A deal that lasted four days

The purchase price of the "ajvarka" pepper in the Strumica region has fallen back to 25 denars per kilo, even though after the previous protests, with the agriculture minister acting as broker, it was agreed at 30. The farmers have done the maths on their production cost: 29.22 denars per kilo of greenhouse-grown kurtovska kapija. Which means every kilo sold carries a 10-denar loss - the more you grow, the more you lose.

What makes this bigger than one crop and one region is the question sitting underneath it. The farmers asked for written guarantees and did not get them. The State Inspectorate announced stepped-up checks at the buying points - if those checks happened, the result is not visible in the price at the point. If the state brokers a deal and that deal does not hold for a week, it remains an open question what the brokering was actually worth.

The machine that worked for one day

Last week it was announced that the PET scanner was working again and that nine patients a day would be scanned. According to SDSM leader Venko Filipche, the machine ran for exactly one day and then stopped again. We are talking about roughly 15 patients a day - people with cancer, whose treatment depends directly on that scan.

The cause is a fault in the cyclotron, the system that produces the radioisotopes. When the machine was briefly brought back online, it was done with an isotope brought in from Istanbul, and talks with Sofia are under way for more. The country has one PET centre and one cyclotron, which means the most sensitive oncological diagnostics here depend on cross-border logistics. VMRO-DPMNE responded with the announcement of an ultramodern clinical centre. Both things can be true at once, but only one of them concerns the person who has a cancer consultation booked for tomorrow.

Diesel has crossed the hundred

The maximum price of diesel is now 101.5 denars per litre. On 28 February, when the strikes on Iran began, diesel cost 71 denars - a rise of roughly 43 percent in six months. Filling a 50-litre tank now costs 1,525 denars more than it did in February.

The state did intervene: VAT on fuel was cut from 18 to 10 percent, and excise duty on diesel by four denars. Those measures are still in force, and prices have kept climbing anyway. The fiscal measure did not stop the increase, it only slowed the speed of it. The open question is how long the reduced excise duties can be sustained.

Smoke over Skopje and a fire that keeps coming back

On Monday afternoon Skopje was breathing smoke from Kitka and Zheden, even though there was no fire reported on Vodno itself. According to the Crisis Management Centre's 18:30 tally, 21 open-air fires were registered across the country. The Zheden fire was brought fully under control in the evening, with around 90 percent of the affected area extinguished - a concrete result produced by specific people who worked all day in brutal conditions.

The Institute of Public Health warned that the smoke carries PM10 and PM2.5 particles and advised limiting time outdoors. The head of the Protection and Rescue Directorate, Stojanche Angelov, claims the Kitka fire is being set deliberately - the fire had been put out, there was no trace of it for a full day, and then it flared again. Indications and motive exist; an arrest does not. A fire also cut the Shtip - Kochani road, and there it was the rain that put it out.

The inspection that arrives on Monday

Butel municipality announced a demolition and criminal charges over an illegal building on Saturday. By Monday there was nothing left to demolish - the builder cleared the site himself and walked away without a fine. Illegal construction goes up over the weekend precisely because inspectors work from Monday, and that is not a revelation, it is a timetable everybody knows.

In Centar, emergency rodent control has begun, and the list of locations reveals the reason too: Kapishtec, Debar Maalo, Bunjakovec, Kale - and almost every address defined by the same two words: by the bins.

A bus that does not come, a desk that stays empty

Eleven villages around Struga have been left without transport a week before school starts, after the operators stopped over a 55,000-euro debt they had been covering out of their own pockets for years. The mayor says the debt was inherited - which is true, and entirely irrelevant to the child waiting for a bus.

In Shtip, 336 first-graders will enrol this year, 27 fewer than last. A decade ago the town had over 10,000 pupils; today it is under 5,600. The reason is not education policy - in the Eastern region in 2024, 936 children were born and 1,974 people died. The school desk is the most precise demographic instrument we have, because it cannot be revised.

A municipality with ten departments and classrooms with sensors

Bitola is going from six departments to ten, which will make every fourth employee somebody's manager. The governing side calls it dispersal of power, the opposition calls it party hiring. The most contentious piece is the auditor who answers to the mayor alone, which turns internal control into something else entirely.

On the other side of the ledger, Skopje's secondary schools are getting laboratories and a smart greenhouse with sensors. The equipment is good news. The hard part is not the procurement, it is who maintains it come February - the same question the stalled cyclotron is asking.

Hail, tobacco and helmets

Heavy hail flattened the tobacco crop in Debreshte in a matter of minutes. A full year of work - seedlings, planting, picking leaf by leaf - wiped out at the most delicate stage, with the damage assessment to follow later, as it always does.

One evening shift by the interior ministry, meanwhile, turned up 140 violations in five hours, including 102 riders with no helmet. Strumica runs at three times Skopje's rate on this. It is the one item on today's list where the outcome does not depend on anybody's announcement, only on what the rider puts on his head.

Set apart from all of it - basketball

Jokic scored 34 and lost at the buzzer, Doncic is not speaking to the Slovenian national team, and Macedonia heads for Vienna with Dimitrijevic in the squad. None of it ties into the rest of the day, and it does not need to - this is the part of the evening you cheer at rather than audit.

What is left

The heavier part of the day has the same shape in four different places: a deal brokered by the state, a machine returned to service, an announced inspection, announced checks at the buying points. All four existed as a press release. The gap between the press release and the work is exactly what the farmer near Strumica, the patient waiting for a scan, and the child with no bus to school tomorrow are the ones to feel.