CBS News
Our favorite finds from the adorable 2024 Pottery Barn Halloween collection
Spooky season, believe it or not, has already begun, as many retailers, including Home Depot and Sam’s Club, have already released their 2024 Halloween collections. One of our favorite brands to shop for Halloween decorations this season is Pottery Barn.
Pottery Barn’s Halloween collection stands out every year for its ability to make decorations look more like decor, which is no easy feat. Instead of Halloween decorations sticking out like a sore thumb in your home, Pottery Barn’s high-quality and inventive options blend in well with most home interiors.
Our favorite finds from this year’s Pottery Barn Halloween Collection
When was the last time you saw a reusable Halloween advent calendar? Or a life-size skeleton that doubles as a chic accent pillow? You probably haven’t. All that and more is at Pottery Barn. See more of our favorite finds from the collection below.
Doug the dog ghost pillow
There are a handful of delightful accent pillows in Pottery Barn’s Halloween collection, but Doug the dog is, in our opinion, the cutest. The combination of his floppy ears, ghost costume and pumpkin candy bag is truly squeal-worthy. Keep him next to you on the couch while you watch “Hocus Pocus” for the millionth time, or place him atop your console table so you and your family can be greeted by his cuteness every time they walk through the door.
At almost $80, the price may seem steep to some, but we think it’s well worth the splurge. That’s because Doug is well-made, distinct in its design, stylish and can double as a toy for your kids.
Peanuts Fall Is Here doormat
Fans of Peanuts will love this playful doormat of Charlie Brown and Snoopy jumping excitedly into a pile of leaves. The design is super sweet and unique, a nice departure from the traditional “Happy Halloween” doormats with ghosts and pumpkins. And although this is filed under the brand’s Halloween collection, it can be used and enjoyed throughout fall.
You can use this mat indoors or out. It’s made of coir, which, for the most part, can handle weather from all seasons without sustaining major damage. The doormat was designed to resist mold, mildew and fading, and is about 1.5 inches thick. To ensure it’s longevity, keep it out of direct sunlight and away from excess moisture. Get this in one of two sizes, including 18″ x 30″ and 22″ x 36″.
Scary Squad organic cotton table runner
Decorate your dining table with this charming Halloween table runner. The runner sets a scene that is engaging, with its “Scary Squad” made up of a gaggle of ghosts, enjoying the spooky season just like you. Some are dressed in costume, while a couple others are showing each other their holiday pumpkins.
You’ll also find a ghost tending to its cauldron, another ghost enjoying that libation and another making friends with a crow. There are two colors available, including black and flax.
The runner measures 18″ x 108″ and is made of cotton (only the top of the runner is organic cotton). To clean, you can put this in the washer and the dryer. Just make sure to run it on gentle cycles.
Harry Potter lit mirror door
Harry Potter fans will appreciate this unique mirror, which will transport you to the Great Hall in just seconds. Just press the on button and the backlit hologram will activate, displaying this famous Hogwarts dining area, decorated with hanging candles that light up.
When switched off, this mirror remains decorative with its stone framing, which resembles the window frames in Hogwarts. Measuring about 3.5 feet tall, it gives you enough viewing room to check out your makeup and hair as well as most of your outfit (if you back up further enough). When the mirror gets dusty, make sure to clean it with a dry cloth, as cleaners can damage the Great Hall display.
Ms. Bones shaped pillow
Pottery Barn knows how to take a traditional Halloween skeleton and make it glam. Ms. Bones is a stylish gal with her witch hat, eyelashes and red lipstick-clad lips.
She’ll be a fun addition to your Halloween decor collection, whether she’s relaxing on a lounge chair or hung up on the wall next to spider webs or a seasonal wreath.
She’s no ordinary accent pillow in more ways than one, as the height of the pillow is more than four feet long, making her taller than the average six-year-old.
Haunted house countdown calendar
Gone are the days of having to wait till Christmas to get an advent calendar. With the haunted house countdown calendar, you can unwrap various types of candy in anticipation of October 31. The Halloween calendar comes with enough candy storage areas, including some exposed slots and others accessible by drawers, to account for the all days of October.
The slots and drawers offer enough room for candy corn, Red Vines, sour straws, Haribo gummies, Halloween-sized versions of Twix, Kit Kats and more. And what makes this better than a traditional advent calendar is that it can be reused for years’ worth of Halloweens.
Lit ghost string lights
These string lights will add an extra layer of ambiance wherever you decide to put them in your home, whether that’s over your front door, wrapped around the handrails of your staircase or hung along your entryways. Decorative lighting isn’t as commonplace on Halloween as it is on Christmas, so it’s refreshing to see Halloween string lights that don’t just display the colors of the holiday.
Like many other Pottery Barn Halloween decorations, the ghost string lights are adorable. The way they hang makes the ghosts look like they’re just hanging out, enjoying the party that is Halloween. Each string is powered by AAA batteries and comes with 12 LED ghost lights.
CBS News
Compromise deal reached at COP29 climate talks for $300 billion a year to poor nations
Countries agreed on a deal to inject at least $300 billion annually in humanity’s fight against climate change, aimed at helping poor nations cope with the ravages of global warming at tense United Nations climate talks in the city where industry first tapped oil.
The $300 billion will go to developing countries who need the cash to wean themselves off the coal, oil and gas that causes the globe to overheat, adapt to future warming and pay for the damage caused by climate change’s extreme weather. It’s not near the full amount of $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for, but it’s three times the $100 billion a year deal from 2009 that is expiring. Delegations said this deal is headed in the right direction, with hopes that more money flows in the future.
“Everybody is committed to having an agreement,” Fiji delegation chief Biman Prasad said as the deal was being finalized. “They are not necessarily happy about everything, but the bottom line is everybody wants a good agreement.”
It’s also a critical step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or cut emissions of heat-trapping gases that are due early next year. It’s part of the plan to keep cutting pollution with new targets every five years, which the world agreed to at the U.N. talks in Paris in 2015.
The Paris agreement set the system of regular ratcheting up climate fighting ambition as away to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius and carbon emissions keep rising.
Countries also anticipate that this deal will send signals that help drive funding from other sources, like multilateral development banks and private sources. That was always part of the discussion at these talks — rich countries didn’t think it was realistic to only rely on public funding sources — but poor countries worried that if the money came in loans instead of grants, it would send them sliding further backward into debt that they already struggle with.
“The $300 billion goal is not enough, but is an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” said World Resources Institute President Ani Dasgupta. “This deal gets us off the starting block. Now the race is on to raise much more climate finance from a range of public and private sources, putting the whole financial system to work behind developing countries’ transitions.”
It’s more than the $250 billion that was on the table in the first draft of the text, which outraged many countries and led to a period of frustration and stalling over the final hours of the summit. After an initial proposal of $250 billion a year was soundly rejected, the Azerbaijan presidency brewed up a new rough draft of $300 billion, that was never formally presented, but also dismissed roundly by African nations and small island states, according to messages relayed from inside.
The several different texts adopted early Sunday morning included a vague but not specific reference to last year’s Global Stocktake approved in Dubai. Last year there was a battle about first-of-its-kind language on getting rid of the oil, coal and natural gas, but instead it called for a transition away from fossil fuels. The latest talks only referred to the Dubai deal, but did not explicitly repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels.
Countries also agreed on the adoption of Article 6, creating markets to trade carbon pollution rights, an idea that was set up as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement to help nations work together to reduce climate-causing pollution. Part of that was a system of carbon credits, allowing nations to put planet-warming gasses in the air if they offset emissions elsewhere. Supporters said a U.N.-backed market could generate up to an additional $250 billion a year in climate financial aid.
Despite its approval, carbon markets remain a contentious plan because many experts say the new rules adopted don’t prevent misuse, don’t work and give big polluters an excuse to continue spewing emissions.
“What they’ve done essentially is undermine the mandate to try to reach 1.5,” said Tamara Gilbertson, climate justice program coordinator with the Indigenous Environmental Network. Greenpeace’s An Lambrechts, called it a “climate scam” with many loopholes.
With this deal wrapped up as crews dismantle the temporary venue, many have eyes on next year’s climate talks in Belem, Brazil.
CBS News
GOP senator blocks promotion of general involved in Afghanistan withdrawal, sources say
The promotion of a three-star general who was part of the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has been paused by Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, three sources familiar with the move confirmed to CBS News Saturday.
Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue was slated to be promoted to a four-star rank and take command of the U.S. Army in Europe. However, he was not included in a batch of nearly 1,000 promotions that moved through the Senate Armed Services Committee this week despite receiving a Pentagon recommendation.
Mullin has put a hold on the promotion. The intention is to allow for the new Republican-controlled Congress and President-elect Donald Trump to weigh in on the promotion given Donahue’s involvement in the Afghanistan withdrawal, two sources familiar with the situation told CBS News.
Behind the scenes, there is an effort underway by the Army and other allies to convince Congress to move forward and lift the hold, which appears to be politically motivated, sources said.
During the campaign, Trump frequently mentioned his surprise that no officers were consequently fired by President Biden for the chaotic withdrawal.
Military officers execute U.S. policy but do not create it. It was the Trump administration that in February 2020 brokered the deal with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, but it was Mr. Biden who decided to execute that withdrawal despite the Taliban breaking the terms of that U.S. agreement.
Donahue was the last U.S. soldier to exit Afghanistan in 2021. The U.S. evacuated about 125,000 people, including 6,000 Americans, over the course of its withdrawal, during which dozens of Afghans and 13 U.S. service members were killed in a suicide bombing outside Hamid Karzai airport in Kabul.
The U.S. underestimated the speed with which the Taliban would capture Kabul and the well-documented U.S. logistical and planning failures have been a focus of multiple internal probes at the Pentagon, State Department, and in Congress.
An extensive State Department report released last year found that “insufficient” planning, communication failures and an inability to grasp “the scale and scope of the operation” contributed to the chaotic operation.
CBS News has reached out to Mullin’s office but did not receive a response. It is not clear whether Trump is aware of the hold.
contributed to this report.
CBS News
Trump picks former White House aide Brooke Rollins to lead the USDA
President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that he will nominate former White House aide Brooke Rollins to be his agriculture secretary, the last of his picks to lead executive agencies and another choice from within his established circle of advisers and allies.
The nomination must be confirmed by the Senate, which will be controlled by Republicans when Trump takes office Jan. 20, 2025. Rollins would succeed Tom Vilsack, President Biden’s agriculture secretary who oversees the sprawling agency that controls policies, regulations and aid programs related to farming, forestry, ranching, food quality and nutrition.
Rollins, who graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in agricultural development, is a longtime Trump associate who served as his former domestic policy chief. She is president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, a group helping to lay the groundwork for a second Trump administration.
Rollins, 52, previously served as an aide to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and ran a think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Rollins’ pick completes Trump’s selection of the heads of executive branch departments, just two and a half weeks after the former president won the White House once again. Several other picks that are traditionally Cabinet-level remain, including U.S. Trade Representative and head of the Small Business Administration.
Trump didn’t offer many specifics about his agriculture policies during the campaign, but farmers could be affected if he carries out his pledge to impose widespread tariffs. During the first Trump administration, countries like China responded to Trump’s tariffs by imposing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports like the corn and soybeans routinely sold overseas. Trump countered by offering massive multibillion-dollar aid to farmers to help them weather the trade war.
President Abraham Lincoln founded the USDA in 1862, when about half of all Americans lived on farms. The USDA oversees multiple support programs for farmers; animal and plant health; and the safety of meat, poultry and eggs that anchor the nation’s food supply. Its federal nutrition programs provide food to low-income people, pregnant women and young children. And the agency sets standards for school meals.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has vowed to strip ultraprocessed foods from school lunches and to stop allowing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program beneficiaries from using food stamps to buy soda, candy or other so-called junk foods. But it would be the USDA, not HHS, that would be responsible for enacting those changes.
In addition, HHS and USDA will work together to finalize the 2025-2030 edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. They are due late next year, with guidance for healthy diets and standards for federal nutrition programs.