Sydney  - A clean-up was under way on Australia's east coast Thursday after beaches were coated with oil that leaked from a container vessel damaged in rough seas.

The oil has begun washing up on 8 kilometres of beaches in Moreton Bay near Brisbane and there are fears slicks will also spoil beaches on the Sunshine Coast.

The Hong Kong-owned Pacific Adventurer also lost half its load of industrial chemicals when 31 containers of ammonium nitrate toppled overboard. One of the tumbling boxes punctured a fuel tank and let 30 tonnes of oil flood into Moreton Bay.

Doha, Mar. 12 : The world''s most expensive rug is expected to fetch 20 million dollars when it goes under the hammer later this month, The Telegraph reports.

The Pearl Carpet of Baroda was created using an estimated two million natural seed pearls farmed from the Arabian Gulf.

It has a starting price of five million dollars and will become a record breaker if it sells, beating the 4.45 million dollars paid for a silk Persian rug in New York, at Christies, in
2008.

Sotheby's will handle the sale of the spectacular rug and the auction will be the first for their new offices in Doha.

Sydney - Unemployment in Australia rose to 5.2 per cent in February from 4.8 per cent in January, official figures released Thursday showed.

A fall of 53,800 full-time positions was outweighed by a rise of 55,600 part-time jobs as workers were shifted from permanent to casual employment because of the economic downturn.

The unemployment rate rose despite the increase in jobs because the number of people looking for work - what economists call the participation rate - went up.

In the Saurashtra-Kutch region, around 2,800 private doctors struck work on Monday to protest what they called as harassment from civic officials in the drive to guarantee safe disposal of bio-medical waste.

The officials have been raiding the doctors’ clinics after the death of 62 patients in the state in February-March because of the suspected use of contaminated syringes.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said that for the overall growth of the country, it’s important to guarantee equal opportunities for women.

While lecturing at a meeting with a group of schoolgirls at his home, PM said that no civilization could go ahead if women lagged behind.

Mr. Singh congratulated the children from some of the Urdu-medium schools on the eve of Milad-un-Nabi.

This was PM’s first public meeting after his bypass surgery on January 24.