Taj into New Seven Wonders club!

It’s official. The Taj Mahal is now one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. At a glittering presentation ceremony in Lisbon today, India’s Taj Mahal was accorded the coveted status for which voting was on with much enthusiasm over the last few months.

The New Seven Wonders of the World are: Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China, Petra, Christ Redeemer, Machu Pichu, Chichen Itza, Colosseum.

The names were announced randomly, without revealing the total votes received by a candidate, thus precluding any ranking among the seven wonders announced today.

The New Seven Wonders of the World was a worldwide attempt to select the top seven world heritage sites in a method that was scientific and democratic. In India, the Bhaskar group spearheaded the campaign to get the Taj Mahal among the new seven wonders.

Ramesh Chandra Agarwal, chairman of the Bhaskar group, said, “It is a matter of great pride to every Indian that the Taj Mahal has earned its well-deserved status as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was my duty as an Indian to champion the cause of the Taj and lead this movement as the official partner of the New Seven Wonders Foundation in India.”

The effort to name the new seven wonders was started seven years back by Dr Bernard Weber, a Swiss author and aviator. His intention was to build a “true public consensus of opinion on the last 2000 years of human achievement’’. “The renowned ancient wonders (The Pyramids, The Colossus of Rhodes, etc.) belong to antiquity and with the exception of the Pyramids none remains in existence. The beginning of the new millennium is a poignant historical moment for determining the New 7 Wonders of the World,” he said.

Though everyone had heard of the “Seven Wonders of the World”, none had actually seen them because only one, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, of the seven ‘must-see’ destinations is still standing. So with the Seven Wonders of the World no longer actually giving wonder to the world, it seemed the perfect time to start again and nominate an all new set of Seven Wonders of the World.

With strict rules like all nominations having to be man-made, be in an acceptable state of preservation and to have been completed by 2000, nominations were whittled down by public votes to 77 last year.

Then Dr Weber took the help of former UNESCO Director-General Federico Mayor Zaragoza, who led a panel of architectural experts to shortlist 21 candidates for the vote, from the list of 77 heritage structures.

The New 7 Wonders Society, a Swiss group with the preservation of man-made heritage close to its heart, then began the hunt for the new Seven Wonders of the World, via the first global voting campaign.

What was shocking was that voting from India was abysmally low till mid-May 2007. It was then that the Bhaskar group’s integrated interactive solutions enterprise, I Media Corp Limited (IMCL), spearheaded this movement and resolved to get Taj to the New Seven Wonders List. The New Seven Wonders Foundation appointed IMCL as its partner in India and sole official voting facilitator in India for the New Seven Wonders. IMCL in turn kicked off a nationwide movement under the aegis of ‘India Unites for the Taj’. Said Bharat Kapadia, chairman of ‘India Unites for the Taj’, “We were determined to get the Taj Mahal to the Seven Wonders and we knew we could achieve it if we could make people aware of the task on hand.”

IMCL roped in A R Rahman to compose an anthem, which he composed, co-wrote and sang. It was a ‘yes’ at first contact for Rahman. “I was in London when IMCL contacted me, and I was very excited about composing the anthem. It was very short notice, but my crew and I grabbed the idea and made special time for working on the anthem,” he said. Rahman unveiled the soulful anthem – rendered in six languages — to kick off the India Unites for the Taj movement on May 24, 2007.

Voting for the Taj never looked back after that. As the first evidence of that, the ranking declared by the New Seven Wonders Foundation on June 7 revealed that the Taj had climbed the rankings to be among the top 10 candidates out of the 21 in the running. The rest, as they say, is history.

The organisers of this vote, New 7 Wonders Foundation, also announced that they would soon organise a vote to select the best seven natural heritages in the world. The slogan for this vote will be, “Our heritage is our future.”

Young girl claims she is Kalpana Chawla

KHURJA (Uttar Pradesh): A four-year-old girl who claims her name is Kalpana Chawla and that she died up in the skies four years ago is drawing huge crowds in a village here in Uttar Pradesh.

Residents of Nar Mohammadpur village, about 35 km from here, where little Upasana is visiting her relatives, think she might be the reincarnation of the India born astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who died when US space shuttle Columbia crashed four years ago.

The news of the girl’s claim spread quickly in the area after she spoke to some villagers here.

“I am Kalpana Chawla,” says Upasana, who reportedly fears the sight an aircraft. She has been telling her illiterate parents that she died in a “crash” up in the skies.

“Upasana has been telling us ever since she started speaking that her name was Kalpana Chawla and that her father’s name was Banarsi Das Chawla but we could not figure out anything as we had never heard of Kalpana,” Upasana’s father Raj Kumar told reporters on Friday.

Raj Kumar is a resident of Pata village of Etawah district where he works as a labourer.

“Yet Upasana’s proclamation led us all to believe that she was actually talking about her previous birth,” he said. “She claims that the spacecraft was hit by a huge ball of ice that sent it crashing and ended her life.”

Upasana was born barely two months after the astronaut’s death in 2003

Will the Taj Mahal make it?

With only hours now before a new list of seven wonders is announced in Lisbon, Indians around the world are thinking Taj Mahal at this moment. Will it, won’t it? Did we fail to send in enough votes? Or will the monument of love manage to edge out other competing wonders powered by a huge surge of voting in the last few days?

The campaign had kicked off a few years ago, but most Indians woke up to it only late last year when the New 7 Wonders Foundation, a Swiss non-profit group, was to visit the Taj. In the manner of a beauty pageant marvels from round the world competed to make the top 21. Since then, it has been a massive global exercise from each country to vote its wonder into the final list of seven.

For many months, the Taj trailed badly before a sudden burst of concern that it would be left out of the new list saw frenzied voting from Indians. By late June, 13 per cent of all votes were coming from India. And that would not factor in the army of Indians all over the world.

Individuals and organisations made fervent appeals to cast more votes for the Taj Mahal. On television, hoardings, radio, the Internet. It became fashionable to vote for the Taj and schoolchildren asked each other- “Have you voted?”

At TimesofIndia.com, readers wrote in hundreds asking fellow Indians to ensure the Taj made the list. Like Babita Sharma from Noida who said: “It is really a shame on our part that we are not giving due attention and protection to the Taj despite its worldwide popularity. I would appeal to fellow indians to come forward and save the dignity of Taj Mahal by voting for it.”

Over the months, many readers also wrote in about their deep appreciation of the Taj and their apprehension that it was not being treasured and preserved the way it deserved to be.

A reader, Jayanto Ghosh, said: “The Taj is among the seven wonders. Nobody can stop it. Only Indians can do it.” Another reader, Binu Samuel from Baroda, echoed the sentiment saying the “Taj is one of the Seven Wonders of the World and no other monument can beat it. The problem is that we do not know the significance of it till we lose it.”

Many readers brought up the problems that the Taj has been mired in. Krishna from Bangalore said,”The government has to take measures to prevent industrial pollution, which causes damage to the Taj Mahal.”

Johnson from Kolkata said “Urgent steps should be taken to preserve this beautiful structure, else its days might be From Faizabad,
Deepak Kumar from Faizabad, UP, wrote, “The beautiful Taj Mahal has been caught in politics. But, we should not forget that it’s a building of love. So I wish that it’s always maintained with care.”

Added N P Roy from Faridabad Haryana, “Possibly the greatest structure ever to be built solely on the foundation of love. This epic monument, which took 17 years to build over 400 yrs ago, is truly an international treasure which needs to be preserved for posterity as one of the Seven Wonders of the world.”

Likewise, Allaukik from Dallas, US, sounded a warning: “Civilizations die if they do not preserve their past. Let us not be irresponsible.”

There are of course those who wonder why there is so much hype about a private endeavour. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has distanced itself from the campaign terming the much-awaited list as the result of a “private undertaking, reflecting only the opinions of those with access to the internet and not the entire world.”

The entire polling for the new seven wonders was on-line, and on phone and SMS.

Even so, when the official declaration ceremony begins at Estadio da Luz in Lisbon after midnight, many Indians will be waiting with bated breath for the announcement.

Among the top contenders for the list are the Great Wall of China, the Inca city of Machu Picchu in Peru, the Colosseum of Rome, the statues of Easter Island and the statue of Christ the Redeemer, among others. Machu Picchu has been a frontrunner through the campaign with the help very active voting from Peru.

iPhone to be deconstructed

Hundreds of developers to gather Sunday to dissect must-have device and create new programs for it.

Exactly one week after the debut of the iPhone, hundreds of developers and enthusiasts plan to huddle this weekend to work on and play with their new favorite toy.

From sundown today to Sunday at iPhoneDevCamp, or the iPhone Developers Camp, some 200 to 300 engineers, designers, entrepreneurs and iPhone owners will dissect, discuss and dream up new programs for the iPhone, Apple Inc.’s all-in-one cell phone, iPod and Internet tool.

The iPhone, Apple’s first step into the cell phone market, has been lauded as the gadget that will raise the bar for the industry, forcing rivals to produce better mobile phones and encouraging people to do more with their phones, from sending e-mails to watching movies.

Developers are hoping to tap into that potential this weekend.

“It’s a great example of a spontaneous community forming around really compelling technologies,” said Danese Cooper, Intel Corp.’s director of open-source strategies and a former Apple executive.

“People who say it is just a phone do not get it.”

Fueled by Red Bull, Kettle Chips and other donated, geek-appropriate nourishment, they will gather into the night at Adobe Systems Inc.’s San Francisco office with a loose schedule that includes discussions on the do’s and don’ts for creating mobile phone applications and a live autopsy of the iPhone.

Developers will also join in a Hack-a-Thon to produce new iPhone programs, which will be shared and judged — with prizes — by the end of the camp.

“Who knows what’s going to happen?” said William Hurley, one of the event’s organizers and the chief architect of open-source strategy at BMC Software Inc. “We’ll have the largest group of iPhone developers, enthusiasts and users in one room.”

Nearly half of electricity from renewable resources by 2030

Germany plans to boost the percentage of electricity generated by renewable resources to 45 percent by 2030 in a bid to curb global warming, environment minister Sigmar Gabriel said Thursday.

Gabriel told reporters that a progress report on a renewable energy law (EEG) passed in 2000 showed that the country had already surpassed the quota of 12.5 percent set for 2010.

He said Berlin was now setting a more ambitious target to produce at least 20 percent of electricity used in the country with renewable resources such as wind and solar power by 2020 and 45 percent by 2030.

“We can and must raise the bar for 2020 to generate at least 27 percent of all the electricity used with renewable resources,” Gabriel said.

“This is the only way we can make a significant contribution to reaching our ambitious EU goals that we passed under the German presidency in March.”

Berlin held the rotating EU presidency for the first six months of this year and made curbing climate change one of its top priorities.

The European Union set a goal in March of a 20-percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, but Germany is aiming to cut up to 40 percent.

Gabriel said Germany had prevented 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from being spewed into the atmosphere last year thanks to renewable energy sources, adding that there were now 214,000 jobs in fields such as wind and solar power.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday at a meeting of political officials, industry representatives and environmental campaigners that Germany would seek to increase energy efficiency by three percent a year until 2020.

She cited fuel-efficient cars, houses with innovative heating systems and energy-saving household appliances as areas the government wanted to see developed.