United Nations: The United Nations General Assembly has voted to adopt a new world map that makes the African continent larger while shrinking North America and Europe, with 164 countries voting in favour, the United States voting against, and six abstaining.

The new map, known as the Equal Earth cartographic projection, improves "the accuracy of the cartographic representation of the world," the resolution stated. It replaces the traditional Mercator projection, designed in 1569 for maritime navigation, which inflated northern regions and compressed equatorial ones - making Europe and North America appear much larger while shrinking Africa and South America.

Togo's Foreign Minister Robert Dussey, whose country sponsored the resolution, said maps "guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions. They are therefore never neutral." France, which co-sponsored the resolution, announced it would abandon the Mercator projection, with Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot saying: "Changing maps obviously doesn't change the world. But correcting a distorted representation is already an act of truth."

The United States criticised the resolution, with representative Yaryna Ferencevych saying such moves are "the reason this institution is losing its credibility." The Equal Earth projection, launched by cartographers in 2018, preserves the relative surface areas of continents and shows their shapes as they appear on a globe.

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