- Nineteen prisoners use cutlery to break out of cells at Winchester prison
- France wants progress in Ukraine before Russia returns to G7
- Italy president begins talks to seek way out of government crisis
- Italian PM expected to resign as political chaos deepens
- Russia says US cruise missile test ‘regrettable’
- Kremlin - No date set for Normandy talks on Ukraine despite Macron meeting
- Egypt court hands out 6 death sentences on terror charges
- Putin says Russian nuclear explosion poses no threat
- Russian panel eyes alleged foreign interference in protests
- Gran Canaria wildfire triggers evacuation of thousands of people
- PM Johnson calls on Germany and France to compromise on Brexit
- Sudan's ex-president Bashir arrives at corruption trial
TEHRAN, June 24 -Inuit hunting grounds, World War I cemeteries, Art Deco heritage in Mumbai are among 30 hopefuls in the running to join UNESCO's famous list as the World Heritage Committee meets from Sunday in Bahrain.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) -Inuit hunting grounds, World War I cemeteries, Art Deco heritage in Mumbai are among 30 hopefuls in the running to join UNESCO's famous list as the World Heritage Committee meets from Sunday in Bahrain.
Delegates at the annual gathering will also debate adding locations including Kenya's Lake Turkana and Nepal's Kathmandu Valley to those sites considered "in danger", but could remove the Belize Barrier Reef from the risk list due to an oil activity ban.
The roster of contenders for this year's new additions spans the globe from the Aasivissuit and Nipisat hunting grounds in the frozen expanses of Greenland to the sun-scorched Al-Ahsa Oasis in the deserts of Saudi Arabia.
Eye-catching -- or lip-smacking -- sites among them include the Prosecco Hills in northwest Italy where famed sparkling wine has been made for centuries, as well as the town of Zatec in the Czech Republic renowned for its hops.
In India, a collection of Victorian and Art Deco landmarks in bustling Mumbai is being billed as "the largest such conglomeration of these two genres of architecture in the world".
The push to include funeral and memorial sites in Belgium and France for those killed on World War I's Western Front has sparked debate over how to treat locations associated with recent conflicts.
In an April report, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, which advises UNESCO, called for a further "period of reflection", despite locations including Hiroshima and Auschwitz already being on the list.
Getting on the World Heritage List could be a major boon for the nominees, as being deemed of "outstanding universal value" can boost tourist numbers and bring in funding.
But the committee also considers whether to remove locations from the list that do not do enough to protect their heritage -- although such moves are rare.
Possibly facing the chop this year over disruptive building work is the historic centre of Shakhrisyabz in Uzbekistan, once the site of a palace of Turco-Mongol leader Amir Timur, that was added in 2000.
"They have erased a whole traditional neighbourhood that was on the list," Mechtild Rossler, director for UNESCO's Division for Heritage and World Heritage Centre, told a news conference.
Source:AFP
Your Comment