Protests planned as Northern Ireland matches no-government record

Protesters in Northern Ireland are demanding feuding political parties get back to governing, as the region matches a record for the world's longest peacetime period without a government.

Tuesday marks 589 days since the Catholic-Protestant power-sharing administration collapsed in January 2017 over a botched green-energy project. The rift soon widened to broader cultural and political issues separating Northern Ireland's British unionists and Irish nationalists, and attempts to restore the government have stalled.

Protesters are using the hashtag #wedeservebetter to call for the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein to restore the power-sharing government. They plan to hold demonstrations in several cities on Tuesday evening.

The British government agreed there was an "urgent need to resolve the current impasse."

Belgium spent 589 days without an elected government between 2010 and 2011.