Masked crowds in the streets of the nation's capital.
Mexico City will remain medium risk yellow on the coronavirus stoplight map for the next two weeks but the capital is very close to switching to low risk green, a city official said Friday.
“According to the latest notification we received from the Mexican government, we’ll stay at the yellow light [level] for at least two more weeks. We’re on 11 points, one point away from green in other words,” said Eduardo Clark, head of the Digital Agency for Public Innovation and a COVID spokesman.
The federal Health Ministry uses 10 indicators to determine the stoplight color in each state, including hospital occupancy levels, the effective reproduction rate (how many people each infected person infects), the weekly positivity rate (the percentage of COVID-19 tests that come back positive) and estimated case numbers per 100,000 inhabitants.
Clark said that most of the indicators are continuing to show improvement in Mexico City, the country’s coronavirus epicenter since the beginning of the pandemic.
There are currently 2,066 COVID patients in hospitals in the greater Mexico City area, he said, a reduction of 279, or 12%, compared to last Friday. Within the capital’s 16 boroughs, 1,466 patients are hospitalized, 211 fewer than a week ago.
Mexico City will remain medium-risk yellow on the stoplight risk map for at least two more weeks.
Federal data shows there are 10,909 active cases in the capital, a figure equivalent to about 120 per 100,000 people.
Neighboring México state will also remain yellow for the next two weeks, Governor Alfredo del Mazo said Friday.
Nationally, the Health Ministry reported 7,388 new coronavirus cases and 469 additional COVID-19 deaths on Friday, lifting Mexico’s accumulated tallies to 3.67 million and 277,976, respectively.
There are 62,158 estimated active cases, a 2.4% decrease compared to Thursday.
These locals give unanimous rave reviews to Jalisco's Río Santillán as a swimming spot: “We love this river!”
The Primavera Forest’s Río Caliente (Hot River) is one of Jalisco’s most popular natural phenomena. The 16-kilometer-long river literally boils out of a canyon wall and eventually cools down to become the Río Salado (Salty River) famed for its numerous rapids, which give it a marvelous Jacuzzi effect — and it even has a few deep spots where you can almost swim.
For a long time, I believed Río Caliente was the only hot stream in the state that truly deserved to be called a “river.”
Then I ran into Roy, an electronics engineer who enjoys exploring the wilds of western Mexico, far off the beaten track.
“I know a hot river in Los Altos (the Jalisco Highlands) that can certainly give Río Caliente a run for the money,” he said. “You need to check it out.”
So off we went to find the hot river, aiming our GPS literally at one waypoint after another that Roy had supplied. After what seemed like endless hours bouncing over miserable, bumpy, rocky, dirt roads, we arrived at … a balneario!
A short section of rapids offers all the Jacuzzi effect you could ask for.
That is, a rather ordinary swimming pool filled with the usual crowd of screaming kids and surrounded with the usual battery of giant speakers blasting the usual sort of music preferred by water parks. I suppose the pool was filled with hot water, but I wasn’t really interested in finding out.
A man wearing a sombrero stepped up to us: “Thirty pesos per person, por favor.”
“We’re looking for the hot river,” we told him.
“Our fee includes access to the river you seek. Thirty pesos each, please.”
Grumbling, we paid the fee, gave the noisy pool a wide berth and eventually came to the shore of El Río Santillán.
The Santillán River, to our great joy, turned out to be quite beautiful. The water was indeed hot, and all along river’s length were stately Montezuma cypresses, which are the Mexican national tree, known as sabinos in Spanish and ahuehuetes (old men of the water) in Náhuatl.
“This is supposed to be the road?” Don’t worry, you can ignore Google Maps at this point.
There were only two problems:
One, all this was happening during the hottest part of May, the hottest month of the year, so we had no desire to throw ourselves into a hot river. And two, garbage and trash were strewn absolutely everywhere on both banks, both upstream and downstream — kilometers of unsightly litter.
So, hot and sticky from our long, long drive, we turned around, still hot and sticky, to start the long, long drive back to Guadalajara.
This visit to the Santillán River occurred in 2012, and I never bothered to write a word about what I considered one of those adventures best forgotten.
Recently, however, I came upon an enticing video clip on YouTube showing people happily splashing in what was billed “Mexico’s deepest hot river,” the Río Santillán. In this clip, the water was crystal clear and nary a dirty diaper or discarded tequila bottle could be seen littering the shore.
This particular watery paradise on the video was called El Charco de la Vaca, or the Puddle of the Cow. Here, it was claimed, the water bubbles forth at 34 C (93 F), is perfectly drinkable and is wonderful for curing rheumatism. Best of all, there were no concrete swimming pools anywhere to be seen.
The Santillán River is lined with stately Montezuma cypresses.
Google Maps showed two routes to El Charco de la Vaca: the awful one I had taken previously, via Tepatitlán, and a new route via Cuquío, each of them about a three-hour drive from Guadalajara.
“How would you like to take a dip in the Puddle of the Cow?” I asked my friend Josh because he had told me he wanted to take some gringo and Russian visitors on a “John Pint adventure.”
“Let’s go for it,” he replied.
Well, right off the bat, the awe-inspiring, ever-winding road through the dramatic Barranca De Oblatos, richly decorated with wildflowers, truly impressed those foreign visitors. They were already hooked.
After that, Google Maps skirted the town of Cuquío and led us onto a very nicely and recently paved road that brought us to a bridge over the Río Verde (Green River), one of Jalisco’s most picturesque and perhaps cleanest rivers.
Now, the real adventure began. Instead of crossing that bridge, we were told to take an anything-but-enticing dirt road heading off to the left, paralleling the Green River. After only 740 kilometers, we came to a smaller river, and now it seemed that the bodiless Google voice was asking us to drive right into it!
A short stretch of the Santillán River offers a whitewater experience to those who seek it.
We got out of the car, immersed our hands in the water and discovered it was nice and warm. “This is our river!” we shouted. “We made it!”
Although there was no triumphal arch, no loudspeakers and no one asking for 30 pesos — no human being to be seen, in fact — there was a small, neat sign saying “Yahualica Thermal Waters: set a good example and keep them clean!”
Social media, I think, may have had a lot to do with this dramatic about-face in the locals’ attitude toward nature and littering. Bravo!
We had found the Santillán River, but instead of driving into it as Google wanted, we turned left onto a dirt road paralleling the small stream and drove a bit until we came to two cars and a handful of people happily bathing in the warm (I would not call it hot) river.
The Santillán — which empties into the Río Verde — seems to be no more than two kilometers long, its southern half accessed the way we had come, via Cuquío, and the northern half (with the noisy balneario) best reached via Tepatitlán.
Recent spurts of heavy rain had turned the river a milk-chocolate brown, but in the dry season, its waters are crystal clear. The river has a few rapids and a few picturesque narrow spots where you can get as much of a Jacuzzi effect as you could ever desire.
“This is the life,” says Guadalajara businessman Josh Wolf, offering his leg as a landing strip for the river’s many dragonflies.
Although shade is a bit at a premium, we did find a good spot all to ourselves. Because the water temperature is “just right,” we could soak for hours to our hearts’ content.
What about the Puddle of the Cow? We found a local man who offered to guide a group of us to the spot, which sounded like a pool at the foot of a small waterfall, apparently the source of the hot river.
The guide described the hike to the Charco de la Vaca as feo (ugly), and those of our group who went with him ended up agreeing.
The Charco, by the way, turned out to be located on private land, and the owner has put up a concrete-and-barbed wire wall around it to keep people away. So much for the “all Mexicans have the right of access to all lakes and rivers in the nation” law.
As usual, I recommend that you visit this place on a weekday or Saturday when there will be few people.
If you are in Guadalajara and take the Cuquío route (OK for any sort of car), you may want to stop off at Restaurante la Magueyera. Apart from its excellent food, it offers a magnificent view of the Santiago River Canyon as well as of the picturesque Cola de Caballo Waterfall, a Guadalajara landmark.
A fragile-looking bridge spans across the Santillán.
The Horse’s Tail and the Cow’s Puddle: what more could you ask from a Saturday’s outing?
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for 31 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.
Mexican, American and Russian visitors prepare to follow a local guide, right, on an “ugly” hike to the Charco de la Vaca.
September is the month when the Santiago Canyon’s road is filled with sulphur cosmos flowers.
The riverbanks are tidy thanks to signs like this urging people to set a good example and keep the area clean.
A peaceful pool invites meditation.
The Charco de la Vaca as it appears in an old photo.
Baby'O, one of Mexico's most famous nightclubs, was torched on Wednesday night.
An iconic Acapulco nightclub popular with celebrities and politicians during the last 45 years was destroyed by fire on Wednesday night.
According to the owners, a group of armed men subdued a security guard, broke into the Baby’O nightclub, doused it with gasoline and set it alight.
Video footage posted to social media shows three men pouring a liquid onto the floor of the cave-like club before a fire is started with what appears to be a burning piece of paper.
There were no reports of injuries or loss of life at the club, which has been closed for the past 18 months due to the pandemic.
Baby’O has played host to a who’s who of Mexican and foreign celebrities. Among the international stars who partied at the club were Tony Curtis, Rod Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor, Donna Summer, Julio Iglesias, Luis Miguel, Geena Davis, Sylvester Stallone and Bono.
Politicians such as former president Enrique Peña Nieto and current México state Governor Alfredo del Mazo also let their hair down at the famous nightspot, as did sports stars, organized crime figures, prominent businesspeople and countless tourists.
The nightclub was destroyed the night before Acapulco Mayor Abelina López Rodríguez was sworn in, triggering speculation that a crime group is sending a message to the new mayor.
Asked about the blaze at his morning news conference on Friday, President López Obrador said it was not yet clear what had happened.
“It can’t be attributed to organized crime without proof, because even the owner said [the club] was never a victim of extortion. But that’s what the media wants to say, that it’s a matter of insecurity and not paying extortion, … but we have to wait,” he said.
“It’s also known that the nightclub was insured. … We’re in contact with the governor of the state, [the authorities in Guerrero] are doing their investigative work and once we have the result of the investigation we’ll make it known.”
The owners said in one report that their insurance didn’t cover damage caused by vandalism.
National Guardsmen assist flood victims in San Juan del Río.
Heavy rains in Querétaro in the last 24 hours have forced 2,440 people from their homes after the San Juan River overflowed its banks. Residents of Santiago de Querétaro, San Juan del Río and Tequisquiapan have been affected and further flooding is predicted in the latter municipality.
Governor Mauricio Kuri warned that there was a 90% chance of more flooding as water is released from the Centenario dam, which has been filling quickly with water from the San Juan River.
Officials in Tequisquiapan, where heavy rainfall has triggered a red alert for the second time in 10 days, warned residents to stay away from the area of the dam due to the likelihood of flooding. A red alert signifies that residents should be prepared to evacuate their homes.
The National Guard has been working in affected areas, where floodwaters have entered people’s homes and businesses, the newspaper Reforma reported.
Diageo's plant in Atotonilco, one of two the company owns in Mexico.
The British beverage firm and tequila producer Diageo has announced a US $500-million investment in a new tequila plant in Jalisco. Construction of the facility, Diageo’s third in the state, will begin this year in La Barca, situated in the eastern Ciénega region.
The company said in a press release that the new plant will use environmentally friendly technology and create more than 1,000 jobs, while expanding Diageo’s capacity to supply tequila to the local and international market. Diageo has a 20% market share in Mexico, and tequila makes up 8% of the company’s net sales worldwide, mostly driven by the North American market.
“This is the most significant investment we have made in Latin America and the Caribbean in the last 10 years,” said Álvaro Cárdenas, regional president of Diageo.
The company said that since its acquisition of Don Julio Tequila in 2015, it has continued to invest in Jalisco, creating jobs and starting a program for female entrepreneurs. In 2019, it completed another tequila facility at “El Charcón” in Atotonilco El Alto. The company is also the owner of Tequila Casamigos, a brand created by actor George Clooney and other partners.
Tequila is differentiated from other agave-based liquors by the fact that it is made from blue agave and produced only in a special geographic area that includes Jalisco and parts of other states.
Former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar mocked President López Obrador at the national convention of Spain's People's Party.
The ruling Morena party has hit back at a former Spanish prime minister after he mocked President López Obrador for seeking an apology from the the king of Spain and Pope Francis for the conquest of Mexico.
Speaking at this week’s national convention of the People’s Party (PP), a conservative political party in Spain, José María Aznar ridiculed López Obrador for requesting the apology in 2019, pointing out that if the conquest hadn’t occurred the Mexican president would never have been born.
“What’s your name? Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Andrés from the Aztecs? Manuel from the Mayans? López! – is it a mix of Aztecs and Mayans? And Obrador – from [the Spanish city of] Santander,” gibed the former prime minister, who held office for the PP between 1996 and 2004.
“Man, if these things hadn’t happened you wouldn’t be here,” Aznar quipped. “Nor could you be called what you’re called, you couldn’t have been baptized, the evangelization of America couldn’t have occurred.”
Aznar’s belief that there is no need for Spain to apologize for events that occurred 500 years ago is shared by other conservative political figures in Spain, such as PP president Pablo Casado and the president of the Community of Madrid, who this week criticized Pope Francis for acknowledging that “very painful” errors were committed in the past in Mexico.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who governs the Spanish capital for the PP, described the promotion and protection of indigenous rights as “the new communism.”
The government of Spain, led by Pedro Sánchez of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party since 2018, “vigorously” rejected the need for an apology when López Obrador revealed in March 2019 that he had sought one from the Spanish king and the pope.
In response to Aznar’s remarks, Morena released a statement portraying the former prime minister as a warmongering denialist. (His government was a strong supporter of the Iraq War.)
Morena “categorically condemns” Aznar’s declarations, the party said, noting they were made at an event organized by the PP, a “political force linked to Francoism.”
The party founded by López Obrador said the former prime minister had openly offended “the history of our country and the dignity and memory of the indigenous people of Mexico and the world.”
“It doesn’t surprise us that an instigator of war denies the indigenous genocide in our continent and defends the Catholic evangelization, taking into account abuses carried out by members of the Spanish crown,” it added.
“… Our movement forcefully rejects his persistent interference in the internal affairs of Mexico, both by him and his representative Santiago Abascal, president of VOX, a far-right party whose presence in our country was regrettable and shameful,” the statement said.
“Mr. Aznar, denying history doesn’t erase it. The ancient cultures of our people that your political ancestors tried to annihilate are still alive and are uplifted by the transformation of Mexico,” Morena concluded.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, a close ally of López Obrador and a leading contender to succeed him as president, also took aim at the former prime minister.
“Here, Mr. Aznar, is the difference between a humanist leader with vision and a racist,” she wrote on Twitter above a link to a video of López Obrador offering an apology for past injustices to the Yaqui people of Sonora.
“The Spanish state is losing a historic opportunity by not recognizing the atrocities committed against the indigenous peoples,” Sheinbaum said, referring to the 500th anniversary of the fall of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán.
If Spain were to offer an apology, she added, progress would be made toward “a world without discrimination.”
The president tours a CFE facility. The government wants to give the electricity commission 54% of the energy market.
President López Obrador has unveiled plans to change the constitution to strengthen the state’s grip on the country’s energy market by eliminating independent regulators and nationalizing future lithium exploration.
The constitutional bill sent to Congress on Friday would guarantee 54% of the power market to state electricity company CFE — compared with 38% that the company says it holds currently — and would get rid of the independent National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH) and the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE).
The proposal is a sign that Mexico’s nationalist leader is redoubling efforts to strengthen state energy companies, keep natural resources in government hands and reverse a 2013 opening of the market to private investment.
The bill is more radical than legislation passed by Congress this year, which has faced multiple legal challenges and was suspended by courts. Friday’s announcement instead would change the constitution directly and potentially blunt future legal challenges.
Energy analysts said the bill, if passed, would hamper more investment in the sector and increase reliance on dirtier power produced by CFE plants.
“The initiative, if passed, will destroy the electricity market and with it Mexico’s potential economic development,” said Montserrat Ramiro, a global fellow at the U.S.-based think tank Wilson Center and a former regulator. “This will hurt Mexicans, let alone industrial consumers and power industry participants.”
In order to pass, the reform will need backing from opposition parties to reach the two-thirds majority needed in both houses of Congress. Experts are focused on what the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which spearheaded the 2013 liberalization, will do.
“There’s no way any member of the opposition can support that without branding themselves anti-business,” said Pablo Zárate, managing director at FTI Consulting.
In the bill the government also proposed that only the state can produce lithium, a key component in batteries for electric vehicles. “All the lithium that there is in the subsoil of the motherland is owned by Mexicans,” López Obrador said in his morning news conference.
Existing concessions for lithium exploration that had been started would be respected, the government said, however.
Investors are betting that the rise of electric cars will drive a period of rapid growth for lithium miners and battery producers. More research is needed into Mexico’s lithium deposits and whether its extraction would be profitable at current prices, experts say.
An image of a Xoloitzcuintle dog from the upcoming immersive virtual reality special-effects show "Inframundo The Experience."
The doors to the Mexica underworld will open this October thanks to a new virtual reality experience in Mexico City. The show, “Inframundo The Experience,” will take place in a geodesic dome set up in the esplanade of the Benito Juárez borough of the city and will run from October 22 to November 7.
The Mexica world of the dead, known as Mictlán, will be recreated with video mapping, sound, lights and virtual reality headsets, immersing the audience in Mexica mythology for the show’s 45-minute duration.
Viewers will descend through the nine levels of the underworld, starting with Itzcuintlan, “the place of dogs,” where a Xoloitzcuintle dog helps the traveler cross the river of death. Next comes Tepectli Monamictlan, “the place of colliding mountains,” where the traveler must cross through a narrow pass between two rocky peaks that open and close, crashing into each other.
To traverse the remaining levels, the audience must walk for miles on sharp rocks, climb icy peaks, withstand the attacks of invisible archers and watch helplessly as their hearts are ripped out by a jaguar, among other challenges.
Finally, on the ninth level of Chicunamictlan, the god of death and the goddess of the Earth await to help the traveler move on and leave worldly suffering behind.
The event is open to children four and up, and tickets cost 295 pesos per person. The show will run Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tickets are available on the Inframundo website.
Both President López Obrador and Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell played down the gravity of the coronavirus.
A leading medical journal has published a damning indictment of Mexico’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, claiming there was a breakdown in the effective functioning of the health system due to the federal government’s deflection of responsibility for “essential decisions that require centralized stewardship.”
Researchers presented a new concept – “punt politics” – in a paper published by The Lancet about what they described as the failure of health system stewardship in Mexico and Brazil during the pandemic.
“Punt politics refers to national leaders in federal systems deferring or deflecting responsibility for health systems decision-making to sub-national entities without evidence or coordination,” the paper said.
“The fragmentation of authority and overlapping functions in federal, decentralized political systems make them more susceptible to coordination problems than centralized, unitary systems. … Punt politics has been the operating principle for COVID-19 in several countries around the world, particularly where federalism coincides with populism.”
The paper notes that the Mexican government declared a national health emergency on March 30, 2020 – a month after the first case was detected – “but punted responsibility to the states to determine what constituted timely action.”
That deflection of responsibility is perhaps best demonstrated by the federal government’s introduction in June 2020 of a stoplight risk alert system, which provides advice about when restrictions should be tightened and eased but ultimately gives states the freedom to decide how to go about combating the spread of the coronavirus.
Before that, on April 21, 2020, the Ministry of Health gave state governments the responsibility to implement the necessary public policies to promote physical distancing and prevent transmission of the virus, the researchers said.
In both Mexico and Brazil, “the absence of national stewardship fostered a fragmented NPI [non-pharmaceutical intervention] response across state and municipal governments, lacking an evidence base,” the paper said.
It acknowledges that some states and municipalities implemented COVID mitigation policies ahead of national governments but others limited themselves to following federal guidelines, “thus reacting slowly and incompletely.”
In Mexico, the federal government never ordered a strict lockdown and didn’t advocate forcefully for the use of face masks, especially early in the pandemic.
Instead, “President López Obrador promoted the benefits of a lucky four-leaf clover that ‘protected’ him from the virus,” The Lancet paper said.
Both President López Obrador and Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell played down the gravity of the coronavirus.
“He also downplayed the COVID-19 threat in the initial stages of the emergency, encouraging the population to continue their daily activities and interactions, such as going out to eat in restaurants, traveling, and attending rallies into late March of 2020,” it added.
“… Lockdowns were late and partial, and testing, contact tracing, quarantines, and isolation programs have been minimal, while vaccine rollout has been slow,” it said, referring to both Mexico and Brazil, which respectively rank fourth and second in the world for COVID-19 deaths.
The researchers argued that the punt politics approach didn’t work because it wasn’t supported by adequate “real-time testing data that trace the spread of the infection and viral genomic sequencing for identifying the spread of new variants.”
“… Sub-national policymaking must then rely on mortality data which lag by weeks at best. During a pandemic, policymaking that is guided by mortality data is necessarily slow, reactive, and ineffective, compared to policymaking based on wide scale, equitably distributed testing accompanied by accurate diagnosis,” the paper said, noting that in late August Mexico ranked 168th out of 209 countries for its per-capita testing rate.
With regard to the different ways in which states in both Mexico and Brazil responded to the pandemic, the researchers said the political leanings of state governors might explain some of the variation observed, providing evidence of a partisan pandemic.
“In Brazil, allegiance with, or opposition to President Bolsonaro is strongly correlated with state policy decisions, especially at the beginning of the pandemic. Governors on the rhetorical left and center initially implemented more stringent NPIs,” the paper said.
(Ten non-pharmaceutical interventions were considered: information campaigns, international travel limits, travel limits within states, meeting/gathering size limits, public event restrictions, workplace closures, school closures, suspension of local public transport, stay-at-home orders and mask-use mandates.)
“Political alignment with the president explains less of the variation across Mexican states relative to Brazil, suggesting a policy vacuum,” the paper said.
“More stringent responses did not come exclusively from opposition governors. Yet, opposition governors were among the first to act and contrast themselves with the national government, and none of the best performing states’ governors are aligned with López Obrador. For example, centrist and right governors (opposition) were particularly stringent in mask mandates relative to those on the left.”
The paper says that Chiapas – under Morena party Governor Rutilio Escandón, an ally of López Obrador – “stands out as having several low NPI scores throughout the pandemic” – although paradoxically it has the lowest case tally and second lowest death toll among Mexico’s 32 states.
“In Mexico, [information] campaigns were strong and consistent across most states, with a few notable exceptions, such as Chiapas,” the paper said.
“Mask use mandates are consistent and relatively rigorous in many Mexican states, but several states implemented them late. Chiapas never went beyond recommending mask use.”
The federal government introduced its coronavirus stoplight system in June 2020, but left the responsibility for implementing COVID strategies with the states.
The researchers also noted that national responsibility for managing the pandemic in Mexico was not concentrated with the president but rather the office of Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell.
The paper noted that along with the president, [López-Gatell also downplayed the gravity of the threat and made “not overreacting a guiding principle, creating obstacles for a strong and coordinated national response,” the paper said.
In their conclusion, the researchers – among whom are former Mexican health minister Julio Frenk and his wife Felicia Knaul – asserted that “populist regimes are attracted to punt politics because their objective is political gain, not maximizing health outcomes.”
“A defining characteristic of populist regimes is valuing and prioritizing power as an end goal rather than a means and, in the case of a pandemic, this implies that policy adoption (or lack thereof) will not be based on prioritizing health needs, promoting trust, or eliciting population compliance,” it said.
“… Instead of harnessing and applying evidence and science in a coordinated manner, Mexico and Brazil’s leaders employed punt politics to achieve political gain or avoid the political cost of implementing unpopular policies such as lockdowns. The result is a health system where some components are functioning, while others, like disease surveillance, are not; the lack of coordination leads to a whole that is far less than the sum of its parts.”
Remittances from Mexicans working abroad continued their steady upward trend in August and set a new monthly record, according to the Bank of México.
Total for the month was US $4.74 billion, up 32.7% over August 2020. It lifted the total for the year to $32.9 billion, an increase of 24.8% over the same period last year.
Remittances sent during the 12 months ending August 31 came to $47.1 billion, up from $45.9 billion in the previous 12-month period.
The August figure, up 4.5% over July’s total, was well above the $4.4-billion median estimate by economists in a Bloomberg survey.
