"There's seven confirmed dead. There could be more," he said. "We're in the process of recovering the bodies. There's definitely seven in the pickup truck."

Oien said the victims "appear to be adults and children" and their identifications likely would not be known until Tuesday at the earliest.

The 18-wheeler, which had out-of-state license plates, rear-ended the pickup and pushed it into the median of Interstate 10 near Pinal Air Park, Oien said.

"The local government has taken emergency measures to prevent the poisonous content in the tailings, including sodium cyanide, from polluting the environment," Xinhua said.

Workers were raising the height of the dam to increase its capacity when the accident took place.

Separately, the death toll from a coal mine blast on Saturday, also in Shaanxi, has risen to 30, Xinhua said. Another two miners were still missing.

China's mining industry is the world's deadliest. Official figures showed that in 2005 some 3,300 coal mine blasts, floods and other accidents killed nearly 6,000 people, while about 1,900 disasters at other types of mines claimed more than 2,300 lives.

Details were not immediately available on precisely when the avian flu in Camden County was discovered.

The H5N1 strain of avian influenza not only kills chickens quickly, but can now infect people, and governments around the world are scrambling to contain its spread. Scientists fear that if the virus acquires the ability to pass easily from person to person, it could cause a pandemic that would kill millions.

The H5N1 avian flu strain has already infected 205 people and killed 113 since 2003. Its spread has forced several countries to ban poultry imports from nations where the disease has spread.

The H5N1 virus has spread from Asia to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Kuperus said preliminary tests from the National Veterinary Services laboratory were negative for type N1 of the virus. More tests are pending at laboratories of the U.S. Agriculture Department in Ames, Iowa, to confirm the strain of the virus, he added.

"The market owner voluntarily depopulated his existing flock, and the market has undergone cleaning and disinfecting under New Jersey Department of Agriculture supervision," said Kuperus.

The market in Camden County will be inspected again by New Jersey's Division of Animal Health before being allowed to reopen.

The focus of the tremor, which struck at 6:24pm (0924 GMT), was 20km below the ocean floor off the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka prefecture, about 80km southwest of Tokyo, the agency said.

Some train services, including bullet trains in the area, were briefly halted as a precaution, NHK public broadcaster said.

Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20 per cent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

In October 2004, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 struck the Niigata region in northern Japan, killing 40 people and injuring more than 3000.

That was the deadliest quake since a magnitude 7.3 tremor hit the city of Kobe in 1995, killing more than 6400.

China, Brazil, Australia and Mexico are home to large numbers of threatened species, said the IUCN, whose members include 81 governments, more than 850 non-governmental groups and some 10,000 scientists from around the world.

It said countries worldwide needed to boost efforts to preserve biodiversity through reduced emissions, tighter fishing and hunting controls, and other measures.

Without a reversal of global warming trends, it predicted polar bear populations would drop more than 30 percent in the next 45 years as melted ice caps deprive the animals of their habitat.

It classified the polar bear as a "vulnerable" species, one step down from "endangered" in its ranking of extinction risk. The polar bear was previously called a less-severe "conservation dependent" species.

The common hippo was also ranked as vulnerable, "primarily because of a catastrophic decline in the Democratic Republic of Congo," the IUCN said.

Unrestricted hunting has caused a 95 percent decline in the central African country's hippo population since 1994, it said. The animal has never before been listed as threatened.

"CRITICALLY ENDANGERED"

Dama gazelles, once the most populous species of gazelle in the Sahara desert, are now "critically endangered" as a result of poaching, the report found.

More than half of the Mediterranean's 25 endemic species of freshwater fish were deemed to be at risk of extinction, along with one in four of East Africa's freshwater fish.

In Malawi, where freshwater fish account for 70 percent of the animal protein that humans eat, the numbers of lake trout in Lake Malawi have halved in the past decade.

"This could have major commercial and dietary consequences for the region," the IUCN said.

Ocean life was also cited as vulnerable. Of 547 species of sharks and rays assessed in the report, 20 percent were found to be at risk of extinction. Bottom-dwelling species also logged huge declines as fisheries have reached into ever-deeper waters.

"Populations are destined to decline in the absence of international catch limits," the report said, adding regulations on mesh size and non-fishing areas could help restore stocks.

World Conservation Union Director General Achim Steiner said resurgent populations of white-tailed eagles in Europe showed that protective measures can protect vulnerable species.

"Conservation measures are making a difference," Steiner said. "We should not be passive bystanders in the unfolding tragedy of biodiversity loss and species extinction."