Education Ministry unwittingly approves 'September 11' games for schools

"Defence of Manhattan" is the name of a computer game on a CD-ROM accompanying a secondary school science textbook approved by the Education Ministry. The object of the game is to protect the Twin Towers and NYSE buildings from virtual bombs by quickly pressing the right buttons. "We could not have predicted such fiction to become reality" said Anna Laska-Gmaj, from textbook publisher WSiP, which started selling the book along with the game over a year ago. Ministry officials who accepted the book claim they were unaware of the fact that the publisher had added the CD. Krzysztof Nahlik, the owner of Krakow-based Nahlik Soft, who produced the disk, promised he would remove the game from future editions. "Manhattan evokes bad associations. I'm considering choosing another city, namely Kabul", he said. (Gazeta Wyborcza, p. 4) M.K.