Toddler skincare videos on TikTok, a notorious Indian gangster and the rewilding of Chornobyl’s exclusion zone

1. #ToddlerSkincare: the ‘dark and exploitative’ world of children’s beauty videos on TikTok

Composite: The Guardian/Guardian design/Getty

Children as young as two are appearing in TikTok videos demonstrating their skincare routines, raising concerns about the beauty industry’s reach and the lack of safeguards for child influencers. This investigation – put together by a team of Guardian reporters, data journalists and software developers – found evidence that, in many cases, the young people featured in the TikTok videos had received free products in exchange for posting about the brand online in programmes open to young influencers.

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2. To see or not to see? Every single Shakespeare play – ranked!

Adrian Lester as Henry V at the National Theatre in 2003. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

“My theory is that the play works best when the leads are seen as victims of a self-intoxicating fantasy.” 

Antony and Cleopatra? Exhausting. Lear? Magnificent but flawed. Hamlet? Limitless. Michael Billington, the Guardian’s former theatre critic, ranked all the plays to mark the bard’s birthday. 

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3. ‘Lawrence is karma’: the gangster who became an icon of Modi’s India

Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images/AFP/ANI via Reuters

Lawrence Bishnoi has been in high-security custody for more than a decade. During that time, he has been linked to multiple high-profile killings, both in India and as far afield as Canada. In this Guardian Long Read, Atul Dev asked: what explains his seemingly undimmed power?

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4. Bonobos enjoy pretend tea parties and chimps think rationally: why apes are more like us than we ever thought

Kanzi, a bonobo.

“We’re working with these remarkable creatures with rich mental lives that have so much more going on under the surface than people give them credit for.”

Gloria Dickie looked at how a series of stunning findings about great apes’ mental capabilities has transformed the way we see our closest relatives.

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5. Going bald? There’s a subreddit for that – and it’s weirdly wonderful

Illustration: Guardian Design/Getty Images

Being hairless on top has never been in style, but r/bald members encourage one another in the face of insecurity. Jason Diamond wrote about the subreddit whose stated mission is to “embrace bald and strive to make the world a more bald-friendly place”.

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6. The no-go zone paradox: Chornobyl’s wildlife thrives amid pro-nuclear shift

A wolf looks into the camera in the abandoned village of Orevichi, Belarus. Photograph: Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

Ahead of Sunday’s 40th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, Jonathan Watts looked at its mixed legacy of nature’s resilience amid serious contamination. The Chornobyl exclusion zone and the neighbouring Polesskiy radioecological reserve form one of Europe’s biggest unplanned nature sanctuaries: an accidental rewilding project that has emerged from the exclusion of most of its former human residents. According to some experts, the long-term effects on nature may be less than if the area had been left to humans.

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