Taj Mahal named among 'new' world wonders

---

LOOK AT THE WONDER: A foreign tourist couple looks at the Taj Mahal in Agra. The Taj Mahal was selected as one of the new seven wonders of the world announced Saturday.

LISBON, July 8 (AFP): The Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal in India were named Saturday as two of the seven "new" wonders of the world at a celebrity-studded televised ceremony in the Portuguese capital.
The others were the Coliseum in Rome, the centuries old pink- coloured ruins of Petra in Jordan, the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, and the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza in Mexico.
A private Swiss foundation launched the contest in January, allowing Internet and telephone voters to choose between 21 sites short-listed from 77 selected by a jury.
It said it had gathered nearly 100 million votes by the end of polling at midnight Friday.
Losing out among the frontrunners on the short-listed sites were the Acropolis in Greece, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the statues on Easter Island, and Britain's Stonehenge.
The privately-sponsored campaign was the brainchild of Swiss filmmaker and museum curator Bernard Weber, following the destruction of Afghanistan's giant Buddha statues at Bamiyan by the Taliban in 2001.
However, the UN cultural body that designates world heritage sites has declined to support the event.
"The list of the seven new wonders will be the result of a private initiative which cannot contribute in any significant or lasting way to the preservation of the elected sites," the Paris- based UNESCO said in a statement last month.
The initiative seeks to recreate the popularity of the seven wonders of the world of antiquity. Only one of the seven, the Pyramids of Egypt, still stands today. The others were: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in Asia Minor, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Pharos of Alexandria.