Priscila E. Coronado Elected as Harvard Law Review’s First Latina President

The Harvard Law Review elected Priscila E. Coronado as the first Latina president in its 136-year history. By Awnit Singh Marta

By Anne M. Brandes and Elizabeth K. Roosevelt, Crimson Staff Writers

a day ago

The Harvard Law Review elected second-year law student Priscila E. Coronado as its president late last month, making her the first Latina to hold the role in the journal’s 136-year history.

A California native, Coronado completed a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California, Los Angeles, and worked at the Disability Rights Legal Center in Los Angeles before arriving in Cambridge to study law. Coronado wrote in an email that she chose to scratch plans to attend medical school after discovering a passion for reading and writing.

Coronado wrote that she joined the Law Review to pursue those interests and meet like-minded peers.

“I got involved with HLR because I knew that I loved reading, writing, and research,” she wrote. “I also thought it would be a great way to meet others who are interested in legal scholarship and that it would be an intellectually stimulating experience.”

In addition to her involvement in the Law Review, Coronado serves as a board member of First Class, an organization for first-generation law students, and La Alianza, a group geared towards Latinx students. She previously worked at the Law School’s Education Law Clinic and currently works with the Child Advocacy Program Clinic.

Coronado wrote that she plans to pursue litigation, focused on education law and disability rights, after finishing her law degree.

She added that she believes her experiences growing up in an immigrant family are integral to her legal outlook.

“I don’t want to downplay the achievement or the tangible way that growing up in a two-Mexican-immigrant, working-class household has shaped my perspective of the law,” she wrote in her email. “They are fundamental to the editorial perspective I bring.”

At the same time, Coronado wrote that she hoped her historic election would not be used to serve a “model-minority narrative.”

“I believe with every ounce of my soul that there are countless other Latinas who are equally incisive in their logic and reasoning but will never get an opportunity like this because of something as out-of-their-control as where they were born,” she wrote.

Coronado’s election comes one year after another historic first — her predecessor Hasaan Shahawy ’16 was elected as the Law Review’s first Muslim President. Only four years prior in 2017, the Law Review elected ImeIme A. Umana ’14 as its first Black female president.

Reflecting on the journal’s efforts to diversify its ranks, Coronado wrote that the publication has made “important progress” but still has work to do.

“I’m hopeful that we will take further steps in my year as President,” she wrote. “I’m convinced that diversity is essential to our mission of publishing rigorous scholarship.”

Coronado also wrote that she hopes to maintain the Law Review’s quality during her presidency.

“My goal for this year is to keep the Review running as smoothly as it always does,” Coronado wrote. “That would be a victory, since the Review’s normal operations put it at the vanguard of legal scholarship written in the United States.”

Biden signs executive order boosting rights of 200,000 construction workers
Reuters
February 03, 2022


By Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden will sign an executive order on Friday requiring "project labor agreements" in federal construction projects over $35 million, a potential boost to construction workers and unions that negotiate these deals, and a shift the administration says will speed up building times.

The order will apply to $262 billion in federal construction contracting and impact nearly 200,000 workers, according to a draft of the executive order seen by Reuters.

Project labor agreements are collective bargaining agreements between building trade unions and contractors, which set wages, employment conditions, and dispute resolution on specific projects. Democratic presidents in the past have typically supported applying such agreements to the massive U.S. federal contracting budget, while Republican presidents have rescinded them.

The order, which will go into effect immediately, comes on the heels of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill signed into law by Biden that invests in the country's roads, ports and bridges.

Much of that money will flow through federal agencies to states and local governments. The new executive order excludes projects funded by grants to non-federal agencies, a senior administration official said, adding that will make up for a bulk of the projects under the bill. But it will apply to billions of other federal spending on waterways, military bases and other areas.

Biden will visit Ironworkers Local 5 in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, Friday to sign this executive order, the White House has said. Details on the contents of the order have not been previously reported.

The U.S. construction industry - including workers, owners, developers, contractors - has been one of the hardest hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to a slowdown of available goods and labor and the termination of entire projects.

Biden has vowed to strengthen unions and increase membership in the United States after years of steady decline, and to increase salaries for hourly workers in construction, health care and other jobs.

"Contractors who offer lower wages or hire less qualified workers will need to raise their standards to compete with other high-wage, high-quality companies," the order says. Earlier executive action by Biden requires federal contractors in new or extended contracts to pay a $15 per hour minimum wage.

Biden's move also found support from some contractors.

"This streamlines the negotiation process and gives employers access to a highly skilled pool of craftworkers," Daniel Hogan, chief executive of the Association of Union Constructors, that represents 1800 contractor companies, told Reuters.

Tiger Farms Doing Little to End Wild Poaching, Vietnam Consumer Study Shows

Tiger farming, where the animals are raised exclusively for commercial purposes, first sprang up in China in the 1980s in an effort to reduce poaching of wild tigers.

By Carolyn Cowan
February 3, 2022 

Mongabay

More than 8,000 tigers are kept in captivity in China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam in commercial facilities ranging from residential basements to licensed venues operating under the guise of tourism, and battery-farm operations holding hundreds of tigers.
Evidence shows that captive tigers and their body parts enter the legal and illegal trade, where they perpetuate the demand for tiger-based traditional medicines and decorative curios, primarily in China and Vietnam.

A new study that investigates the motivations of consumers of “tiger bone glue” in Vietnam reveals that consumers prefer products from wild tigers and would carry on purchasing illegal wild products even if a legal farmed trade existed.

The findings back up calls from conservationists and wildlife trade experts to phase out tiger farming entirely since it doesn’t alleviate pressure on wild tigers, and only encourages the consumption of tiger parts.

Acting on a tipoff, Vietnamese police pried open a basement door in Nghe An province and flicked on the light switch. Videos from the August 2021 raid show officers filing down an aisle past cage after cage of adult tigers. Starved of daylight, malnourished and raised as livestock in concrete cells, each tiger was destined for slaughter to supply skins, bones and other body parts to the illegal wildlife trade. One clip focuses through vertical iron bars onto a skinny striped body, hunkered in a corner, lungs heaving and eyes dilated from the commotion and sudden rush of tungsten light.

In total, the authorities arrested four suspects and confiscated 17 adult tigers from two home basements. But this wasn’t an isolated incident; evidence shows that tiger farming to satisfy mainly Chinese and Vietnamese demand for tiger-based traditional medicines and decorative curios is proliferating across Asia. In Nghe An alone, experts estimate that dozens more tigers remain in similar holdings.

While only 3,900 tigers are estimated to remain in the wild globally, a 2017 investigation by U.K.-based nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) calculated that more than 8,000 tigers are kept in captivity in China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Over the past decade, around 40% of tigers seized from illegal trade were of captive origin, according to the report.

Tiger farming, where the animals are raised exclusively for commercial purposes, first sprang up in China in the 1980s in an effort to reduce poaching of wild tigers. Gradually spreading to nearby countries, breeding facilities now range from small-scale illegal setups, like the basements in Nghe An, to government-backed, licensed venues operating under the guise of tourism, and battery-farm operations holding hundreds of tigers.

Wild tigers in demand

Now, a new study that investigates the motivations of “tiger bone glue” consumers in Vietnam adds to the body of evidence that demonstrates that tiger farming cannot be legitimized as a means to alleviate pressure on wild populations. Tiger bone glue, or cao hổ as it’s known locally, is the primary driver of the illegal tiger trade in Vietnam. It’s made by boiling down tiger skeletons to a viscous paste that users then infuse with wine. Although medically unsubstantiated, the mixture is believed to treat rheumatism and boost virility.

Through interviews with 228 buyers and potential users of tiger bone glue, researchers found that consumers overwhelmingly favored products derived from wild tigers rather than farmed ones.

“Most of the buyers we interviewed prefer tiger bone glue from wild tigers over farmed ones because they believe wild bones are more potent,” Hoai Nam Dang Vu, a doctoral candidate at the University of Copenhagen and lead author of the new study, told Mongabay.

As with many illegal wildlife products, tiger bone glue is considered a high-status luxury product, popular in an affluent stratum of society that is “part of a patriarchal hierarchy and notoriously averse to investigation,” Nam said. To engage with these unapproachable individuals, he and his research assistants had to earn their trust by learning to “speak their language.”

Driving a borrowed $300,000 Porsche and primed with newly acquired knowledge of real estate markets, luxury watches, antiques and Cuban cigars, Nam and his team began to infiltrate exclusive sports clubs and luxury condominiums in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, to converse with government officials, business owners, and members of the upper echelons of society, many of whom routinely use tiger bone glue.

Crucially, when the researchers asked consumers to choose between bone glue from wild tigers and from a hypothetical legal and regulated farmed tiger trade, one-third of consumers said they would still purchase bone glue derived from tigers poached from the wild, irrespective of legality or price.

The findings, published in the Journal for Nature Conservation, lend credence to calls from conservationists and wildlife trade experts for the governments of tiger-farming countries to phase out the practice. They say it perpetuates the demand for tiger products and removes the stigma associated with their use. Furthermore, as the new study illustrates, the preference among consumers for products derived from wild specimens means wild tigers continue to be killed by poachers.

“All tiger farming has done is increase the accessibility and acceptability of tiger parts in trade, perpetuated desirability and stimulated demand, and made a lot of money for criminal enterprises and wealthy business persons,” Debbie Banks, campaign leader for tigers and wildlife crime at EIA, told Mongabay in an email.

The recent extinction of tigers in countries that tolerate tiger farming, such as Laos and Vietnam, is also a stark reminder that farming does not ease pressure on wild populations.

Culture of minimal risk

The new study is the first to engage with a significant number of actual tiger bone buyers and potential consumers in Vietnam, according to Nam, whereas prior studies have been based largely on interviews with the general public.

Interviewees shared their consumer preferences candidly, Nam said, since possession of tiger bone glue carries minimal risk in Vietnam and traders and consumers consider themselves untouchable. It’s notoriously difficult to identify tiger DNA within bone glue, so prosecutions for possession are rare. Instead, authorities prioritize crackdowns on suspects caught directly trading tigers or their parts, as in Nghe An.

“There are a lot of loopholes and grey areas in current legislation in Vietnam that tiger product traders can abuse to sell the final product,” Nam said. “Some traders have even shown me tiger bone glue from their fridge … without any fear of [legal] sanctions.”

The profile of tiger bone glue buyers from the study will be critical to design effective campaigns that shift consumer behavior toward sustainable medical alternatives, Nam said. Buyers tend to be middle-aged, affluent and well-connected, with a penchant for luxury goods and traditional medicines, and have knowledge that helps them circumvent legal sanctions.

“Campaigns should be well designed and based on these insights into the actual buyers of tiger glue, not the general public, because this product is only coveted by a specific group of consumers — it is like Porsche or Rolls-Royce,” Nam said.
Governments must take action

While behavior change campaigns and phasing out tiger farming are solutions that could help wild tigers over the long term, an immediate audit of all tigers currently kept in captivity is vital, according to experts. DNA profiling and stripe pattern databases would identify the source of any tigers that end up in the trade so that the tiger facilities feeding the demand can be detected. These measures have been promised by authorities in tiger-farming countries for years, yet they remain to be implemented.

Alongside captive-tiger databases, Banks said that recovery of wild tiger populations will depend on governments in tiger-farming and -trade countries taking action to strengthen conservation laws and wildlife crime enforcement, and to clean up policies that facilitate commercial breeding of tigers in contravention of CITES regulations. “Mixed messages and a lack of leadership from the top have meant that not only are wild and captive tigers feeding demand, but other big cats that are being passed off to consumers as ‘tiger’ are at risk,” she said.

As host to the U.N. Biodiversity Conference in Kunming in April 2022, China has a unique opportunity to lead the way in phasing out tiger farming and ending the tiger trade, Banks said. She also called on tiger range governments to apply lessons learned from parts of the world where wild populations are beginning to recover, such as India and Nepal, where tigers are not treated as commodities and commercial breeding is prohibited.

“We are seeing signs of wild tiger population recovery in India,” she said, “where strong conservation laws, deep-rooted cultural connections to the tiger and incredible tolerance among those living with tigers have been complemented by sustained government investment, including in inter-agency, intelligence-led enforcement to disrupt some of the more persistent criminal networks involved in trafficking.”

—

This post was previously published on mongabay.com and under a Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.0.

Essential oils conquered medicine cabinets across the West. But do they work?

Loyal customers keep buying products while essential oils skeptics scoff. But the question lingers: What does the science say?

By Eric Schulzke Feb 3, 2022,

Zoë Petersen


Don’t look now, but deep in your eyelids you likely have tiny mites called demodex.

Don’t worry, they (probably) won’t hurt you.

They’re usually benign and sometimes even beneficial, says Keyur Savla, a Ph.D. candidate in vision science at the University of Alabama, as they can perform dead-cell cleanup. But these microscopic creatures also cause serious irritation and infections if they proliferate, which is more common among immune-compromised patients.

Despite years of training in vision science, Savla hadn’t heard of demodex until his Ph.D. adviser began reviewing demodex treatments for a prestigious British publisher. Savla assisted in the research, spending over a year parsing through existing studies, culminating in a July 2020 article in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, titled “Tea Tree Oil for Demodex Blepharitis.”

Yes, tea tree oil.

As in, an essential oil — those tiny dark glass bottles of aromatics found in nearly every medicine cabinet along swaths of the I-15 corridor, where essential oils have become a source of good scents, wealth and some healthy skepticism. Critics say the products are overpriced and oversold; boosters swear by them. But many others simply wonder whether there’s evidence that the products work.

Two of the industry’s biggest players: Young Living and doTERRA, each of which do well over $1 billion in annual sales, are headquartered in the Beehive State. Given the volume of sales, there’s little question about the product’s popularity — each month thousands of homes are continually infused, suffused and amused by a potpourri of some 90 different essential oils products sold in 10 mL vials. But skeptics say the science to support the broadest claims of these oils has been elusive at best.

Suddenly, though, essential oils are popping up in legitimate medical research reviews. It’s worth asking: Have essential oils arrived?

Interviews with medical professionals and industry experts, along with hundreds of pages of research and marketing materials, reveal a growing, and in some cases promising, scientific effort to understand what if any benefits are derived from essential oils. Currently, many of the hopes and claims that are marketed still appear to outpace scientific support. Whether these two realities can be reconciled remains to be seen.

That essential oils have “arrived” at hospitals across America is now a matter of record. No, they’re not curing COVID-19, but major American research hospitals, from Harvard to Stanford, are in fact using aromatic oils as part of a growing push toward “integrative medicine.”

The aim is to incorporate promising nontraditional methods into more mainstream medical settings, says Ana Baldioli, a physical therapist and the Inpatient Integrative Medicine Coordinator at UCLA Health in Los Angeles.

“Hospitals are stressful,” Baldioli says. “So we try to engage the ‘parasympathetic’ nervous system, which helps the body rest and digest, to counter the ‘sympathetic’ system, which triggers fight or flight.”

At UCLA Health, integrative medicine runs a gamut from therapeutic massage, energy healing (Reiki), traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, music, animal therapy, essential oils and more.

UCLA Health provides three essential oils at every nursing station: lavender, lemon and peppermint, chosen for their popularity and lack of side-effects. The oils are not diffused into the air, Baldioli explains, but rather put on a tissue or cotton ball.

In explaining the role essential oils play, Baldioli cites an example of a reluctant patient who needed a PICC line inserted in her vein. The stress was too much until she was offered a back massage, followed by soothing music, lavender oil and a foot massage during the procedure.

Another case involved an older man with cardiac trouble who was struggling to sleep, his heart racing at 120 bpm. “They played music and gave him lavender oil,” Baldioli says, “and within a few minutes his heart rate had dropped to 80 and he was snoring.”

Baldioli says UCLA practitioners are careful not to make medical claims regarding the results. And the examples Baldioli cites are anecdotal, not clinical. Anytime she cites possible benefits, Baldioli is quick to use the phrase “patients report.”

Some tools used in integrative medicine programs, like Reiki massage, are at least as controversial as essential oils: research is disputed, and skeptics believe the placebo effect is doing some (if not all) of the heavy lifting.

But Baldioli thinks placebo would be a feature, not a bug. “We want the placebo effect,” Baldioli tells me. “If we can leverage the power of the mind, give someone something to believe, we’ll use it.”

A woman fills a capsule with essential oils at her home in Santa Clara on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2019. Ravell Call, Deseret News Purchase Photo

Essential oils are volatile chemicals. They release from a leaf, flower or bark when plants are heated by steam. The oils are “hydrophobic,” so when the steam cools into water, the evaporated oils separate for capture.

The term “essential oils” has been widely used since the 1750s, but the term is still easily misunderstood. It doesn’t mean that the oils are “essential,” as in indispensable, but rather that they are the “essence” (i.e., smell or taste) of the plant or tree from which they’re distilled.

Steam distillation is an old art, probably originally spreading from Persia and the Middle East. In 1556 a German physician named Walter Reiff wrote that lavender oil “is commonly brought to us from the French Provence, filled into small bottles, and sold at a high price.”

He could have been describing modern day Utah County.

Those tiny bottles were used medicinally at a time when bad air — “miasma” — was thought to cause various diseases. No surprise, then, that aromatic herbs and oils, which at the very least do smell good, were viewed as cures or preventions. Much later, in the 1880s, germ theory displaced ideas about miasma.

But the science and industry of plant aromatics was just getting started.

In 1871 the first major essential oils company, Fritzsche Brothers, was founded in New York City, and in the 1920s, a Fritzsche executive by the name of Ernest Guenther began decades of research and world travel, culminating in 1947 in his six-volume “The Essential Oils.”

Guenther’s contribution drives home the chemistry of essential oils. That they are emitted by plants with pleasant odors can mask the fact that these are, first and always, chemicals. If these oils have any salubrious effects beyond placebo, it will be because of these chemicals.

The chemical in tea tree oil that fights demodex, for instance, is “terpinen-4-ol.”

Guenther’s work remains a classic, but a 1949 review in the journal “Nature” hits at a point that still resonates: on the question of what actual function these oils serve, the reviewer notes “too many tentative solutions … for any of them to seem very satisfying.”

In the intervening years, essential oils have found their way into foods, cleaning supplies, fragrances and cosmetics. Fritzsche Brothers prospered, and in 1990, Fritzsche’s successor company was bought by Givaudan, a Swiss corporation, which remains the world’s dominant player in flavors and fragrances with annual sales of around $7 billion.

As the plodding science drags against soaring consumer hopes and revenue demands, some essential oil companies have overplayed their hand.

Sellers have been warned by The Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission that they cannot “advertise that a product can prevent, treat, or cure human disease” without offering “reliable scientific evidence, including, when appropriate, well-controlled human clinical studies.”

Multilevel-marketing firms and their distributors may be held accountable for making misleading or unsubstantiated product claims. Some essential oil companies try to walk the line between marketing and science by deploying bendable phrases that imply potential benefits, but avoid asserting claims. They often use phrases like “said to” or “thought to” or “often used for” in marketing materials.

But sometimes a company will just let ‘er rip.

One smaller firm, for example, begins its web description of Angelica Root Oil cautiously enough with “has a reputation for” and “in China is used to,” but then suddenly says the oil has the ability to “clean infections, fight viruses, assist with respiratory ailments, help with indigestion, regulate menstruation, and aid sleep.”

Oh, and it might also “purify the blood.”

More prosaically, and more typical of the industry, another company claims its oils help aid against “the threat of seasonal illnesses.”

According to Nicole Stevens, Director of Clinical Research at doTERRA, the “immune support” claims boil down to something very similar to what Ana Baldioli at UCLA told me: They support the immune system by helping convince the brain to “rest and relax” instead of entering “fight or flight” mode.

“Lifestyle experiences (such as sleep, diet, stress, drugs, etc.) can put strain on the immune system,” Stevens said via email, adding that essential oils can “help the body function better overall, including the immune system, through mechanisms like stress reduction and improved sleep.”

Essential oils company do TERRA’s sprawling campus in Pleasant Grove is pictured on Thursday, July 8, 2021. Spenser Heaps, Deseret News Purchase Photo

But others hold out hope that the oils can do much more, and they’re waiting on science to prove it.

One prominent, level-headed optimist is Robert Tisserand, known for his book “Essential Oil Safety: A Guide for Health Care Professionals,” now in its second edition. An icon in the field, he helps direct an eponymous institute in Southern California.

In our conversation, Tisserand cited ongoing research in Brazil looking at how citrus oil may help fight an aggressive brain cancer. He also said essential oils could soon be helping fight antibiotic resistant bacteria, in synergy with traditional antibiotics. The oils may disarm a key weapon the bacteria use to expel the antibiotic, he says.

Tisserand can name many other such examples of ongoing research, some of it promising but still early. He discusses a study showing that diffusing certain oils into the room can lower bacterial, fungal and viral counts. But these, too, have not yet reached the stage of any systematic review. And, on the flip side, not much is known about the impact of diffused oils on indoor air pollution.

But Tisserand also points to a handful of essential oil products that are moving into the medicine cabinet. In Germany, lavender oil is used in oral capsules to fight anxiety, with support in clinical trials. Another essential oil has been commercialized to treat acute bronchitis, also supported by randomized controlled studies.

And then there’s the farm.

“Essential oils are now widely used in raising pigs and chickens and other animals instead of antibiotics,” Tisserand tells me. Typical mixtures might involve “cinnamon, thyme and oregano.”

And what about tea tree oil, the nemesis of our friends, the demodex? While Keyur Savla’s research for Cochrane Review looked at six studies with 562 participants, they concluded that they still lacked high confidence in tea tree oil, although some are willing to recommend it.

Peppermint oil has a similar story. The herb has long been thought to be effective in treating the upper and lower digestive tract, and Tisserand referred to a sizable body of research on the topic.

But not so fast, says Dr. Ellen Stein, a gastroenterologist at Rutgers University. She cites recent controlled research that has shown high placebo effects and only slight benefit from the oil itself. But Stein said she still suggests peppermint to patients. “It’s low cost and low side effects,” she says over the phone. “I advise patients if it works for them, they should use it.”

Settled science, of course, can be a moving target and Stein knows that the shadow of placebo is there. But like Baldioli at UCLA Health, she can live with that, just like so many consumers who swear by the products.

Robert Tisserand does urge caution about ingesting essential oils.

“For most essential oils,” Tisserand says, “there is no information about what would be an appropriate dose.”

The same is true, really, of any delivery method for these products.

For example, some marketing for “Thieves Oil” makes reference to an elaborate backstory about its purported use during the black plague outbreak. Thieves Oil, the Young Living website says, offers “immune system support” and is “cleansing to the digestive system.” The website also recommends its use on the feet during “cold winter months.”

When I asked about the foot rubbing advice, a Young Living spokesperson replied via email, “Some customers choose to rub oils on their feet because they contain larger pores, which is believed to assist in the absorption of the oil and provides a soothing effect.”

But other questions remain about how much of a given oil is prudent to put on one’s foot to absorb, and for what measurable effect? Or, how much of another oil should one put in a diffuser, and for how large a space? Or, how much, if any essential oil is safe to ingest?

DoTERRA’s website, for instance, recommends ingesting cinnamon oil, aka casia, “to support healthy cardiovascular, metabolic, and immune function.” Nicole Stevens points to studies that do show metabolic benefits from cinnamon, including a 2020 study led by Giulio Romeo at Harvard that used 500mg daily over 12 weeks, with promising results for pre-diabetic subjects.

But it’s unclear whether ingesting “one or two drops” of cinnamon oil in lemon oil and water, as suggested on doTERRA’s website, could measurably improve metabolic health — or how the oil compares to swallowing an alternative, like, say, cinnamon powder.

DoTERRA’s research team has published over 20 peer reviewed papers, with more on the way. Some of doTERRA’s current work includes clinical trials testing current products. Other work is basic lab research, including agar plate testing to look at whether an oil can fight specific bacteria, viruses or fungi.

This kind of research may be a long way from clinical trials, but it’s a movement in the direction of more rigorous study by larger distributors like doTERRA and Young Living, something that has been too often missing in an industry marked by sales pitches and lofty claims.

Some in the industry are hopeful that change will come as research grows, allowing sellers to be more narrow and also more accurate in their claims. Tea tree oil, for example, has also been studied for gum disease, and substantive research suggests that a diluted tea tree oil mouthwash may be as effective as commonly prescribed chlorhexidine, but with fewer side effects.

And then there’s lavender oil. A 2017 research review in the journal Mental Health Clinician has the headline, “Essential oil of lavender in anxiety disorders: Ready for prime time?” Scholars review evidence “from multiple high-quality randomized trials suggests a role … in the treatment of anxiety disorders.” They also note its low cost and low side effects.

In another win for lavender, research at the University of Kentucky suggests that putting the oil on a nearby object reduced hospital intensive care stays for infants who had pre-birth narcotics dependency. An added bonus in this study: The NICU setting eliminates placebo on the patient side.

So while Ana Baldioli and her team at UCLA Health may be open to placebo as a side benefit, there is some evidence that more may be in play.

“We don’t have all the answers in peer-reviewed publications, but the science is proceeding exactly as it should to fill in the gaps of our understanding,” says Nicole Stevens at doTERRA. “Our mindset has been to do the best we can with current scientific knowledge, and when we know better, do better.”

But reviewing the marketing materials, it’s clear the industry is still riddled with vague and often unsupportable claims.

“So many pressing questions,” René-Maurice Gattefoss wrote in his groundbreaking “Aromatherapy” book in 1937, “but we will answer them as best we can on the basis of our experience, meager as it is before the immensity of the problem. At least the questions have been raised.”

That was some 85 years ago. For critics, that’s a long time to wait for answers. But science does move slowly. The question is whether marketing materials can keep the same pace.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Newly Public Documents Allege Allstate Overcharged Loyal California Customers $1 billion

on February 3, 2022
By Creative Commons

Above: Photo / Adobe Stock

A 2020 Markup investigation found the company pursuing similar goals in other states

Apair of newly public documents filed with a California administrative law judge show experts accusing the company of systematically overcharging customers it believed to be the most loyal around $1 billion over the past decade.

This practice of charging higher premiums to customers an insurance company suspects are unlikely to defect to a competitor is termed “price optimization” and was the subject of a 2020 Markup investigation that found Allstate was attempting to use a new pricing algorithm for auto insurance in Maryland that would have unfairly targeted its highest-paying customers—and that the algorithm had been approved in several other states.

Nearly every state, including California, bars insurers from setting car insurance rates on factors apart from the actual risk the drivers pose. Insurance regulators in 18 states and Washington, D.C., have explicitly declared price optimization illegal.

The new documents, which were initially filed in late October by the California Department of Insurance and Consumer Watchdog, a consumer advocacy group allowed by the state to intervene in the case and provide expertise, consist of written testimony from insurance industry experts who examined how Allstate set its prices.

They allege that Allstate was engaging in price optimization by giving smaller than appropriate discounts to the least-price-sensitive among its customers with clean driving records who held multiple policies with the company or who had several decades of driving experience.

Edward Cimini Jr., a senior casualty actuary with the California Department of Insurance, said he reviewed internal Allstate documents, documents the company submitted to the state describing its auto insurance pricing plan, and depositions of company employees and found that Allstate gave smaller discounts to drivers with more than 39 years of experience, a group he said is unlikely to shop around. “Since Allstate’s selections were not based on underlying costs, the final rates that Allstate charged these policyholders were actuarily unsound and unfairly discriminatory,” he said.

Allan Schwartz, an actuarial consultant hired by Consumer Watchdog to review Allstate’s pricing practices, estimated that Allstate overcharged California drivers who were owed discounts “about $1 billion.”

“Those policyholders were known by Allstate to have a lower elasticity of demand and were more likely to renew with Allstate even though they were charged premiums in excess of those based upon an actuarially sound estimate of the cost of risk transfer,” he said.

The company denies the allegations. “Allstate does not employ, and has never employed, price optimization in determining premiums in California because Allstate does not take into account an individual’s or class’s willingness to pay a higher premium relative to other individuals or classes,” Allstate spokesperson Ben Corey wrote in an email to The Markup.

In its court filings, Allstate points out that in 2011 the California Department of Insurance reviewed and approved the 2011 plan without highlighting the issues now raised in the long-running class action that triggered this hearing.


The company was sued in 2015 over alleged price optimization practices in California. Allstate moved to have the case thrown out, arguing in part that it wasn’t a matter for civil courts but rather for the state department of insurance. In 2016, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California put the case on hold and referred it to the authority of the Commissioner of the California Department of Insurance for its opinion, which triggered the administrative law proceeding. Last week, the parties agreed to enter voluntary mediation.

Two years ago, The Markup published an investigation revealing that a new method of calculating rates for car insurance customers that Allstate was trying to implement across the country attempted to charge higher rates to customers who were already paying a lot for their car insurance—essentially creating a “suckers list” of big spenders and squeezing even more money out of them.

The investigation was based on details the insurer provided to regulators in Maryland as part of its 2014 filing there that revealed the current and proposed rate for policyholders in the state. Using statistical regressions, we found that the rating factor, called CGR, would charge more—and severely limit discounts—to big spenders. Maryland regulators rejected Allstate’s plan over price optimization concerns. We found Allstate was using similar algorithms in 10 other states, but we were not able to determine if they worked exactly the same way in those states because we lacked the data we had in Maryland. Allstate did not answer our questions about the algorithms.

Consumer Watchdog founder Harvey Rosenfield, who has long been critical of Allstate’s pricing practices, said that the company found a different method of achieving the same goals in California, which only allows insurers to use a limited number of approved factors—like driving record, type of car, or number of years behind the wheel—to determine how much customers have to pay in premiums.

“What we’re contending is they took their knowledge of price elasticity and figured out a pretty straightforward way of doing it without saying so,” Rosenfield said. “Their actuaries selected relativities to set people’s premiums that punished people who Allstate knew were inelastic, who fit the profile of being less sensitive to price changes. They charged those people more.”

California isn’t the only place where Allstate has faced litigation over its use of price optimization. Shortly after the publication of The Markup’s Maryland investigation, the company was hit with a class action lawsuit in Texas that directly referenced The Markup’s reporting. That suit alleges that the company was “charging higher premiums to its more tenured policyholders than it charges otherwise identically-situated newer policyholders for the same or materially the same coverages.”

That case is still ongoing.

Northeast Syria: Fate of Hundreds of Boys Trapped in Siege Unknown

Protect and Clarify Conditions of Detainees Recaptured from ISIS

February 4, 2022

Click to expand Image
Fighters with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces deploy around al-Sina’a prison in the Ghweran district of al-Hasakah, northeast Syria, on January 25, 2022, midway through the 10-day battle to recapture it from the Islamic State (ISIS). 

© 2022 AFP Photo via Getty Images

(New York) – The Kurdish-led armed force in northeast Syria should ensure the humane treatment of all men and boys it has evacuated or recaptured from a prison that the Islamic State (ISIS) assaulted and held for several days, Human Rights Watch said today. The regional fighters and US and UK forces supporting them should assess whether their forces complied with the laws of war during operations to recapture the prison and take all feasible measures to protect civilians during operations to find ISIS members and escaped detainees.

ISIS fighters assaulted al-Sina’a prison in the Ghweran section of al-Hasakah city on January 20, 2022. The Kurdish-led armed force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said it regained full control on January 30 following a battle backed a US-led coalition against ISIS that left more than 500 people dead. The prison held about 4,000 male ISIS suspects or family members, including 700 boys, most from Syria and Iraq and the rest from dozens of other countries. The foreigners had been unlawfully detained in dire conditions for nearly three years.

“The Syrian Democratic Forces began evacuating men and boys from the besieged prison days ago, yet the world still has no idea how many are alive or dead,” said Letta Tayler, associate crisis and conflict director for Human Rights Watch. “The detaining authorities in northeast Syria should end their silence on the fate of these detainees, including hundreds of children who were victims of ISIS.”

The SDF should immediately allow international humanitarian groups to visit the detainees it has evacuated or recaptured from al-Sina’a prison and provide them with essential care. They should make public how many detainees, including children, were killed, wounded, and evacuated during the battle to retake the prison.

The US-led coalition against ISIS said the detainees were being held at a more secure facility, which two sources told Human Rights Watch was a new, UK-funded prison near al-Sina’a. About 300 detainees were transferred on January 24 to Alaya prison in the city of Qamishli, the Rojava Information Center told Human Rights Watch, but it was not clear if they remained there.

“Everyone is in safe places. They receive good care,” Siyamend Ali, media commander for the SDF, told Human Rights Watch, but he did not provide any details.

The Syrian Democratic Forces said that ISIS used the detained boys as human shields during the 10-day battle and that they had taken steps to protect the children in their counter attacks on the prison, but did not clarify what those steps were.

Reports of Children Killed

Midway through the prison battle, two foreign detainees still inside the prison told Human Rights Watch that many detainees were killed in the fighting, including children. A Canadian detainee said he believed “tens” of children were killed and described a child bleeding to death in his arms. A 17-year-old Australian boy who said he was hit in the head and hand in an Apache airstrike estimated at least 15 to 20 children were killed including two teenage friends who he said were shot down in front of him.

“I was just sitting in my cell and an explosion happened,” the Australian boy said in a panicked message midway through the siege. He asked not to be identified by name, but Human Rights Watch has verified his identity. “There was shooting at our building [cell block]. I ran out with my friends and on the way my friends got killed in front of me, a 14-year-old, a 15-year-old. …”

“I kept running,” the Australian boy said, but “I got injured in my head and my hand. I lost a lot of blood.” The boy said he saw “a lot of bodies, dead bodies, and there’s a lot of injured people screaming from pain.” He added: “There's no doctors here, there's no one who can help me. I'm very scared. I need help. Please.”

The Canadian man as well as a detainee who described himself as an 18-year-old US citizen told Human Rights Watch that the men and boys inside the prison had run out of food, drinking water, and medicine during the siege.

“We're starving. We're thirsty. There's no food, there's no water, there's no medical supplies at all,” the 18-year-old said. “We’re scared. We just need someone to help us get out of here, to help get us to safety.”

Boys had been held separately from adults but when ISIS stormed al-Sina’a, chaos ensued and adults and children were mixed together, including the injured and other detainees needing care such as people with tuberculosis or mental health conditions, the Canadian detainee said. Human Rights Watch has received reports since 2020 of deadly tuberculosis outbreaks and acute shortages of medicines and other supplies in al-Sina’a and other prisons for ISIS suspects in northeast Syria.

Human Rights Watch lost contact with the detainees on January 26.

The SDF should work with aid groups to get word to family members on whether their relatives in al-Sina’a are alive, dead, or injured, Human Rights Watch said. Many family members have not heard from their imprisoned relatives for years.

“I pray there is a way to know that he is okay,” a woman related to a Western detainee who had been held in al-Sina’a told Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch has received a number of allegations from detainees, family members, or their lawyers since 2019 of the Syrian Democratic Forces abusing detained ISIS suspects but cannot verify the allegations. The Kurdish-led force and members of the US-led coalition against ISIS, including US and UK forces supporting the current operations, should ensure humane treatment of all those who surrendered or were evacuated or recaptured, and to allow independent monitors access to the detainees.

Under international law, all parties to a conflict are required to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians from harm. In case of doubt that a person is a valid military target, that person should be considered a civilian. Forces may target the military objectives only if the anticipated military gain outweighs the anticipated harm to civilians or civilian property. Indefinite detention without charge amounts to collective punishment of detainees and their family members, which is a war crime.

The foreign detainees in al-Sina’a are among nearly 45,000 men, women, and children from nearly 60 countries held in deeply degrading and often inhuman conditions in northeast Syria as ISIS suspects and family members. The vast majority of these foreigners are young children held with their mothers in locked camps. The Syrian Democratic Forces and other regional authorities have repeatedly called on countries to bring them home, saying they lack the resources to care for them and to prosecute those suspected of serious crimes. But few countries outside of Central Asia have repatriated their nationals or taken other significant steps to end their abuse.

Recapturing the prison does not resolve the international crisis created by the indefinite and arbitrary detention of these foreigners, Human Rights Watch said.

All countries with nationals detained in northeast Syria should repatriate or help bring home their nationals for rehabilitation, reintegration, and, as appropriate, prosecution. The US-led coalition, United Nations bodies, and countries involved in the northeast Syria crisis should help resettle other detainees, also with prosecutions as appropriate, in third countries if they are at risk of ill-treatment in their countries of origin. All of these detainees should be immediately released to safety unless they are brought before an independent judge who can rule on the legality and necessity of their detention.

Governments that actively contribute to this abusive confinement may be complicit in the unlawful detention and collective punishment of thousands of people, most of them women and young children.

“The al-Sina’a prison crisis was the predictable result of governments turning a blind eye to the fate of their nationals and all others held in horrific conditions in northeast Syria,” Tayler said. “This assault should be a wakeup call to countries that outsourcing responsibility for their nationals won’t make this problem go away. It will only increase the suffering of these detainees, most of them young children, and deprive ISIS victims of justice.”

Scant Casualty and Recapture Details

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced on January 31 that 77 prison employees, 40 of its fighters, and 4 civilians were killed in the 10-day battle to retake the prison, as well as 374 “Daesh [ISIS] terrorist detainees and attackers.” They provided no breakdowns, such as the number of detainees killed and how many were children, the number of injured, the number of detainees who joined the uprising, the number of adults and children back in their custody, or the number of adults and children unaccounted for, despite repeated queries from Human Rights Watch and media.

On January 31, a commander for the SDF acknowledged that imprisoned children had been killed after The New York Times reported seeing the bodies of two teenage boys who had been shot dead near the prison and appeared to be escaped detainees. The Times said locals told them the boys were shot by the SDF, but it was unable to confirm any details about them or their deaths. The commander said only that “a very small number” of the dead were children.

The SDF said as many as 300 ISIS fighters had stormed al-Sina’a prison. It said on January 27 that 3,500 detainees – nearly the entire prison population – had surrendered, but its announcement a day earlier that it had regained total control of the prison turned out to be premature, raising questions about those figures.


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Main damage observed through satellite imagery and video analysis on al-Sina’a prison, al-Hasakah city, northeast Syria from January 25 to 29, 2022. Satellite imagery acquired on January 28, 2022, as well as videos and photos shared online from January 25 to January 29, 2022, shows extensive damage to al-Sina’a prison and adjacent areas. Eight days after the battle started on January 20, 2022, the roofs and facades of the buildings throughout the core of the prison compound are extensively damaged. Debris is spread across the prison yard and burn scars are visible on the ground and some of the roofs. Walls and fences that separate the different areas of the prison have been struck, including the main gate, which is riddled with bullets. A one-story building close to the entrance gate is severely damaged, potentially the result of the use of a larger munition. Human Rights Watch was not able to corroborate the type of munitions used and the nature of the strikes. Credit: Satellite imagery © 2022 Maxar Technologies

US and UK-Backed Military Operations

The US-led coalition against ISIS said it conducted air strikes, reportedly with Apache helicopters and F-16 fighter jets, and the Pentagon said the US had provided ground support in support of the SDF during the battle to recapture the prison. UK special forces also assisted according to media and the Rojava Information Center. Satellite imagery and videos analyzed by Human Rights Watch showed extensive damage to the prison compound.

During and after the prison siege, the SDF searched house-to-house for ISIS members in nearby areas and elsewhere in northeast Syria, displacing tens of thousands of local residents and in some cases destroying homes where they suspected armed militants were hiding.


Before

After

JuxtaposeJS
Before: December 14, 2021: Satellite imagery © 2022 Planet Labs Inc. After: January 28, 2022: Satellite imagery © 2022 Maxar Technologies
Satellite imagery recorded before and after the assault on al-Sina’a prison in the Ghweran section of al-Hasakah city, northeast Syria. © 2022 Human Rights Watch.

Unlawful Detentions

Backed by the US-led coalition, the SDF rounded up tens of thousands of Syrian and foreign men, women and children, including most of the men and boys they then detained in al-Sina’a, during the fall of the last ISIS-held territory in northern Syria in February and March 2019. None of the foreign detainees have been brought before a judge to determine the necessity or legality of their detention, making their indefinite detention arbitrary and unlawful.

The conditions for detainees in al-Sina’a were often inhuman and life-threatening, marked by severe overcrowding, scarce access to the outdoors and sunlight, and insufficient medicine and food, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations independent expert on counterterrorism said. The children were to start receiving education through a nongovernmental organization in early 2022 but the prison assault threw that timeline into doubt, an organizer told Human Rights Watch.

Most if not all the detained foreign boys were brought to Syria by their parents. About 400 of the boys imprisoned at al-Sina’a were Syrian, up to 200 were Iraqi, and 100 or more were from other countries, northeast Syrian authorities told Human Rights Watch. Some of the 700 imprisoned boys were as young as 12, the SDF said. Detainees told Human Rights Watch and media reported that some were as young as 10. Under international law, all children associated with armed groups should be treated first and foremost as victims and detained only as an exceptional measure of last resort.

Although the US-led coalition has spent millions of dollars to improve security and other conditions at al-Sina’a and the UK has spent US $20 million to build a nearby prison, these measures do not change the fact that indefinite detention without judicial review is unlawful, Human Rights Watch said.

Starbucks Profits Soar by 31%—But It’s Raising Prices Anyway

 February 3, 2022 By Creative Commons

One critic said the company’s explanation for the coming price hikes amounts to “word salad to hide corporate greed.”

Above: Photo collage Lynxotic /Pexels / Adobe Stock

Starbucks on Tuesday reported a 31% increase in profits during the final three months of 2021, but the massive Seattle-based coffee chain nevertheless announced plans to further hike prices this year, drawing outrage from critics who say the company is pushing higher costs onto consumers to pad its bottom line.

“Corporations are jacking up prices on consumers and using concerns about inflation as cover to do so.”

Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson—who saw his compensation soar by 39% to $20.4 million in 2021—told investors during the company’s earnings call Tuesday that “supply-chain disruptions” and rising labor costs are to blame for the coming price increases, of which he suggested there will be several.

“We have additional pricing actions planned through the balance of this year, which play an important role to mitigate cost pressures including inflation,” said Johnson, who also touted the company’s “strong revenue growth” in the quarter.

Starbucks’ revenue grew to $8.1 billion at the tail-end of 2021, a 19% jump compared to the previous year.

To progressive observers, Starbucks’ announcement of price hikes fits a pattern of U.S. corporations—in sectors across the economy—raising costs for consumers while raking in record profits, boosting executive pay, and squeezing regular employees. Starbucks employees nationwide are increasingly fighting back against their low wages and poor working conditions by launching union drives.

Historian Andy Lewis argued that Starbucks’ explanation for the impending price increases amounts to nothing more than “word salad to hide corporate greed.”

The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, for its part, responded with outrage to Starbucks increasing prices for customers after giving its CEO a nearly 40% raise last year.

During testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday, Rakeen Mabud of the Groundwork Collaborative noted that “in sector after sector, in company after company, corporations are jacking up prices on consumers and using concerns about inflation as cover to do so.”

“We see that in Kimberly-Clark taking advantage of the pandemic to raise prices on masks,” the economist said. “We see Proctor & Gamble using the fact that they sell essential goods that families depend on like diapers to raise prices in this moment of crisis. And we even see companies like McDonald’s raising prices on consumers even as they enjoy massive increases in sales.”

“So in short,” Mabud added, “this is a really broad-based problem—it’s unfortunately not limited to a specific sector of the economy.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

JAMAICA

Striking cabbies leave Portland students stranded
Published:Friday | February 4, 2022 |
Gareth Davis Sr/Gleaner Writer

Gareth Davis
A section of the roadway in east Portland, which is undergoing major construction.

ZION HILL, Portland:

Dozens of students were left stranded and had to return home on Monday after taxi and minibus operators withdrew their services in protest over the deplorable road conditions from Anchovy to Hector’s River in east Portland.

The protest action taken by those offering commuting service to the general public came against the background of the digging up of the main thoroughfare from Anchovy to the border of Portland and St Thomas, by contractors of the Southern Coastal Highway now undergoing construction.

On Monday, a majority of students attending Fair Prospect High, Happy Grove High, Boston Primary, and Seaside Primary School, who had travelled from the parish capital, Port Antonio, had to return to their homes as they were unable to secure a ride to get to their learning institution.

Principal of Happy Grove High School, Monique Grant-Facey, said that a decision was made for some students to return home, as they were still on the road up until 9 a.m. Monday as they were unable to get public transport.

“I had anticipated to see over 230 students in school today for grade 10,” said Grant-Facey.

“We had to ask some of them to return home, because close to 9 0’clock, they were still in Port Antonio, so we asked those to return home, but others did come in. As you know, we have students from St Thomas and Portland, so we had those from St Thomas coming in earlier on. A bus that the school contracted to transport the students picked up quite a number of them. There were two other buses running the route as well, so we did manage to get over 200 students in school,” she added.

The move by the irate taxi and minibus operators also brought commerce to a halt in the eastern section of the parish, with several business operators left stranded as they were unable to transport goods to their shops on time to capitalise on a full day’s sale.

The public transport providers said that they were forced to take protest action as their cries for help had fallen on deaf ears for what they claimed was a prolonged period.

“We believe in development and we really glad fi di highway, but dem yah workman yah a dig up every weh all at once. Dem is so inconsiderate that even when dem dig up di road fi lay di pipe dem, it no cover back properly,” said a taxi operator acting as spokesperson for the group, who gave his name only as Ratty.

MAKE ROADS MORE DRIVABLE

“Dis caan continue and wi know say it rough pon di schoolers dem, but enough is enough and wi really caan do any betta. Right now if we make $5,000 fi di day, we haffi spend back $8,000, so wi caan save nuttin. Vehicle parts dear (expensive), and wi haffi a buy dem every week. Mi haffi go see my mechanic every Sunday and it really rough. All wi say is fi dem mek di roadway drivable. Everybody wid vehicle a feel it,” he added.

It was a rather difficult day for students, who had only just returned to face-to-face classes after sitting out almost a year and a half due to conditions brought about by COVID-19, which forced a complete lockdown of learning institutions across the island.

Meanwhile, Mayor of Port Antonio and councillor for the Manchioneal Division in East Portland, Paul Thompson, said that the upgrading of the main thoroughfare is needy at this time to allow motorists to travel with ease and comfort, but added that consideration must be given to at least make some areas more drivable and suitable for motorists.

Disaster declaration in Texas amid ice storm & power outages

The storm poses an ‘imminent threat’ to people and property, according to the governor

Snow and ice are cleared from the tarmac at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport in Grapevine, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022 © AP / LM Otero

Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration in 17 counties across the state on Thursday as an ice storm led to power outages and hundreds of flight cancellations.

In a statement, Abbott said the ice storm “poses an imminent threat of severe property damage, injury, or loss of life” in the 17 counties, including Dallas. The rest of the counties listed by Abbott are Bosque, Delta, Denton, Ellis, Fannin, Grayson, Hopkins, Hunt, Johnson, Kaufman, Lamar, Navarro, Rains, Red River, Rockwall, and Williamson. “I do hereby declare a state of disaster in the previously listed counties based on the existence of such threat,” 

Abbott authorized the use of “all available resources of state government and of political subdivisions that are reasonably necessary to cope with this disaster.”

The extreme weather conditions have led to local power outages across Texas and other states, with 350,000 homes and businesses reportedly losing power across the US on Thursday.

More than 1,400 flights to and from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport were also canceled on Thursday, with another 156 delayed due to the storm. Nationwide, more than 3,600 flights were canceled.

“The winter storm is having a significant impact on our DFW operation. Due to conditions at the airport, the remainder of flights bound for DFW this evening have been canceled and we anticipate additional impact through tomorrow morning,” said American Airlines in a statement.

Last year, Texas suffered an extreme ice storm disaster which left more than 4.5 million houses without electricity, created major water, food, and supply shortages, and caused over 240 deaths.

Inside the $128 Million Heist That Shocked the World—and the Police Chase That Followed

EUROPEWire Service

Feb 4, 2022

A defendant hides his face as he is led into a courtroom of the Higher Regional Court in Dresden, eastern Germany, on Jan. 28, 2022 prior to the start of a trial over a jewelry heist on the Green Vault (Gruenes Gewoelbe) museum, in Dresden's Royal Palace in November 2019. (Jens Schlueter/Pool via AP)

It took at least nine hard blows from an ax to smash the glass case in Dresden’s historic Green Vault. Once the glass shattered, the two masked thieves grabbed 21 priceless diamond-studded artifacts and disappeared.

It was November 25, 2019, and in the space of a few short minutes, some of the world’s most valuable historic jewels had vanished.

A trial with the six men accused of carrying out one of the biggest jewel thefts in history has started in Germany on Friday, January 28. But the mystery of what happened to the treasures they are alleged to have stolen endures.

This is the story of a heist that stunned the world—and the meticulous police work that led to the capture of six members of the family gang that police say are believed to be responsible for it.

Adorned with more than 4,300 diamonds, the treasures stolen from the Green Vault were worth at least 113 million euro ($128 million), according to the state prosecutor’s office. However, the director of Dresden’s State Art Collection, Marion Ackermann, said their material value doesn’t even begin to reflect their “incalculable” historical and cultural importance.

Nearly all the stolen artifacts were made during the rule of Frederick Augustus III, the last Elector of Saxony, who was later known as Frederick Augustus I, the first King of Saxony.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel smiles while looking at jewelry in an exhibit at the Gruenes Gewoelbe (Green Vault) Museum, while museum director Dirk Syndram looks on, on the day of the museum’s reopening in Dresden, Germany, on Sept. 1, 2006. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

They included a 1780s hat clasp decorated with 15 large and more than 100 small diamonds, as well as a 96-centimeter (38-inch) sword and a scabbard, or sheath, which together contained more than 800 diamonds.

But it wasn’t just the immense value of the loot that captured the world’s attention, it was the brazenness with which the raid was allegedly carried out.

Roy Ramm, a security consultant and former commander of specialist operations at New Scotland Yard in London, told CNN that crimes like this are increasingly rare.

“Technical security has improved over the years with CCTV alarm systems and all kinds of high-tech protections, so [there is a high] risk of early detection and being actually caught in the act … you need some inside information and a very, very detailed plan,” he said.

According to investigators, four months before the robbery, a suspect went to the city of Magdeburg, 180 miles northwest of Dresden, to collect a dark blue used Audi S6: the future getaway car.

The vehicle had already been deregistered, but the police said the gang went even further in their efforts to disguise its origins, changing its color to silver and leaving only the roof dark.

“What this says to me is that these people planned meticulously; they were running through, in their own minds, how the robbery would take place, and what the police reaction would be, and all the time they were thinking of ways of disrupting the police activity or giving themselves more time,” Ramm said.

“If the car was seen by a bystander leaving the scene, and that person was able to give a description of the car, once the police started making inquiries into that vehicle, those inquiries would become more complicated, more difficult and more time consuming to resolve.”

And police say the gang’s preparations didn’t stop with the getaway car.

A few days before the heist, the bars across the window where the thieves entered the vault were cut, according to authorities. Removing the metal grille completely might have raised the suspicion of passers-by, so the suspects covered their tracks by temporarily sticking the bars back in place with glue, police said.

The window was in a blind spot, so it wasn’t visible on security cameras and the whole area was in “complete darkness,” the Saxon State Ministry of Culture and Tourism said in response to an inquiry from the Saxon parliament. A motion sensor that should have been triggered by the theft didn’t go off. The ministry said the alarm had gone off the day before the crime and security guards failed to reactivate it. CNN reached out to the state prosecutor’s office for more details about the alarm failure, but the office wouldn’t comment because the investigation is ongoing.

At about 4:50 a.m. on Monday, November 25, 2019, the gang sprang into action, according to the police.

First, police said, the thieves or their accomplices set fire to a power distribution box near the Green Vault. This caused the streetlights nearby to go out, plunging the whole area into darkness.

Next, at 4:57, they headed for the vault.

The police said security camera video showed the thieves knew where they were going. After entering the building through the window of the mirrored Hall of Treasures, police believe they hurried through the vault’s Heraldry Room straight to the Jewelry Room where the museum’s most valuable pieces are on display.

Security camera footage shows it took the robbers just a few minutes to get inside, smash the display case, grab the jewels and leave. The thieves couldn’t steal all the pieces in the display, because some were sewn into the cases, Ackermann told German public broadcaster ZDF.

But before they made their escape, the robbers sprayed the room with a powder fire extinguisher to cover their tracks, the police said.

“Footmarks are very often used to identify the footwear used in by criminals,” said Ramm. “Fairly often, they’ll get rid of gloves and all sorts of other things but forget to get rid of their shoes. So, anything that disrupts the forensic trail is—I hesitate to say it—useful.”

Police said the robbers escaped the scene in the Audi and that, just 13 minutes after the CCTV camera captured the first images of them entering the vault, the gang’s car had been abandoned and set on fire in an underground garage some three miles away. The police connected the car to the robbery almost immediately.

“It is incredibly difficult to use a vehicle and not leave DNA behind,” said Ramm. “There have been lots of cases around the world where tiny amounts of DNA have been found and it was enough to tie the person to a car … so burning the car was all about the DNA.”

The police operation, codenamed Operation Epaulette after one of the artifacts stolen that day, began the moment the museum’s security staff made their first emergency call—while the robbers were still inside the building.

The vault’s two security guards saw the robbery unfolding on security monitors but did not intervene. That decision was later questioned by the police, but Ackerman said security staff had followed the safety protocols .

Ramm said detectives likely started by looking closely at the museum itself.

“The only way that these things happen is if the robbers have got really good inside information,” he explained. “You’ve got to know that there aren’t, for example, laser beams across the room, you’ve got to know that there aren’t pressure sensitive tabs around the place. It is extremely risky to do what they did.

“It is conceivable that they’ve done extended research on the building,” Ramm said.

Saxony’s State Prosecutor’s office said in March 2020 it was investigating four security personnel from the museum. Last week, the State Prosecutor’s office told CNN the investigation is ongoing. A spokesperson said a criminal complaint was lodged against two guards by a private individual, alleging they “did not react adequately and prevent the robbery.”

He said two other security guards were investigated. One was suspected of handing documents about the Green Vault and its security systems to the perpetrators and was arrested four days after the heist. The other guard was released following an investigation, he said.

The spokesperson added that a fourth guard was being investigated as “there is evidence of an action in relation to the alarm system, which could have facilitated the theft.”

By September 2020, police said they had received hundreds of tip-offs and searched several Berlin properties believed to be connected to the robbery.

They also found out more about the getaway car—including where it had been resprayed or refoiled—and released a composite image of one of the suspects.

Then, on November 17, 2020, almost a year after the Green Vault’s prized treasures were stolen, the police launched a huge security operation in Berlin, bringing in special forces and 1,638 officers from across Germany.

Heavily armed police secure an area in Berlin’s Neukoelln district during raids of properties on Nov. 17, 2020 in connection with a spectacular heist on the Green Vault museum in Dresden’s Royal Palace on Nov. 25, 2019. (Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images)

They were targeting five members of the infamous Remmo Clan, one of Germany’s most powerful crime families, which operates mostly in Berlin.

Ralph Ghadban, a political scientist and an expert on clans in Germany, said the way the heist was allegedly carried out and the number of suspects and their possible accomplices involved shows the power the clans wield.

“The clan protects and helps its members, it can have many thousands of members and can dominate and terrorize entire quarters in the city,” he said, adding that the “forceful and quick” action displayed during the heist is one of the clan’s calling cards.

The police announced the arrest of three of the five prime suspects during the operation in Berlin.

The police identified the two suspects still on the run as twin brothers Abdul Majed R. and Mohamed R.; a massive manhunt was launched to find them.

Interpol issued a red notice for the twins, but it took another month before Mohammed was caught in a car in the Berlin neighborhood of Neukölln—on the Remmo clan’s turf.

Abdul Majed remained at large for another five months before he too was detained on May 17, 2021.

A sixth and final suspect in the case was apprehended in August 2021, police said.

A month later, prosecutors in the case finally charged all six men with crimes including serious gang theft and arson. Three of the suspects are brothers and the other three are their cousins. Two of the accused were previously convicted for stealing a 100-kilo commemorative gold coin known as the “Big Maple Leaf” from Berlin’s Bode Museum and are now serving prison sentences for that.

CNN has reached to the representatives of the accused for comment.

The suspects may be in custody, but for the police, the investigation is far from over.

“Something of this nature, where the items themselves are irreplaceable, most of the detectives that I’ve worked with over the years would think it’s a job kind of half done, not to have recovered the items,” said Ramm.

So, what happened to those priceless jewels stolen from the display case that day in November 2019?

Ramm and other experts believe the likeliest scenario is the one the museum’s curators feared the most: that the stolen items have been broken up, the stones sold on, and the precious metals melted down.

“All of that takes organization,” said Ramm. “It is very rare that the people who actually stole the items will be the people that ultimately disposed of them. There will be a network and that’s why the police will be very, very keen to get hold of mobile phones, computers, anything that shows the links between the six people that they’re putting on trial shortly and any other criminal groups.”

Hard drives, computers and cell phones were indeed seized during the mammoth police investigation but the stolen treasures themselves have vanished without a trace.

The Green Vault remained closed to visitors for months, due to the investigation and later the coronavirus pandemic. When it reopened in May 2020, the burglarized cabinet was repaired but left deliberately empty.

The trial is scheduled to last until at least the end of October. If convicted, the suspects face potential jail sentences of several years.
The-CNN-Wire