Bukovo is burning again, and the answer is more soil

The "Bukovo" landfill near Ohrid caught fire again, and the smoke reached Krushje once more. Over eight thousand cubic metres of soil have been hauled to the site this year for covering and stabilisation - and the landfill burned anyway. That is the technology: a landfill fire is never put out, it is covered over and left to wait beneath the surface layers of waste. Permanent closure depends on the regional centre in Novaci, announced for the end of 2027. Until then, the villages below the landfill are counting summers, not days.

Thirty times over the limit, six months after the ban

Struga was left without water to drink or wash hands with because two men and one company were digging for ore beside the Shum springs without a concession, across private, third-party and state parcels. The values measured in the drinking water exceeded the permitted levels more than thirty times over. The hardest detail is not the digging - six months ago the prosecution had already issued measures barring them from accessing those parcels. The ban existed. The digging continued. The water was poisoned. The two men from Veleshta answer for what they did, and that is exactly as it should be. But next to their responsibility stands a second question that is not for them: who was supposed to check whether that ban was being observed at all?

Thirty-seven fires in a day, and the Army sent in ahead of the disaster

Thirty-seven fires in twenty-four hours, five still burning. The worst is at Chanishte near Prilep, where the fire is running along four arms at once. For the first time this summer, Army personnel are being deployed preventively - not as a reaction to a catastrophe, but as preparation for one. If that is an admission that the fire services cannot cover this alone, it is an honest admission. The harder question is why, after so many years, the same capacity is still the same capacity. The list of fires extinguished in 24 hours is longer than the list of active ones, and the same words keep repeating in it: rubbish dumps, abandoned fields, stubble. These are not fires that fall out of the sky.

Five years, three prosecutors, zero indictments

The prosecution for organised crime has closed the case into the procurement of nineteen modular hospitals. It was opened on 10 September 2021, two days after the fire at the Tetovo modular hospital in which fourteen people died. The procurement was financed by a World Bank loan, which meant international rules applied rather than the domestic procurement law, and a Bank team confirmed in October 2021 that what was delivered met the technical specifications. A closed case is not an acquittal - the prosecution did not say everything was in order, it said there is not enough evidence to prosecute. Those are two different things, and anyone who blurs them is doing it deliberately. The legal question is closed. The institutional one is not: why did a case opened after fourteen deaths need five years and three prosecutors to arrive at the conclusion that there was nothing to prove?

Bread at 126 denars and seven hundred mattresses

The State Audit Office published its findings on the "Pelagonija" student dormitory in Skopje: bread bought at 126 denars a kilogram in 2025, while the market price was around 70. Nearly double. For bread. For students. The mechanism is more telling than the price - the bread was contracted at 57,46 denars a kilogram, but invoicing ran on the principle that one loaf equals one kilogram, and a loaf usually weighs less. Auditors also found 250 mattresses worth 1,174 million denars that had never been put into use, bought on top of 450 previously purchased from the same supplier while the existing ones were in good condition, and equipment worth 21,563 million denars that does not appear in the books at all. Not broken. Not old. Simply impossible to confirm it ever arrived.

Water, buses and floods: the infrastructure waiting for a fault

One day, three pictures of the same network. A single lightning strike left Bitola without water in over thirty degrees after hitting the "Dovledzik" pumping station - for critical infrastructure, lightning protection is not a luxury, it is part of the design. The City of Skopje has mapped the three points that flood after every heavy rain and drawn up technical solutions, but drawing up is not carrying out. And the public transport company has brought back the number 37 on a new route, with four departures and nothing at weekends - between 08:10 and 14:10 there is not a single service, which makes it a line for secondary-school students rather than for the neighbourhood it serves.

The bills: diesel nearing 100 denars, school at 10,5 percent of the household budget

Diesel is knocking on 100 denars after rising 6,5 denars; the excise has already been cut, VAT is not being touched for now, and the regulator revises prices every seven days. The government is monitoring the situation. Meanwhile the school basket is back - a measure that last year saved 3.000 denars for two children, while schooling eats 10,5 percent of a household budget. The measure runs until 15 September. The bills run all year.

The good news: Ohrid has round-the-clock paediatrics again

After a five-year pause, the paediatric ward in Ohrid is working twenty-four hours a day again - ten thousand examinations in a year, instead of driving children to Struga because there were no specialists. The ward is back. The basic equipment, bed linen included, arrived through donations from citizens. That is good news for patients and an accurate diagnosis of the budget at the same time.

Around the neighbourhood and further afield

The Danube has stopped a nuclear plant: after 52 years, Kozloduy is cutting output because the river has run low. Italy is holding migrants in Albania, where 42 incidents were recorded in five weeks, and the EU is considering copying the model. In Ukraine, two Patriot launches over Kyiv both failed, and drones struck a border crossing towards Moldova. Washington has announced the harshest sanctions yet on Iran, and the real message is addressed to Beijing.

And something lighter

Vardar had to sweat it out against Nexe, while Partizan return to the elite after thirteen years. In the NBA, 88 million for 54 games is a number that will be quoted all season, while Doncic takes the Lakers to Bled. And Milos has seventy beaches and not one of them looks like the next - the island that sent Venus to the Louvre and kept a copy for itself.

The day took the same shape in several places at once: someone already knew, someone had already written down that a thing must stop, and the thing happened anyway. A ban issued six months ago at the Shum springs. Eight thousand cubic metres of soil at "Bukovo". Technical solutions for Skopje's floods, drawn up and sitting in a drawer. The gap between a document and its execution is where this day played out - and in the heavier part of it, nobody has a name yet.