The Grand Canyon, the Matterhorn and the Great Barrier Reef are competing with 25 other spectacular natural landmarks in the final phase of the global poll to choose the “New 7 Wonders of Nature.”
The Amazon rainforest, the Dead Sea, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and Ecuador’s Galapagos islands are also among the finalists, the organization New 7 Wonders, led by Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber, said on Tuesday.
People can vote by Internet or phone. The winners will be announced in 2011 and share in the glory already enjoyed by the seven man-made wonders chosen two years ago.
More than 1 billion people are expected to join in the voting, Weber said.
“This campaign should contribute to the appreciation — to the knowledge — of our environment and not just the one in our country but worldwide,” he said. “If we or our children want to save anything, we should first appreciate it.”
The finalists also include Azerbaijan’s Mud Volcanoes, Lebanon’s Jeita Grotto, Ireland’s Moher Cliffs and Germany’s Black Forest.
A panel of experts chose the finalists among the 77 nominees that gained the most votes in an early round of polling. People had suggested 261 landmarks all over the world.
The panel chaired by Federico Mayor, former chief of UNESCO, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, picked the finalists depending on geographical balance, diversity and the importance to human life.
High voter participation has come from Asian countries, including Indonesia, India, Bangladesh and Vietnam, as well as from Latin America, he said.
“US voters’ participation is always quite high,” he added.
Africa, where most people vote by mobile phones, has had the biggest increase in votes over the last few weeks, Weber said.
Weber declined to give any specific numbers of votes so far. But the organization plans to release details about voter profiles later. Registration on the Web site aims to prevent people from voting twice.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion