The fire reached Pelister, and the suspicion has a concrete basis

The blaze that broke out near the village of Makazi in the Resen area crossed into Pelister National Park and burned part of the pine plantations between Vrtuska and Mala Cuka. Stojance Angelov, head of the Directorate for Protection and Rescue, said the fire was most likely set deliberately, and that is not a guess thrown into the air: it was spotted at no fewer than two locations near apple orchards, and while crews were trying to contain it, another, longer line of fire appeared further off. Fire that starts in several separate places is not the work of a sunbeam hitting glass. The spread was stopped thanks to the air tractors and fast work on the ground, but a system that functions only because the crews got there in time is not prevention - it is reaction, and reaction gets more expensive every summer.

A state agency director glorifies a man convicted of genocide

Dalibor Kitanovikj, director of the Agency for the Realisation of the Rights of Communities, posted a photo composition showing Ratko Mladic among figures presented as national heroes, captioned "Generals of the heavenly army". The government offered him the chance to consider stepping down himself. Not dismissal, not suspension pending an inquiry - an offer. Uranija Pirovska of the Helsinki Committee put her finger on it: this is not his decision to make, it is a matter of Article 407-a of the Criminal Code, which covers approving or justifying genocide. The law exists, the offence is defined, the responsible institution has a name and an address. What is missing is any movement from it without a political signal. That same day, Serbia was preparing him a military funeral with state honours.

139 children at Tetovo paediatrics, and the number is "normal"

Over 48 hours, the paediatric ward of the Clinical Hospital in Tetovo examined one hundred and thirty-nine children, twelve of them admitted. Director Dr Erzen Elezi rejected claims of an epidemic or mass poisoning and says the figure does not deviate from the same period last year. He is most likely right - and that is exactly the problem. If the number is normal for August, then normal means the Polog region has a ward that takes in over a hundred and thirty children in two days, and that this surprises nobody. From the Health Ministry and the Institute of Public Health there is neither confirmation nor denial. Silence works as an answer, just a bad one.

The heat holds, and the appeal is aimed at the wrong people again

Skopje-Petrovec recorded 37.6 degrees, and a layer of Saharan dust settled over the whole country, turning the sky into a yellowish membrane. The meteorologists' advice is that citizens should stay out of the open between 11am and 5pm. The question the institutions do not ask is what the people on building sites, in the fields and delivering parcels are supposed to do in those hours. An appeal to citizens is free; banning heavy outdoor work in the hottest hours would cost something. And the school year starts at 34 degrees, with September running three degrees above average and drier than usual - for a country that has spent the whole summer counting fires, that is not good news.

The train that departs and the wall that had to be built

From 1 September the first line of the "City Train" project begins running - Zelenikovo to Skopje railway station in 24 to 28 minutes, eight departures a day. Anyone who commutes into Skopje from that side knows what a guaranteed 24 minutes means against the morning queue. What remains is the gap of nearly four hours between 8:30 and 12:26, which the timetable covers for nobody on an afternoon shift. At the other end of the city, the ground under a nursery in Centar slid enough to require a 3.2-metre retaining wall and the children were moved to another building. The municipality acted correctly. When the erosion was first noticed remains unanswered.

Data centres without names, copper without a mine

The government is negotiating data centres with five to six investors, and not a single name or condition has been published. SDSM wants to know how much water and electricity they will consume; VMRO-DPMNE says there are various cooling technologies - which ones will be used, nobody says. The same economic frame holds the comparison with Andalusia, which is running 73 exploration projects for critical minerals and clears over 1.2 billion euros a year from metal ores, while Ilovica-Shtuka here exists as a projection on paper. On top of it all, eurozone inflation is heading towards 3.3 percent, and Germany is the largest buyer of Macedonian exports - the ECB decides on 10 September.

Fourteen hours of prayer without a single ministry

At the Prechista monastery near Kicevo, the vigil ran from 9:30pm until noon the next day, with three choirs, among them the Greek one that sang at the coronation in London. A full church, people from across the country, seven centuries of history - and not one ministry in the story. It is the rare piece of news from this day in which something works because people hold it up themselves, not because an institution announced a project.

Vardar returns where it belongs

After a four-season absence, Vardar is back in the Champions League, with Ivan Cupic on the bench - the man who scored one of the most famous goals in Final Four history. "Not everyone can play for Vardar and not everyone can be its coach," he says, and coming from him that line does not sound like marketing. In basketball, Jokic took only seven shots and Serbia won 102:73; Macedonia opens its road to EuroBasket in Vienna tomorrow, again without a full squad. And the draw in Monaco did no English club any favours.