The pelican that waited two weeks for a vet

For two weeks visitors to Dojran saw the same thing - a lone pelican moving unusually close to people. The answer only came when vet Risto Ichkov from Bogdanci finally went out to the lake and found that the bird had been shot with buckshot under its wing. The line that hurts most is his: we caught it easily, because it was already exhausted. A wild bird you can pick up by hand is a bird with no strength left to flee. The vet cleaned the wound, Dojran's fishermen brought the fish, the mayor arranged a shelter. The Food and Veterinary Agency announced it is planning a wildlife centre - that centre does not exist yet, and somebody shot a protected species on one of the country's three natural lakes without a single institution issuing a statement about it.

Five years of charges nobody ever cross-checked

Everyone registering a vehicle paid the small line items - roads, Red Cross, environment - without asking. According to the police investigation, 138.8 million denars, roughly 2.26 million euros, ended up with private companies routed through an insurance brokerage, from 2021 until January 2026. The heaviest hit fell on the Budget and the municipalities - over 83.3 million denars. Those are the same municipalities that later have no money for bins or street lighting. The arrests are good news, but uncovering this after five years is not a success of the control system, it is proof the system was not working. Among the suspects is a deputy finance director at a public enterprise, which means oversight was not merely absent.

Accounts in five banks and one phone book

At the hearing for appellate judge Gjoko Ristov, the prosecution laid out numbers that describe the situation better than any statement: over 1.5 million euros across the accounts of the judge, his wife and his mother, and an expert witness who cannot establish where it came from. Ristov's salary rose from 60,000 to 120,000 denars over eight years, while 350,000 euros were found in a hole behind kitchen tiles. The defence argues an appellate judge does not rule alone but as part of a three-member panel. That is true - and it is precisely why the argument is weaker than it looks, because if one member of a panel is compromised, so are the panel's rulings.

A permit for 337 megawatts, issued by a municipality

The State Audit Office published a finding that sums up the whole renewables story in one sentence: from 2022 to May 2025 solar plants were built without a functioning planning system and with almost no site oversight. A 337-megawatt plant, enough for around 94,000 households, got its building permit from a local council instead of the responsible ministry. Until November 2024 the law did not define panel capacity at all - one megawatt or three hundred, same category. The state had no Indicative Plan either, and the rulebook on authorisations and the government commission still do not exist. Panels installed today expire in about twenty years, and the waste they leave behind has no legal classification.

The smoke is coming from across the border

Skopje is breathing smoke again tonight, and this time the source is not a landfill. A forest fire from Kosovo crossed into the Skopje village of Grachani with a fire line more than five kilometres long. On the same day, at Kosovo's request, Macedonia deployed a state helicopter to fight a fire outside its own territory for the first time. That is not a contradiction - fire does not recognise a border crossing. Of 27 fires over the past day, one is burning in Shuto Orizari, where a landfill caught alight behind a hotel. A landfill burning inside a Skopje municipality is not a forest fire, it is waste left to sit until it ignited on its own.

Plans written after the structure is finished

Three of today's stories share the same order of operations. The ASNOM bridge finally gets a route - the structure was finished back in 2020, the agreement with the people whose houses stood on that route was not. At Barutana, Biljana Ivanovska handed the planners blank statements to sign confirming the plan was safe, nobody signed, and the three bodies that had already ruled on it are now pointing at each other. And Skopje received 27 of the municipal vehicles on display, bought with 4.2 million euros from an unspent World Bank project, while the mayor admits up to 10 vehicles a day break down, out of fifty.

Numbers counted two different ways

Government and opposition spent today arguing over a 1.3 billion euro eurobond in 2027, one side counting net, the other gross, while nobody mentions the 3.5 percent of GDP deficit that refinances nothing. At the municipal vehicle launch the prime minister took stock of 26 months in office and announced half a billion euros decentralised to municipalities. Separately, on the Hungarian loan and on Orban, he said he does not fear the investigation and that the remark was not about us, even though Orban said no candidate country, without exception.

What gets counted without a press conference

Against all of that, 49 percent of Prilep residents separate their waste, with 8,318 bins and 126 containers deployed. The budget pays for equipment, the household supplies the habit, and the second one is harder to build. In Kavadarci over 70 people and 30 vehicles are clearing up after the storm since the early hours - the mobilisation is fast, and the question every such storm leaves behind is why the water always pools in the same places.

A seventh death and a pattern nobody explains

A 69-year-old from Gazi Baba died after 38 days in intensive care, the seventh West Nile fever fatality. Of 50 registered cases, 39 are men - a pattern foreign research confirms but nobody can explain. Spraying began in September.

From abroad: an investigation in three countries and one coffin

Beyond the border the day brought two lines that touch. The Leipzig drones and the explosive-packed tins from the Serbian-Hungarian border were built the same way, and the investigation now runs across three countries; Germany test-fired a ballistic missile hours after the attack. In Belgrade, Mladic's body landed under state protocol - what a court established about genocide is not renegotiated in a public square. And the EU confirmed a levy on small parcels by 1 November at the latest, with fines up to six percent of annual imports.

And something lighter to close

Vardar took the Super Cup by a single goal, leaving Gevgelija one goal short of a first trophy in Ohrid. In Germany, Tomovski leads the Bundesliga in saves and still loses - a small summary of the week in itself.

The heavier part of the day has the same shape in all four main stories. The plan, the registry, the oversight and the centre all exist as a promise or a legal obligation, but not as something that works the moment it is needed. Fishermen saved the pelican, police uncovered the scheme after five years, a municipality that had no right issued the permit, and the panels will leave behind waste with no category. The state is not absent from the paperwork - it is absent from the ground.