The Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower,Sydney Opera House, and the Statue of Liberty in New York may be chosen among the new seven wonders of the world

July 6 (Bloomberg) -- The Taj Mahal in Agra, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Sydney Opera House and the Statue of Liberty in New York may be chosen among the new seven wonders of the world in a poll that has drawn more than 90 million votes.
The Acropolis in Greece, Jordan's ancient city of Petra, the Statues on Easter Island, the Great Wall of China and the Statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, are also contenders, the New7Wonders Foundation said. The group said it removed candidates' rankings from its Web site because of a surge of voting before balloting on the Internet closes at 8 p.m. New York time today.
``The phenomenal participation in the New7Wonders campaign, with votes still pouring in every day from all corners of the globe is powerful testimony to the fact that people yearn for dialogue,'' foundation head Bernard Weber said. The new seven wonders are due to be announced July 7 in Lisbon, Portugal.
The Great Pyramid of Giza, the only surviving structure of the seven wonders of the ancient world, was automatically included after Egypt protested it shouldn't have to compete to join the list, which will now comprise eight marvels.
The New7Wonders Foundation, based in Switzerland, is separate to the United Nations list of world cultural treasures, which was updated last week to include Sydney Opera House in Australia and the Red Fort in India.
Ancient World
The six other ancient wonders of the world were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. The six were located around the Mediterranean and in the Middle East, reflecting the origins of civilization.
The ancient wonders came from a list compiled by Greek philosophers at the time. The modern list was started in 1999 by Weber with 200 candidates. It has been narrowed to 20 sites.
A month ago, the top 10 included the Acropolis, the Colosseum in Rome, the Eiffel Tower, the Chichen Itza pyramid in Mexico, Machu Picchu in Peru, Petra, the Christ the Redeemer statue and the Easter Island statues off Chile.
The bottom 10 were Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Alhambra in Spain, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the Kiyomizu Temple in Japan, the Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral in Russia, Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, the Statue of Liberty, Stonehenge in the U.K., the Sydney Opera House and Timbuktu in Mali.
Jennifer Lopez
The new seven wonders of the world will be announced at Lisbon's Benfica Stadium. Guests will include actors Ben Kingsley and Hilary Swank, singer Jennifer Lopez, soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo and Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, the New7Wonders Foundation said in a statement last month.
The list by the UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization includes 851 cultural and natural sites which its World Heritage Committee considers to have ``outstanding universal value.'' The Taj Mahal, Australia's Great Barrier Reef, Stonehenge, the Grand Canyon National Park in the U.S. and the Great Wall of China are among the sites.
The World Heritage Committee consists of representatives from 21 of the 184 countries that are signatories to the 1972 international convention for the protection of the world's cultural and natural heritage