“Lizzie” is a middle-class professional working full-time in a demanding job. But she spends much of her spare time roaming around English fields, disrupting fox hunts and gathering evidence of any law breaking. She describes herself as part of the modern breed of hunt saboteurs: “There’s nurses, social workers, an electrician – we’re all in responsible jobs … This isn’t a class issue – we’re just looking for the law to be upheld.”

That law – the Hunting Act (2004) – is set to be strengthened as part of the UK government’s newly launched animal welfare strategy. In our latest Insights long read, we investigate the complicated alliance hunt saboteurs have forged with some police officers in their common pursuit of illegal fox hunting over the past two decades. Such collaborations have come despite the deep distrust that lingers from the “spy cops” scandal of the 1970s and ‘80s, when saboteur groups were among those infiltrated by undercover police.

We now have access to more media than at any other time in human history, but that doesn’t mean we get more reliable information. Former BBC foreign correspondent James Rodgers describes how working as a journalist has changed – and why it’s getting ever more dangerous.

When out shopping for festive gifts, have you been struck by how much the price of chocolate has gone up, while the size of the bars keeps shrinking? A professor of global food systems explains why – and it’s not all down to higher cocoa prices.