WASHINGTON ― After squashing a small revolt in her own caucus around Thanksgiving, Nancy Pelosi reclaimed the House speakership Thursday, becoming the first politician in 58 years to take back the gavel.

Pelosi’s path back to House speaker wasn’t easy. Part of the reason Republicans were able to win back the House majority in 2010 was through a “Fire Pelosi” campaign that made her toxic in some Republican-leaning districts, and Republicans have run on a similar playbook for every election since, including in 2018.

A number of freshman Democrats made promises during the campaign to not support Pelosi if they were elected to Congress.

But Pelosi was able to quell a revolt from about a dozen and a half Democrats who were already in Congress. She was able to frame the opposition as misogynist. (Her supporters started the hashtag #FiveWhiteGuys to describe the opposition, even though it wasn’t only white men opposing her and there were more than five.)

She picked off individual members through small promises. (She got the vote of Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio by promising to bring back a subcommittee on elections and make her the chairwoman, and she got Rep. Brian Higgins of New York simply by publishing a statement supporting his Medicare buy-in idea.)

And she swung a large chunk of detractors through a deal where she stated her support of term limits for leadership roles and committee chairmen. (The deal set up Pelosi to not only serve this term as speaker but to serve next term as speaker if Democrats hold onto the House.)

It was a classic demonstration of her skill as a legislator. She outworked her opponents. She wore them down, made it uncomfortable to oppose her, and then offered a carrot for their support. And by giving the smallest concession, Pelosi actually solidified her future position. If she serves the next two terms as the No. 1 Democrat in the House, she will have spent 20 years in that position and practically assured through rule changes that no one else could ever do the same.

Pelosi takes the speakership from Republican Paul Ryan, who exited the building entirely in deciding not to run for re-election, during a partial government shutdown. The fitting end to Ryan’s speakership is a political gift to Pelosi, as Democrats are able to unify around her opposition to President Donald Trump and his border wall. The first order of business for Democrats is to pass legislation reopening those closed agencies.

Pelosi has already shown her mettle with Trump during this shutdown. She has been resolute that Democrats won’t approve any money for Trump’s border wall, and she’s positioned Democrats to hammer the president and Senate Republicans for their refusal to take up a bill that passed the Senate unanimously weeks before.

During an Oval Office meeting with Trump and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), she and Schumer were able to goad Trump into taking the blame for a shutdown ― a sound bite that continues to haunt Trump as the shutdown stretches into its second week.

As House Democrats address legislation to end the shutdown, they are also set to take up unifying anti-corruption legislation before facing any of the real fault lines in their caucus. Democrats don’t plan to immediately demand Trump’s tax returns, as they could in the Ways and Means Committee. They don’t have any plans to impeach the president, though some members plan to offer articles of impeachment on Day One. And they won’t be taking up contentious health care legislation any time soon. Pelosi was able to head off a small revolt on the rules package. Some progressive members didn’t want “pay as you go” rules enacted in Congress, for hope of passing a Medicare-for-all bill, but the rules package is expected to easily be adopted later Thursday.

Pelosi, the only woman to ever serve as speaker, takes the gavel after serving eight years as minority leader, with four years as speaker before that and another four years ― from 2003 to 2007 ― as the minority leader previously. She’s been in Congress since 1987.

A record 10.2 million people visited the Louvre Museum in Paris last year, making it the world's most popular museum of fine arts.

A Beyoncé and Jay-Z pop video made in the museum is reckoned to have helped boost the numbers.

Louvre director Jean-Luc Martinez said it was a sign that Paris had recovered from the fall in tourism after the 2015 Islamist terror attacks.

Foreigners accounted for nearly 75% of the Louvre's visitors in 2018.

The post-terror slump in tourism cut Paris visitor numbers by 30%, but in 2017 the total visiting the Louvre had already recovered to 8.1m, Mr Martinez told the AFP news agency.

The Louvre houses Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and many other world-famous masterpieces.

In June last year Beyoncé and her husband Jay-Z released a music video for their single "Apeshit", in which they posed in front of Louvre artworks, including the Mona Lisa.

Critics said the video challenged the idea of white cultural supremacy, for example by showing black dancers gyrating in front of The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon, a giant 19th-Century painting executed by Jacques-Louis David.

Pope Francis delivered a blunt message Thursday to his American bishops — stop “playing the victim or the scold” and do something about the “culture of abuse” that has resulted in a crisis of credibility for the U.S. Roman Catholic Church.

Francis’ letter, which was dated Tuesday, was delivered as the bishops were at a weeklong spiritual retreat at the Mundelein Seminary north of Chicago.

“These have been times of turbulence in the lives of all those victims who suffered in their flesh the abuse of power and conscience and sexual abuse on the part of ordained ministers, male and female religious and lay faithful,” Francis wrote in his eight-page letter. “The Church’s credibility has been seriously undercut and diminished by these sins and crimes, but even more by the efforts to deny or conceal them.”

Instead of “helping to resolve conflicts,” Francis wrote the actions of the church thus far have “enabled them to fester and cause even greater harm.”

“We know that the sins and crimes that were committed, and their repercussions on the ecclesial, social and cultural levels, have deeply affected the faithful,” the Pope wrote.

Restoring credibility, Francis added, will not be accomplished by “issuing stern decrees or by simply creating new committees or improving flow charts, as if we were in charge of a department of human resources.”

“Clearly, a living fabric has come undone, and we, like weavers, are called to repair it,” he wrote. “This requires not only a new approach to management, but also a change in our mind-set.”

Francis told the bishops there needs to be a change in “our way of praying, our handling of power and money, our exercise of authority and our way of relating to one another and to the world around us.”

It is time, Francis declared, “to abandon a modus operandi of disparaging, discrediting, playing the victim or the scold in our relationships.”

“Our catholicity is at stake,” he wrote.

The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author of “Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship or Respect, Compassion and Sensitivity,” said Francis’ letter is a “big deal.”

“First, it is directed not simply at the whole church, but the US church specifically,” Martin said in an email to NBC News. “Second, Francis does not hesitate to force the US bishops to look at the harsh reality of the ‘sins and crimes’ of abuse, their ‘loss of credibility’ and the cover-ups that have happened in the past. Finally, he is blunt about the many divisions among the US bishops and even the ‘slander’ that prevents them from working together more quickly on this.”

Why did Francis drop this letter now on the bishops?

“The timing is not only so that they can pray about these topics on their retreat,” Martin wrote.

The Pope is schedule to meet next month at the Vatican with the bishops from around the world and he wanted to get this message out now.

“The U.S. is a bellwether for many issues in the church, and so you can expect that nearly every bishop who will be attending that summit will read this letter," Martin wrote.

In a brief statement, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the bishops "carry with us these days the pain and hope of all who may feel let down by the Church."

Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for Cardinal Timothy Dolan and the Archdiocese of New York, called Francis' message a "prophetic call."

"I know that Cardinal Dolan, and, I am sure, every bishop in the country, would agree with Pope Francis that the abuse of minors, and especially how that abuse was handled in the past, has undermined and damaged the Church’s credibility, and that only through openness to the Holy Spirit and a spirit of humility and unity can that credibility be regained," Zwilling said.

But Dolan has, for many years, been fighting attempts by New York lawmakers to pass a Child Victims Act that would do away with statutes of limitations that have prevented some alleged abuse victims from suing the church — and create a one-year “look-back window” that would allow alleged victims who weren't able to sue in the past to file claims.

David Clohessy of the Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) was not impressed by Francis' letter.

"In one brief sentence, he mentions victims," Clohessy said. "But his concerns, in order, are that the church has been badly shaken, lay people have been "confused," the "communion of bishops" has suffered, and the church's credibility has waned."

For those of you who stay up to date on the on the latest news and gossip going around about Royals its no coincidence that Kate Middleton has become even more beautiful and even younger looking since she married Prince William and officially became apart of the Royal Family back in 2011. But what exactly did she do that resulted in her family getting upset with her "age defiance?" Well, it just so happens that she's teamed up with Dr. Oz to create a skincare product that actually works and it seems that their latest formula is the REAL reason for her youthful look. Although it didn't make skincare giants like L'Oreal and Olay happy, it makes normal people like us very happy because it's excitingly effective, safe, and cheap!

The project Kate is referring to is her wildly popular anti-aging skincare line Emollient. The duchess has spent the past two years developing a line of highly potent and effective anti-aging products that she claims are the solution for those who don’t want to resort to plastic surgery.

Her product Emollient sold out within ten minutes when first launched and it seems the world cannot get enough of the benefits and results.

Kate even admitted that plastic surgeons are furious with her after noticing a large decline in patients since Emollient was launched on the market.

“Users of Emollient are experiencing anti-aging results that before now were only possible through surgeons. It’s obviously a much cheaper, easier and safer alternative and because of that plastic surgeons are finding it harder to book patients for botox injections and face lifts.”

Having a crowd of angry plastic surgeons is a glowing endorsement for Emollient, but Kate has been proactive in getting Emollient into the hands of those who need it.

Together the duo actually discovered this anti aging miracle when multiple celebrity friends and clients were constantly reaching out to him hoping for a solution to look younger to prolong their career without going in for surgery.

Countless aging celebs admit they avoided surgery and look 10 years younger using Emollient.

“The advances Kate has made in the anti-aging skincare industry are remarkable. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t had the chance to try it out for myself. I knew Kate was aging well but thought it was her genetics. After using Emollient for two weeks I was already looking years younger.” - Reese Witherspoon

“I thought there was no way to hide my age until Kate let me try Emollient. I had resigned myself to the fact that it was only downhill from here, but with Emollient that isn’t the way. Every night that I use Emollient I wake up looking younger and more radiant. I can’t believe it.” - Pippa Middleton

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