World briefs

STOCKHOLM - Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa of Japan and Yoichiro Nambu of the United States won the 2008 Nobel Physics Prize Tuesday for groundbreaking theoretical work in fundamental particles.

The three were lauded for their work in explaining anomalies in concepts of the nature of matter and the origins of the Universe, created in the "Big Bang" 14 billion years ago.

Nambu, 87, won one half of the prize for work in the 1960s for discovering the mechanism of "spontaneous broken symmetry" in sub-atomic physics, the Nobel committee said.

The duo received the other half "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry," the jury said.Nambu was hailed for developing a concept called "spontaneous symmetry-breaking".

TEHRAN, Iran - Iranian news reports claimed Tuesday that Iran forced down a Western aircraft that accidentally entered its airspace, then allowed the plane to continue to Afghanistan after questioning its passengers.

The state-owned Al-Alam, Iran's official Arabic-language television station, quoted an unidentified senior Iranian military official as saying the plane belonged either to a British or Hungarian relief agency. It said Iran forced the aircraft to land on Sunday and then permitted the passengers and crew to leave the following day.

House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, "We're looking into the various and conflicting reports coming from the Iranian `news' agencies, but do not have any information at this time that would lead us to believe they are correct."Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi said he had no information.

LONDON - An Anglican priest has apologised over comments made on his blog arguing that gay men should have warnings about sodomy tattooed on their backsides.

Remarks made by Reverend Peter Mullen triggered a furious response from his diocese, which ordered him to remove the "highly offensive" blog post.

"I did not intend to cause any upset but I realise that the remarks were injudicious and I have caused offence. I want to issue an apology," said Mullen, who ministers to parishes in the City of London financial district.

"I did not intend to cause offence when I made some joking remarks about homosexuals. I was not actually meaning to criticise individual homosexual persons, but the promoters of gay culture.

"However, my remarks have caused offence and for this I am sorry and make a full and complete apology." In his original blog post, the 66-year-old wrote terrible remarks against homosexuals.