In 1999 Gail Letzter gave a general construction of symmetric pairs for
quantized enveloping algebras. We will make a brief overview of the
subject and describe a characterization of the symmetric pairs admitting
Iwasawa decomposition in the framework of diagonal Nichols algebras. This
more general setting not only gives new examples like quantum groups at
roots of unity, but also provides a more conceptual approach to the
construction of quantum symmetric pairs. Based on this and a notion of
star-products on N-graded connected algebras, it will be proved that all
such algebras give rise to representations of the braid groups of type B.
This is joint work with Stefan Kolb (Newcasle Univ).