Tuesday, February 17, 2026

The Obtain: The rise of luxurious automotive theft, and combating antimicrobial resistance


Internationally, unsuspecting individuals are unwittingly turning into caught up in a brand new and rising sort of organized legal enterprise: car transport fraud and theft.

Crooks use e-mail phishing, fraudulent paperwork, and different techniques to impersonate respectable transport corporations and get employed to ship a luxurious car. They divert the cargo away from its supposed vacation spot earlier than utilizing a mixture of know-how, laptop abilities, and old-school methods to erase traces of the car’s unique possession and registration. In some instances, the automotive has been resold or is overseas by the point the rightful proprietor even realizes it’s lacking.

The nationwide epidemic of auto transport fraud and theft has remained below the radar, even because it’s rocked the trade over the previous two years. MIT Expertise Overview recognized greater than a dozen instances involving high-end autos, obtained courtroom information, and spoke to legislation enforcement, brokers, drivers, and victims in a number of states to disclose how transport fraud is wreaking havoc throughout the nation. Learn the total story.

—Craig Silverman

The scientist utilizing AI to hunt for antibiotics nearly in every single place

Antimicrobial resistance is a significant drawback. Infections attributable to micro organism, fungi, and viruses which have advanced methods to evade remedies are actually related to greater than 4 million deaths per yr, and a latest evaluation predicts that quantity may surge previous 8 million by 2050.

Bioengineer and computational biologist César de la Fuente has a plan. His crew on the College of Pennsylvania is coaching AI instruments to go looking genomes far and deep for peptides with antibiotic properties. His imaginative and prescient is to assemble these peptides—molecules product of as much as 50 amino acids linked collectively—into numerous configurations, together with some by no means seen in nature. The outcomes, he hopes, may defend the physique towards microbes that face up to conventional remedies—and his quest has unearthed promising candidates in sudden locations. Learn the total story.

—Stephen Ornes

These tales are each from the subsequent print challenge of MIT Expertise Overview journal, which is all about crime. If you happen to haven’t already, subscribe now to obtain future points as soon as they land. 

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