Iran bans popular youth title

Students at a Tehran university protest the jailing of journalists

A court in Iran has banned the country's highest-circulation youth magazine.

The official Iran News Agency said the court had ruled that the magazine, Iran Javan, had been publishing false information and material that offended public morality.

The court singled out photographs in a feature on cinema as examples of obscenity.

President Khatami is pursuing cultural liberalisation policies

Correspondents say more than 25 mostly pro-reform newspapers and periodicals have been closed since April, after reformists won a majority in parliament.

A number of prominent pro-reform journalists have also been detained and brought before the conservative-led courts.

Press curbs

And the country's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has blocked the new parliament's attempts to lift press restrictions.

The weekly magazine was the latest casualty of a hardline backlash against reformist President Mohammad Khatami's cultural liberalisation policies.

It was popular among Iranian youth for stories dealing with problems facing teenagers and for reporting Western entertainment news.

It also ran interviews with moderate clerics and social observers.

In an attempt to roll back curbs on the press, Iran's culture ministry on Tuesday approved 17 new publications - covering such topics as humanities, administrative science and computers, political economy and psychology.

The ministry's press supervisory board has often been a target of conservative anger because of what they describe as its laxity in controlling the press.

Earlier this month, a conservative-dominated oversight body ruled that a new law allowing papers freedom to change from weekly to daily or regional to national publication without prior police approval was "anti-Islamic".