The power-sharing coalition's principal parties, Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist party (DUP), are locked in chronic feuding that has severely hindered legislation and governance, creating a perception of drift and neglect.
As the United States reaches the one-year mark in its increasingly dysfunctional and abuse-laden political marriage with Donald J. Trump, though the President has made it clear that he will take almost any sort of gift-even, and maybe especially, someone else's Nobel Peace Prize medal. The Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado offered hers up to him last week, in a large gold-colored frame, ready for hanging.
Birmingham, once celebrated for its municipal governance, now faces a crisis rooted in political dysfunction exacerbated by refuse workers' strikes and poor administrative decisions.