With drug plan costs rising, it means Medicare beneficiaries will have to begin shopping for better deals on prescription-drug plans.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit focusing on health-care issues, the average premium paid by seniors for stand-alone drug plans is set to rise 11% i.e. $38.94 a month in 2010, which means 1.2-million Medicare beneficiaries will have to pay a minimum of $10-more in monthly premiums, if they choose to remain on their current plan.

A report by estate agents has revealed that for every property currently for sale on the market, there are an average five potential buyers. As the demand for properties continues to outrace the supply, each buyer has five others to compete with.

For the month of October, the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) has confirmed that properties offered for sale by each of its registered member was being pursued by an average of five house-hunters.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) began Friday holding a run-off vote to choose a successor to outgoing chief Mohammed ElBaradei after Thursday's balloting by the 35-member failed to choose between Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano and his South African riva, Abdul Samad Minty.

Amano, 61, clearly won over Minty, 69, in three rounds of voting, but fell short of the necessary 24 votes, or two-thirds majority, of the board vote as required under the agency's rules.

Inspectors acknowledged eight previously unreported cracks in a 130-metre-high dam under construction in the province of Son La, Vietnamese media reported Friday.

Inspectors from the Vietnam Electricity Corporation (EVN), the main investor in the Son La dam, reportedly found five major cracks and three small ones in addition to two that had been previously reported. The cracks were discovered between September and December.

The half-millimetre-wide cracks range from 8 metres to almost 100 metres in length, and run up to 6 metres into the body of the dam.