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How large is Africa compared to the United States, or Western Europe? Most inhabitants of the latter places might guess it is a little larger, but few would have any idea of the scale of the difference. This has led German graphics designer Kai Krause to produce this map to shake people's perceptions a little.

Any attempt to map a spherical planet onto a flat map will involve distortions of size, shape or both. There is a passionate debate among cartographers about the best way to hang the world on a wall, but most agree that the most common maps we get our sense of the world from are very bad ways to do it. The problem is that these maps exaggerate the size of the countries at high  latitudes, and shrink places near the equator - leading to a perception that Europe is larger than South America, to pick just one example among many.

Africa, which spans the equator, fares particularly badly on these sorts of projections: Krause says, "Africa is so mind-numbingly immense, that it exceeds the common assumptions by just about anyone I ever met: it contains the entirety of the USA, all of China, India, as well as Japan and pretty much all of Europe as well - all combined!”  Some have argued that since people associate size with importance this encourages the already strong tendency of the world's wealthiest nations to disregard those who live in the tropics. 

“It is clear to us that Russia will protest,” Kaminski said. “The Kremlin’s diplomats react very violently every time a Soviet monument is removed.”He adds that the issue needs to be resolved quickly, so as not to allow time for “provocation” from Russia.The INR’s initiatives have often divided Russian and Polish opinion, most recently with the launch of a board game modeled on Monopoly that shows the difficulties of the Communist-era economy. The INR-designed game has been a bestseller in Poland and elsewhere. But Russia banned the game earlier this month after it failed to convince the creators to remove all historical references to Communism and turn it into a board game about shopping.

Last month marked six years since the start of the Syrian war, which has forced millions of people to flee their homes in one of the largest humanitarian crises in modern history. Perhaps the artist who has most visibly used his work to draw attention to the conflict is Ai Weiwei, whose political activism has earned him a reputation as China’s foremost creative dissident. Ai has made works focused on the refugee crisis for years, but lately his projects have taken on a greater sense of urgency. His newest exhibit, Law of the Journey, was recently unveiled at the National Gallery in Prague and features a massive inflatable lifeboat with 258 faceless, rubber figures on board—evoking the treacherous journey some refugees make to Europe.

Last month marked six years since the start of the Syrian war, which has forced millions of people to flee their homes in one of the largest humanitarian crises in modern history. Perhaps the artist who has most visibly used his work to draw attention to the conflict is Ai Weiwei, whose political activism has earned him a reputation as China’s foremost creative dissident. Ai has made works focused on the refugee crisis for years, but lately his projects have taken on a greater sense of urgency. His newest exhibit, Law of the Journey, was recently unveiled at the National Gallery in Prague and features a massive inflatable lifeboat with 258 faceless, rubber figures on board—evoking the treacherous journey some refugees make to Europe. Earlier this week, the Public Art Fund announced Ai would build more than 100 fence-themed installations in New York across multiple boroughs, asking the city’s inhabitants to reflect on the ideas of barriers, nationhood, and security.

So-called killer robots are due to be discussed at the UN Human Rights Council, meeting in Geneva. A report presented to the meeting will call for a moratorium on their use while the ethical questions they raise are debated. The robots are machines programmed in advance to take out people or targets, which - unlike drones - operate autonomously on the battlefield. They are being developed by the US, UK and Israel, but have not yet been used. Supporters say the "lethal autonomous robots", as they are technically known, could save lives, by reducing the number of soldiers on the battlefield. But human rights groups argue they raise serious moral questions about how we wage war, reports the BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva. They include: Who takes the final decision to kill? Can a robot really distinguish between a military target and civilians?

A Swiss secondary school has caused uproar by allowing two Muslim boys not to shake the hand of women teachers - a common greeting in Swiss schools.The boys had told the school in the small, northern town of Therwil it was against their faith to touch a woman outside their family.Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said shaking hands was part of Swiss culture and daily life.A local teachers' union said the exemption discriminated against women.

Should public money be spent to preserve these crumbling sites? Is controlled decay an option for anything associated with the Nazis? Or have Hitler and his architect, Albert Speer, locked future generations into a devilish pact that compels Germans not only to teach the history of the Thousand Year Reich the Nazis proclaimed here but also to adapt it for each new era?Several dozen experts — and some curious citizens — gathered for a weekend recently to ponder such questions at a forum titled “Preserve. For what?”

When two Syrian immigrant brothers refused to shake their female teacher’s hand this year, it ignited national outrage in Switzerland.This week, the authorities in the northern canton of Basel-Landschaft ruled that the students, who studied at a public school in the small town of Therwil, could not refuse to shake their teacher’s hand on religious grounds. They said that parents whose children refused to obey the longstanding tradition could be fined up to 5,000 Swiss francs, about $5,050.Shaking a teacher’s hand before and after class is part of Switzerland’s social fabric, and is considered an important sign of politeness and respect.

Most seriously of all, the effects of suppressing national memory could be of critical importance to Poles in coming decades, and to a global audience that has yet to fully absorb the complicated lessons of World War II. In some measure at least, how rising generations of Poles see themselves, democracy, and Europe will depend on whether they can have ready access to their country’s complicated experience in World War II. The collapse of democracy, the museum’s first theme, could hardly be more salient than it is right now. And the presentation of the conflict as a global tragedy could hardly be more instructive. The preemptive liquidation of the museum is nothing less than a violent blow to the world’s cultural heritage.

The period — the full-stop signal we all learn as children, whose use stretches back at least to the Middle Ages — is gradually being felled in the barrage of instant messaging that has become synonymous with the digital age

The current problem is, in part, an unintended consequence of previous efforts to aid the environment.The British government provided financial incentives to encourage a shift to diesel engines because laboratory tests suggested that would cut harmful emissions and combat climate change. Yet, it turned out that diesel cars emit on average five times as much emissions in real-world driving conditions as in the tests, according to a British Department for Transport study.

On 13 May 1939, more than 900 Jews fled Germany aboard a luxury cruise liner, the SS St Louis. They hoped to reach Cuba and then travel to the US - but were turned away in Havana and forced to return to Europe, where more than 250 were killed by the Nazis.

But now experts say a reliance on sat-navs and smartphone map apps is undermining map-reading skills. So here are five reasons why you should love maps and resist the easy attraction of the sat-nav.