Yoti

Age verification is being privatised even as state-backed digital ID schemes stall. Private providers Yoti and Luciditi are expanding rapidly, with Yoti reportedly downloaded more than eight million times, and now operate with clear legal grounding. Commentators are asking what this shift means for privacy and oversight, given commercial firms will handle sensitive identity and age checks once handled by public authorities.

The Earth BioGenome Project has published quality standards and recommendations for generating eukaryotic reference genome assemblies. The guidelines are intended to ensure consistency and accuracy across the thousands of species genomes the initiative aims to sequence. Researchers in genomics and biodiversity science are expected to follow these benchmarks as genome assembly efforts expand worldwide.