18 July 2017•Update: 18 July 2017
By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO
Apple on Monday previewed more than one dozen new emojis, including one that appears to be a woman wearing a hijab.
The emojis were unveiled to celebrate World Emoji Day and will be released on Apple devices later this year, the company said.
The new slate of emojis include several entries that make the icons more diverse; along with the woman wearing a headscarf, there is a woman breastfeeding and a man meditating in what appears to be the traditional yoga lotus pose.
Other additions are less political -- Apple revealed a dinosaur, zebra, elf, zombie, genie, sandwich and coconut emoji. New smiley face emoji include one with stars for eyes and another with a mushroom cloud from a nuclear detonation exploding its head.
“The new emoji make it easier for users to express themselves with greater diversity, additional animals and creatures, new smiley faces and more,” Apple said in a statement.
The standards for all emojis is set by the Unicode Consortium, which dictates the characters available for computer programing.
Unicode announced in May its next version would include 69 new emojis. What Apple unveiled Monday was its interpretation of several that will be available for its iPhones, Apple Watches and Macbooks in the coming months.
Facebook also celebrated World Emoji Day and revealed the most used emoji on the platform is the laughing with tears emoji.
The smiley face emoji with hearts for eyes came in second place, followed by the winking and kissing smiley face.
The U.S., Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, U.K., Spain, France, Italy and Germany are the nations where emojis are used the most on Facebook.
The company said that 5 billion emoji are sent worldwide via Facebook Messenger each day.
