Tetovo

A Danish skier was injured in a bear attack at a nature park in North Macedonia Tuesday, in an area where authorities say mild winters have led to a surge in the brown bear population.

However, Mickoski's accusation lost legitimacy when it turned out that the gunman, the angry owner of a hotel, was a supporter of the Alliance of Albanians, a partner party of his own VMRO-DPMNE.

Not a rally but a funeral

Unusual funeral procession in Tetovo. Photo: Twitter

Portals under the Tetova-sot media group. Illustration: BIRN

Party affiliate reaps rewards of weak system

Rami Mislimi works in the mainly ethnic Albanian Municipality of Tetovo and at the same time pushes his journalistic career through the portal tetovasot.com.

Bilall Kasami, leader of ethnic Albanian party Besa (Pledge of Honour), told BIRN in an interview the day after he was confirmed as the mayor of Tetovo that North Macedonia should avoid new snap elections after his coalition government partner Social Democratic Prime Minister Zoran Zaev resigned following his party's poor performance in the weekend's municipal polls.

The forthcoming local elections on October 17 will again be dominated by male mayoral candidates, official data on candidacies that was recently published by the State Electoral Commission reveals.

Out of a total of 298 candidates who will be competing for mayoral seats in the country's 81 municipalities, only 26, or less than nine per cent, are women, the data shows.

The Public Prosecution said on Monday that its teams are now analysing physical evidence from the scene of last Wednesday's fire in the town of Tetovo that claimed the lives of 14 people at a hospital for COVID-19 patients.

Opposition parties, government critics and some medical doctors have called for the resignation of North Macedonia's Health Minister, Venko Filipce, over the fire that took 14 lives in Tetovo's COVID-19 modular hospital earlier this week.

At Thursday's emergency session, after Wednesday's hospital inferno in the town of Tetovo, North Macedonia's government decided to accept help offered by its NATO allies in investigating the cause of the fire that claimed the lives of 14 COVID patients.

As North Macedonia on Friday marks the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Ohrid Peace Accord that ended the 2001 conflict between security forces and Albanian insurgents, an original of the historic document has finally been sent to the State Archive.

Faced with yet another surge in infections, particularly in the capital Skopje and in the town of Tetovo, the government has decided that, starting next Monday, all hospitality venues with a capacity over 30 guests must introduce private security personnel to check guests for vaccination certificates on entry.