Swastikas halt Corel sales By Reuters November 25, 1996, 12 p.m. PT MUNICH, Germany--Corel (COSFF) software company has temporarily halted sales of its top-selling Corel Draw graphics program in Germany because it includes four banned Nazi symbols, a company spokesman said today. The Canadian company will remove three drawings of Adolf Hitler and one swastika from future versions of its popular software, spokesman Thomas Layer said. It is also distributing warning labels to be placed on versions now being sold, Layer said. The label warns that the "improper use of digital images and symbols" found in the programs Corel Draw 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0 is prohibited in Germany, which bans public displays of Nazi symbols. Munich's state prosecutor launched an investigation into the software on October 2 after learning that someone had used the banned images to print business cards for a neo-Nazi group, Layer said. This is not the first time that the company has had complaints due to their clip art images. In 1992, pressure from US Black rights organisations forced drawings of the Ku Kux Klan to be removed from the collection. Consideration is also being given to the removal of other images from the collection, either due to legal restrictions in various countries, or due to complaints from organisations such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Images considered for removal include a burning US flag, Josef Stalin, the Star of David icon, a cannabis leaf, and a drawing of a woman in a bathing costume. Corel Draw provides more than 24,000 clip art drawings and symbols that computer users can copy. The company suspended the sales on November 19.