FRANKFURT: German police shot dead a dog-sized rat which attacked a 59-year-old man outside his home near Frankfurt, Bild newspaper reported today. The mass-selling tabloid quoted police as saying the half metre -long rat was as vicious as a fighting dog and as big as a dachshund. It said the rodent's intended victim, identified only as Horst L, heard something rustling in a bush and then a sharp hissing. He turned around and saw the rat, ready to pounce at him. ``I was rigid with fear,'' said Horst. ``I just had time to grab a wooden plank to fend it off.'' The rat sank its teeth into the plank and Horst ran inside his home to call the police. Officers tried to grab the animal with thick gloves, but it attacked them, so they shot it.

British school lets model pupils have a lie-in

LONDON: A British school has rewarded model pupils by allowing them to have a lie-in and come in late for classes.``We try to inspire the children with some imaginativeprojects not only to ensure their good behaviour, but to raise their achievements,'' said Graham Newman, deputy headmaster at Prestwich school in Manchester. So children who perform well are being given a chance to snatch some extra time in bed, with the full agreement of their parents and teachers. ``In the past couple of weeks, about ten per cent of the school population about 80 children were given permission. It was about an hour-and-a-half,'' Newman told BBC Radio today. ``They missed their first lesson and they actually volunteered to make up the work themselves.''

Most people need 10 hrs of sleep, says study

HAMBURG: MOST people don't get enough sleep according to American sleep researcher James Maas of Cornell University in New York. Many try to get by on six or seven hours of sleep per night and think eight hours make a good night's sleep, says Maas, but that's really just the bare minimum. He recommends ten hours of sleep as the ideal. Studies prove that going from eight up to ninehours of sleep at night increases productivity by 20 per cent on the next day. ``We don't feel better on vacation or over the weekend, because we aren't working,'' Maas says, ``We feel better because we're getting more sleep.'' Good, long and healthy sleep, according to Maas, depends on a number of small factors, many of which can easily be changed, created or controlled. Bedroom temperature should be 18 degrees celsius never warmer the room should be quiet and dark. Digital clocks and televisions should be banned from the room. Last call for alcohol should come at least four hours before going to sleep and no coffee after 2 pm. Strenuous physical activity should be taboo for the last three or four hours before bedtime, except for sexual activity. That, says Maas, has a ``relaxing effect''.

Leak discovered in one more Japanese reactor

TOKYO: A leak was detected in a second nuclear reactor in Japan's Southern Saga province, forcing operators to halve power output, reports said today. The leakhappened yesterday at the Genkai Nuclear Power Plant on Kyushu Island, six days after a similar leak took place at a plant in the province of Fukui when sea water apparently escaped from a condenser in reactor number one, the Kyodo news agency reported officials as saying. Officials claimed there was no escape of radioactivity into the atmosphere. Last week's incident at the Tsuruga Nuclear Plant in Central Japan happened when a pipe broke and started a massive water leak. Scientists measured a level of radioactivity more than 11,500 times the permitted maximum inside the reactor, although they also said there was no leak of radioactivity to atmosphere. Yesterday's leak was also reported to be occasioned by a broken pipe in a part of a condenser used for cooling a steam-driven turbine.