Diesel hits 99.50 denars, and our increase is double the neighbours'

Half a denar is all that separates diesel from a three-digit price. Under the Energy Regulatory Commission's new decision a litre now sells for 99.50 denars, the highest in three and a half years. But the number worth holding onto is not the price, it is the percentage: between late February and late July, diesel here rose by 42.8 percent. In Kosovo the rise was 21.3, in Albania 20.3, in Montenegro 19.7, in Greece 18.7, and in Serbia 15 percent.

The same global oil market, the same world prices, an entirely different result at the pump. In Germany, France and Switzerland the jump ranged between 10 and 12 percent. The gap between 42.8 and 15 percent is not explained by Brent. The government has announced yet another price analysis, after which it will decide on possible measures. The analysis will show what every analysis shows - that the price is high. The question of why our percentage is double the neighbours' is filed at a different address.

Gostivar: operating theatres closed because there is no safe water

At the city hospital in Gostivar the operating theatres are closed, and the reason is neither a shortage of doctors nor of electricity. There is no safe water to sterilise the equipment, so acute cases are sent to Tetovo. This is the fourteenth day since the ban on drinking water from the city taps came into force.

Health Minister Sasho Klekovski says the epidemiological situation is gradually stabilising and that the water analysis is expected by 20 August. Newly reported patients with stomach problems range between 40 and 80 a day, which he notes is close to the normal pre-epidemic range of 25 to 100 cases. The numbers may be stabilising. In the Ciglana neighbourhood, meanwhile, around 100 people in 15 houses have had no water at all for more than twenty days, and travel to a well three to four kilometres away.

Three versions of the same water procurement

While the town carries bottles, the same water comes with three different explanations. SDSM claims the procurement went through without a public call. The government says it all went through a tender. The company, for its part, says it was a donation. Three versions of one procurement, and nobody is showing the contract.

This is the part that rarely makes the daily bulletins, and it is inseparable from the closed theatres. Solidarity is not proven by a statement but by an invoice. When three parties give three different descriptions of the same process, at least two of them know it.

The minister admitted the private specialisations missed the mark

The same minister gave an unusually direct answer on a different problem. The experiment with private specialisations from 2017 and 2018 did not deliver. "People were not enrolling in the private specialisations we actually need, but in what the doctors wanted," Klekovski said. The result is plenty of cardiologists and plastic surgery, and very little pathology, anaesthesiology and radiology.

The state opened a system in which the choice is made by the individual according to personal interest rather than the needs of the health service, and is then surprised that there is nobody left to hold the mask in the operating theatre. Before the pandemic public health employed 20,000 people; by 2024 the figure had fallen to 18,000, and it now stands at 18,900. Specialising in anaesthesiology takes six years, meaning someone enrolling today is ready in 2032.

Debt running to 2041 and the fastest-growing minimum wage in Europe

The state took on 41 million euros of new debt repayable through 2041, at interest rates up to 5.20 percent and an annual interest cost of 129.4 million denars. Investors know exactly what they are getting. The citizen learns only the total.

The same day brought news that Macedonia has the fastest-growing minimum wage in Europe at 6.9 percent. It sounds like good news until you look at the base: 624 euros gross, roughly 420 net, while a four-person household needs 1,100 euros a month. The fastest percentage in Europe does not close that gap, because the percentage is calculated from a small number.

Fires, waste, and a donation that did not come from the budget

Fourteen fires in a single afternoon across eleven municipalities, from Polog to Ovche Pole. Landfills, stubble and rubbish burned, not only forest - the list of locations says more than the weather forecast does. In Skopje, meanwhile, 15,735 tonnes of waste were collected in July, while branches from the storm still lie on the pavements.

Struga's firefighters received 41 sets of protective equipment. Not from the budget, but from Switzerland, bought by Kjendrim Kala, a volunteer firefighter in Urdorf who kitted out an entire shift in his home town. A lovely story with an uncomfortable backdrop - equipment for one shift should be a budget line, not a matter of goodwill.

Two fathers, two municipalities, one night

Within a single day police detained two men on the same charge - physically assaulting their own son. One is 55 and from Kriva Palanka, the other 54 and lives in a village near Strumica. Less than five hours passed between the two calls to 192.

The statements contain initials, ages and times. What is missing matters more: whether there were prior reports, whether anyone was already inside the protection system. Detention at a police station is a pause, not a solution. The number of people detained is easy to announce; the number of families where the violence stopped after the intervention is published nowhere.

Separately, in Skopje a police officer collected fines in cash and attached other people's fiscal receipts for four months. He pocketed 12,700 denars, while the damage to the budget is 85,500 - almost seven times more. One form, four months, and nobody noticed.

Beyond the border: the Danube, Kyiv, and a plan about sequence

Romania is sinking barges and blasting rock to keep the Cernavoda nuclear plant running, where the first reactor is already shut down for lack of water. Hungary has imposed drinking water restrictions in hundreds of settlements, and the Danube at the Paks plant has fallen to 135 centimetres. When a state convenes a defence working group over a river level, that is no longer a weather forecast.

In Kyiv fourteen people were killed in a single night in strikes on four residential districts, with not one military target among them. Eight of them were waiting on a platform for a suburban train to take them home. And the American plan for Gaza was accepted by Hamas and rejected by Netanyahu - the dispute is not over the steps, but over who goes first.

And something lighter to close

Macedonian basketball opens the European championship in Skopje and Gevgelija today, on the same day Jokic deliberately declined a 278-million contract to wait for one worth 359.5. The cadet handball players, meanwhile, reached Europe's Top 16, and Shkendija play in Edinburgh tonight for a second European autumn. That is the part of the day that needs no analysis.

The rest does. A closed operating theatre, three versions of one tender, and a pump percentage double the neighbours' are not weather events. They are decisions with an author, and the author is precisely the detail that is always missing from the press release.