If awards were given for thinking up new ways to frighten people, Britain's animal-rights extremists would win lots of them. Their inventiveness and determination has frightened the government too. The prospect of losing pharmaceutical research business prodded the Department of Trade and Industry into announcing amendments to a crime bill this week. Their aim is to make it easier to catch the people who target suppliers to Huntingdon Life Sciences, a research firm in Cambridgeshire, or to Oxford University's proposed biomedical research facility. If found guilty, they will get a five-year sentence and a big fine.