Taj Mahal among top 21 in wonders list
By ELIANE ENGELER and ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS Geneva: A global competition to name the New Wonders of the World is attracting widespread interest, with more than 20 million people voting so far in the poll conducted by Internet and telephone, organisers said. The list of candidate has been whittled down to 21, and the winner will be announced on Sunday in Lisbon. The Egyptian pyramids at Giza are the only structures still remaining from the original list of seven architectural marvels put together by different observers of the ancient Mediterranean and the West Asia. Long gone are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon , the Statue of Zeus at Olympia , the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos lighthouse off Alexandria . Choosing world wonders has been a continuing fascination over the centuries. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, or Unesco, keeps updating its list of world heritage sites, which now ...