Doha  - There was incredulous murmuring among experts at first when the Arab Gulf states announced ambitious plans for art museums.

The sheikhs, of all people, wanted to join the international elite of art connoisseurs and collectors in just a few years?

The very people who, swimming in petrodollars, had turned their villas and palaces into monuments of kitsch with gold faucets and walls hung with embroideries of Koranic suras and oil paintings of Arabian horses? What hubris to think artistic judgment can be bought!

Washington  - The top EU and US trade officials Thursday vowed to fight protectionist trends and maintain robust trade to support global economic recovery.

The commitments were made in a joint statement from newly minted US Trade Representative Ron Kirk and EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton. They also pledged to push for an "ambitious" outcome on the stalled Doha world trade talks.

Doha, Qatar  - Any self-respecting family in the oil-rich Arab Gulf monarchies sends its children to study in Britain or the United States and conservative ones send their sons only. Some progressive clans also give their daughters a chance - always in the hope that after four semesters in the "sinful" West, the young women will still be marriageable back home.

As most Gulf Arabs prefer to have their daughters nearby or at least in an Islamic environment, female students outnumber males in many places in the Gulf states. At state-run Qatar University, for example, there are currently about 6,000 female students as opposed to
3,000 male students.

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.

Doha  - The government of Qatar on Monday said that it would purchase the investment portfolios of seven Qatari banks.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani said the government would purchase shares in the banks' investment portfolios in an attempt to support the country's banking sector.

The banks, which include Qatar's national bank, are listed on the Doha stock exchange.

The Doha stock market rallied by almost 9 per cent after the announcement, the Dubai's al-Arabiya satellite channel reported.

Brussels- The world's 20 greatest powers (G20) must revive the moribund Doha round of talks on an international trade agreement to stave off the threat of protectionism sparked by the economic crisis, the head of the EU's executive said on Thursday.

"We are seeing outside Europe big pushes for protectionism. .. It will destroy jobs and the possibility for growth in the global economy," Jose Manuel Barroso told journalists in Brussels.