understand how the crowd crush happened now that most of the victims have been identified. Witnesses said they saw almost no crowd control and scant police presence in the hours leading up to the tragedy, even though people were filling the streets. The crush happened in Itaewon, a popular nightlife district, on the first Halloween after most pandemic-related social distancing measures were lifted.As the night grew more frenetic and the mass of revelers swelled, many of them crammed into an alleyway barely 11 feet wide, in a bottleneck of human traffic that made it difficult to breathe and move. From within the crowd came calls to “push, push” and a big shove. Then, they began to fall, a tangle of too many bodies, compressed into too small of a space.Toll: At a community center where family members had been awaiting news, wrenching wails followed dreaded confirmations. Shin Su-Bin, 25, is among the dead. Her family had been calling her phone that night to no answer.Details: Among those killed in Itaewon, Seoul’s most diverse neighborhood, were citizens of the U.S., China, Iran, Norway and Uzbekistan. Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s president, has declared a weeklong period of national mourning.Context: The tragedy is one of the deadliest peacetime accidents in South Korea’s history. In recent years, it has been eclipsed only by the Sewol ferry sinking in 2014, where more than 300 people died — including 250 high school students.Friends and relatives helped Anna Moroz, 80, salvage what she could from her home in Ukraine.Ivor Prickett for The New York TimesRussia pulls back from grain dealOn Saturday, Russia withdrew from a deal that had allowed grain to be exported from Ukrainian ports, upending an agreement that was intended to alleviate a global food crisis. Yesterday, the U.N. and Turkey pushed to revive the deal, which they helped broker.Russia’s move came hours after a drone attack on its Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, which Russia blamed on Ukraine. Russia said it could no longer ensure the security of cargo ships taking grain from Ukrainian ports and would suspend the agreement’s implementation “for an indefinite period.”The State of the WarGrain Deal: After accusing Ukraine of attacking its ships in Crimea, Russia withdrew from an agreement allowing the export of grain from Ukrainian ports. The move jeopardized a rare case of wartime coordination aimed at lowering global food prices and combating hunger.Turning the Tables: With powerful Western weapons and deadly homemade drones, Ukraine now has an artillery advantage over Russia in the southern Kherson region, erasing what had been a critical asset for Moscow.Fears of Escalation: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia repeated the unfounded claim that Ukraine was preparing to explode a so-called dirty bomb, as concerns rose in the West that the Kremlin was seeking a pretext to escalate the war.A Coalition Under Strain: President Biden is facing new challenges keeping together the bipartisan, multinational coalition supporting Ukraine. The alliance has shown signs of fraying with the approach of the U.S. midterm elections and a cold European winter.The grain deal, which was signed in July, also aimed to lower food prices. Russia’s move jeopardized a rare case of wartime coordination, which ended a five-month Russian blockade. The deal allowed more than 9.2 million tons of grain and foodstuffs to be exported again. Many were bound for poor countries.Reaction: The U.S. accused Russia of using food as a weapon. “It’s really outrageous to increase starvation,” President Biden said on Saturday. Fighting: With Western weaponry, Ukraine now has a front line advantage in the south. Despite the slog of mud season, its army keeps advancing.Toll: Ukraine’s children face years of trauma.Brazil’s vote is one of Latin America’s most important in decades. Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesBrazilians choose their new presidentVoters headed to the polls yesterday to cast their ballots in a presidential runoff. Polls closed just before this newsletter was sent, and results are still coming. Here are live results and an overview of the race.Voters faced a stark choice after an ugly campaign. Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing populist, seeks a second term as president. He faces Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the once-incarcerated former leader who vows to revive leftist policies.The vote carries major consequences for the Amazon, and thus the entire planet. Bolsonaro gutted the agencies tasked with protecting the rainforest, leading to increased deforestation. Da Silva has vowed to eradicate illegal logging and mining.It is also a test for democracy. Bolsonaro has spent years attacking Brazil’s democratic institutions, including a sustained effort to undermine its election systems. In so doing, he has destroyed public trust in the elections.What’s next: If Bolsonaro loses, will he accept his defeat?Details: Brazil’s elections chief ordered the head of the country’s highway police to answer allegations that he had ordered traffic stops, particularly of buses transporting voters to the polls, in an effort to suppress turnout.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificDozens of Australians, many of whom are children, remain in the camps.Ivor Prickett for The New York TimesSeventeen Australians have returned home from Islamic State detention camps in northeast Syria, where they had lived since 2019. Dozens remain at the camps.At least 70 people were killed after a suspension bridge collapsed in the western Indian state of Gujarat yesterday.Flooding and landslides left at least 45 people dead in the Philippines.Kazuki Takahashi, who created Yu-Gi-Oh!, died in July. New details have been released: The 60-year-old drowned while trying to save others.Around the WorldElon Musk took charge of Twitter and quickly ordered layoffs. My colleagues analyzed the deal on “Hard Fork,” our podcast.Israel will hold its Parliamentary elections tomorrow. Benjamin Netanyahu is the leading candidate.At least 100 people died in the deadliest terrorist attack in Somalia in five years.The U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked in their home. He is expected to heal, but the encounter highlights fears of growing political violence in the U.S. Other Big StoriesRishi Sunak, Britain’s new prime minister, married into a secretive $800 million fortune, which might not fit within his party’s views.The U.S. released Guantánamo’s oldest prisoner, a 75-year-old businessman who was held for nearly two decades without being charged with a crime.Census data revealed that more than one in five Canadians is an immigrant. Polls show the nation approves.Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen divorced after 13 years of marriage.A Morning ReadThis year, parts of Riyadh, the Saudi capital, looked like creatures from a haunted house had escaped and taken over the city.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesUntil recently, Saudi Arabia banned Halloween, which was viewed as suspicious and pagan. But this past weekend, the kingdom hosted a government-sponsored “horror weekend” — not strictly speaking a Halloween festival, but certainly conveniently timed.Clowns and goblins filled the streets, and costume shops sold out almost as fast as employees could restock the shelves. “Saudi is changing,” said a young man going as a wizard.UP FOR DEBATEShould daylight saving time end?Mexico City (and most of the rest of Mexico) would stop springing forward and falling back.Marco Ugarte/Associated PressLast week, Mexico’s Senate voted to end daylight saving time for most of the country, prioritizing morning light. In March, the U.S. Senate took the opposite approach when it unanimously passed legislation to make daylight saving time permanent. (The House has not found consensus.)Each side of the debate carries strong opinions. The business community generally supports keeping daylight saving time: Many retailers and outdoor industries say that extra afternoon light can boost sales because people have more time to spend money after work or school.But many scientists believe that doing away with it, as Mexico is poised to do, is better for human health. They argue that aligns more closely with the sun’s progression — and, therefore, with the body’s natural clock.Mexico’s Senate seems to agree. “This new law seeks to guarantee the human right to health and increase safety in the mornings, procure the well-being and productivity of the population, and contribute to saving electric energy,” the body said on Twitter.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChristopher Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.Start your week off right with this simple salted-caramel rice pudding for dessert.What to Watch“The Novelist’s Film,” by the South Korean director Hong Sang-soo, is a study in small moments and chance encounters.Tech TipA latecomers’ guide to TikTok.TravelThe next time you’re in Mexico City, tour the former houses of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Hair colorer (three letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. Happy Halloween, and see you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Jenna Russell, a longtime reporter at The Boston Globe, will be our next New England bureau chief.Start your week with this narrated long read about animal voyages. And here is Friday’s edition of “The Daily,” on Brazil’s elections.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Digested week: no sympathy for the second most awful man in America | Emma Brockes

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      MondayI’ve always felt sorry for the victims of Sacha Baron Cohen, no matter how much they seem to deserve it. He plays on their vanity and eggs them on to say terrible things, but he also hoodwinks them using something less laudable: the desire, present in most people, to avoid causing someone else – in this case, Baron Cohen’s buffoonish alter egos – social pain or embarrassment.There is, it turns out, an exception to this weakness of mine, a person I’m only too happy to see Baron Cohen torment. Step forward Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and the second most awful man in America, who over the weekend continued to push back against his starring role in the new Borat sequel. In a secretly filmed scene from the movie, Giuliani is shown accompanying Borat’s “15-year-old daughter” to a hotel room, before lying down on the bed and sticking his hands down the front of his pants. He said later he had been “tucking in my shirt”.Even Fox News confessed to being “grossed out” by this episode, but four days after news of the scene broke, Giuliani did what he does best and upstaged himself by engaging in another dispute. On Sunday the 76-year-old sat in a car on Fifth Avenue in New York stuck in traffic caused by a group identifying itself as “Jews for Trump”. Counter-protesters arrived and spotted through the car’s open passenger-seat window the tiny, scowling face of Giuliani. Video footage of the event shows him peering beadily out like a creature in a story by Beatrix Potter introduced for the sole purpose of receiving a comeuppance. Shouting ensued.“Who would you prefer for the next four years?” said Giuliani in an interview afterwards. “This group of foul-mouthed people who don’t seem to have a vocabulary beyond three words, or these very nice Jewish people who are … not saying anything back and not doing anything other than exercising their right to say they’re for Donald Trump.” To which the answer is, obviously, whichever one grabs the wheel and keeps driving until Giuliani is safely over the horizon.TuesdayTo escape the world, I am on a television binge, although my choice of shows sometimes makes everything worse. On Tuesday I finished Utopia, Gillian Flynn’s horrifically timed adaptation of the 2013 cult British show of the same name, in which a flu-like pandemic threatens the world. A laborious disclaimer runs at the start of the show (Utopia is a work of fiction “not based on actual, related or current events”), which makes one wonder how close makers came to delaying its transmission. One of its themes is how you can’t trust government health authorities, while the world falls victim to an unreliable vaccine.If it was masochistic to watch, I enjoyed it for its comic-book thrills and the way it unfolded like Scooby-Doo but with torture. A better escape is The Undoing, the new HBO thriller starring Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman, set in the airless world of hyper-wealthy Manhattan. Grant, who once described his own acting range as “sinisterly narrow”, has prospered where other former romantic heroes have fallen, and as someone who has since Four Weddings and Funeral been, so to speak, totally straight for Grant, it is gratifying indeed. Orlando Bloom, marooned on the terrible Carnival Row; Jude Law, hurling himself ineffectually about in The Third Day; Paul Bettany, with any luck never to be seen in any context again; and here is Grant, urbane, winsome and still a bit mumbly, banking one TV hit after another.WednesdayKim Kardashian West threw a surprise party on a private island to celebrate her 40th birthday, an event that left her feeling, she wrote on Instagram afterwards, “humbled and blessed”, not least “during these times when we are reminded of the things that truly matter”. It has never been clear how nakedly the Kardashians are trolling us but, given that of all their shortcomings a lack of self-awareness has never been one, it’s fair to assume they know what they’re doing. The Instagram post wasn’t tone deaf, it was precisely on brand.It was the same story with Kendall Jenner’s commercial for Pepsi, in which the model was depicted solving aggressive policing in the US by giving a cop a can of cola. She too was accused of tone deafness, when the ad, which was crass, dumb and self-regarding, was entirely in keeping with the family’s output. Above all, it guaranteed to generate in the form of outrage more grist for the Kardashian mill. If we want them to go away, we have to give up the pleasure of hating them and replace it with stony indifference.ThursdayThere is no trick-or-treating in our building this year, but a socially distanced Halloween parade around the block, during which all the kids will be required to wear masks (not the fun kind). In school, Halloween is banned because of problems with allergens. One good thing to have come out of the reduced school schedule, therefore, is Halloween at the Learning Center, the city-provided facility where kids go for remote learning on the days they are not in school. Today, to their delight, they got to dress up (the only proviso, “no swords”).Our particular Learning Center is in a public leisure complex, and it’s a lot groovier than school. The staff work for the parks department rather than the education department, which means more tattoos and body piercings and fewer fawn-coloured cardies. It also means that although it’s entirely indoors, it has a forest school vibe of no competition.After a day of Halloween fun, my kids came home over the moon at the new way of doing things. “We played a game and if you won you got candy and if you lost you also got candy.” I have opinions about this prizes-for-all approach but, given the state of the world, I decided to let this one slide.FridayAs with everywhere else in New York, the one unbreakable rule of the Learning Center is that everyone entering wears a mask. The number of ways people find to wear their masks wrong continues to be weird. There’s the sizing issue, when the wearer drapes a narrow strip of fabric successfully over his nose and mouth while leaving vast expanses of chin exposed. There’s the nose flasher, who covers his mouth but thinks nose-breathing doesn’t shed viral load. And there is the person who wears it hooked over their ears but pushed way down as a kind of chin hammock. (This person drags out the eating of crisps so their mask can stay down.)Like the small hacks and variations kids make to school uniforms, everyone has their own style, with the added frisson of potentially infecting those around them with a deadly disease. Happy Halloween. More