Plot twist. Two Chicago men have been charged with conspiring against Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist whose drawings of Muhammad incited controversy at Yale and abroad.

Halloween festivities kicked off yesterday in Ezra Stiles and Branford colleges with pumpkin carving contests.

Yale still “does it” better than Harvard. Yale climbed Trojan condom brand’s Sexual Health Report Card rankings this year, improving its place on the list of colleges from 41st to 15th in the nation.

Fodder for your next baseball study break: a Philadelphia woman eager to see the Phillies play in the World Series posted an ad Craigslit offering sex in exchange for two tickets. The woman has been charged with prostitution — and undying devotion.

Goodwill Sterling. Students were allowed to take discarded Sterling Memorial Library shelving supplies for free on Wall Street Wednesday.

A ‘League’ of their own. On Oct. 12, China’s Ministry of Education created the C9 Conference, an association of elite universities described as “China’s Ivy League.” Among the institutions is Peking University, the host of Yale’s joint undergraduate program in Beijing.

Thirty-five Yale students, alumni and parents have signed a petition posted online by the Responsible Endowment Project. The petition calls for the University to invest its endowment responsibly through “active ownership, restored transparency … and enhanced reporting.”

Singing sensation Sam Tsui ’11 and his producer, Kurt Schneider ’10, appeared before some 7 million people Wednesday on ABC’s World News Tonight. Tsui, a member of Davenport College and the Duke’s Men, appeared on Perez Hilton’s popular entertainment blog last September, linking to Tsui’s YouTube tribute to Michael Jackson, in which he sings six tracks at the same time. The video has now amassed almost 2 million hits.

This day in Yale history

1988 A woman lay enshrouded in a net hung between two trees on Old Campus as part of an exhibit of outdoor sculptures by students at the Yale School of Art.

Correction: Oct. 29, 2009

An earlier version of this Cross Campus reported that the New Haven City Council had approved the allocation of $4,075,000 to renovate a city park pool. The city council described was that of New Haven, Indiana, not New Haven, Conn. The News sincerely regrets this error.