A passport for the accused, retirement for the judge - three days apart

A three-member criminal panel at the Basic Court in Struga returned the passport of businessman Borche Markovski, accused over a public procurement deal worth roughly 1.7 million euros. Markovski left the country via the Tabanovce crossing. Three days later the panel's president, Vulnet Vinca, stopped being a judge - not for ethical or professional reasons, but because he filed his request to extend his term almost three months past the deadline. Asked about the decision, his answer was "I don't feel responsible", and when pressed for a written explanation: he is no longer president, so he cannot sign anything. The institution stays, the signature retires. The hearing is set for 2 September.

The highest-rated judge got two votes

The same Judicial Council spent the same day deciding on the Court of Appeals in Skopje. One candidate holds 197 points - the highest rating among judges. The other has long experience and a past inside the Council itself. The vote ended nine to two in favour of Zoran Gerasimovski. The argument against the numbers was that the post demands managerial ability. The state runs a mechanism that assigns every judge a score. If that score does not decide when there are exactly two candidates, the question is what it is for.

Four years without annual accounts, and nobody noticed

The Financial Police filed criminal charges for tax evasion causing damage of over 12.6 million denars. The company filed no annual accounts for 2022, nor 2023, nor 2024, nor 2025. This is not a hidden scheme with offshore structures - it is the absence of a document every business must submit each year, four times running, visible in every registry that tracks the firm. Goods worth over half a million euros vanished from the books.

Ninety percent of village water systems cannot afford disinfection

After the contamination of the springs in Elshani and Velestovo, laboratory analyses found E. coli and coliform bacteria, and the water was banned for drinking and cooking. The figure comes from the institution itself: 90 percent of village water systems in the Ohrid region lack the resources for regular disinfection. The same week, in the Strumica villages of Rich and Belotino, the same finding. We know what is polluting the water, we know chlorination is the answer, and we know the systems that need chlorinating have nothing to do it with. In Gostivar, over four thousand people went to a doctor in two weeks, and the ban only lifts after three consecutive clean analyses.

A roof gaping over intensive care, a pool locked for two years

Ten days after the storm, the roof of the Shtip hospital is still open above the third floor, where orthopaedics and intensive care are. The response so far is project documentation and waiting on the insurer. In Skopje, the Boris Trajkovski pool goes under lock for two years, and the same ceiling has already dropped pieces on people twice - last year tiles fell because of shoddy earlier work. At the Health Fund, auditors write the same finding for the third year running: 21 lawsuits, 8.4 billion denars in unpaid contributions and an IT policy unchanged since 2014.

The pensions of 638,000 people as a budget line

Right now 147 people draw a pension from the second pillar, averaging 9,878 denars. Individual accounts hold over 3.4 billion euros. The funds say moving that money into the state fund would cover the deficit for a year and a half to three years - and then the same problem, minus the fund. On the other side, the estimate is that 80 to 90 percent of future pensioners in 2030-2032 would receive a pension below the legal minimum. Both sides hold one true claim each, and the government is waiting on three analyses.

Spraying after the confirmed cases, a tunnel with no date and no figure

The emergency spraying in Drachevo came because of laboratory-confirmed West Nile fever cases - action after them, not before them, and scheduled for ten at night, exactly when Skopje residents finally open their windows after a full day above 35 degrees. From Wednesday, the weather service forecasts over 40 degrees and a heatwave lasting to the end of next week. On the Corridor 8 tunnel, the working group met in Sofia and agreed on a schedule, but the statement carries not a single date and not a single figure. And Fetai, who left the government over absences, returns as a special envoy to Brussels - where Macedonia already keeps a Permanent Mission with an ambassador and dozens of diplomats.

Beyond Macedonia

A ten-metre crater in a Polish field, four F-16s scrambled and none reached the target - the object spent six minutes inside NATO airspace and vanished from radar. At Ceuta, 30,000 people gathered at the fence and three died trying to swim the final stretch; Italy demanded Spain be suspended from Schengen. At NATO's military headquarters, an intern was arrested for espionage - she became suspicious because she asked strange questions, not because any vetting caught her. Moscow, meanwhile, no longer demands the disarmament of Pyongyang.

And one lighter item to close

Shkendija knocked out Bravo and is now alone in Europe, while Vardar and Pelister learned what their European autumn looks like. LeBron, for his part, turned down 20 million to play for eight - he went after a ring, not a salary.

What is left

In the heavier part of the day, the same thing repeats. Every one of these cases had a mechanism that was supposed to fire: a filing deadline, a scored evaluation, annual accounts, routine chlorination, an audit finding, an epidemiological measure. The mechanisms existed. Not one was pulled in time - and where someone finally did react, it came after the cases, not before them.