newbie needs help correcting distorted map

[Mike Jackson]

Hi All,
 I've just completed the tutorial, and tried to hack together my first
maps, but they seem to be distorted, especially the northern countries.
I tried the epsg 4326, and many others, just to experiment, but none of
them really had much effect on the output. I'm using the countries.shp
from freegis world data.

 Here is my .map file:

MAP
  IMAGETYPE      PNG
  EXTENT         -179.999900 -89.999900 179.999900 83.627357
  SIZE           1390 900    # fits my browser nicely
  SHAPEPATH      "geodata"
  IMAGECOLOR     0   0   128 # navy blue
  PROJECTION
    "init=epsg:4326"
  END

  LAYER
    NAME         countries_interior
    DATA         countries
    STATUS       DEFAULT
    TYPE         POLYGON
    CLASS
      COLOR        82 82 82 # gray32
    END
  PROJECTION
    "init=epsg:4326"
  END
  END

  LAYER
    NAME         countries
    DATA         countries
    STATUS       DEFAULT
    TYPE         LINE
    CLASS
      COLOR 255 255 0 # yellow
    END
  PROJECTION
    "init=epsg:4326"
  END
  END
END



Here is the head output from ogrinfo -al:

INFO: Open of `countries.shp'
using driver `ESRI Shapefile' successful.

Layer name: countries
Geometry: Polygon
Feature Count: 27320
Extent: (-179.999900, -89.999900) - (179.999900, 83.627357)
Layer SRS WKT:
GEOGCS["wgs84",
    DATUM["unknown",
        SPHEROID["wgs84",6378137,298.257223563]],
    PRIMEM["Greenwich",0],
    UNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433]]
cat: Integer (11.0)
na2: String (80.0)


 Any ideas what I am doing wrong, and better yet how to correct it?

Thanks!
Mike