MONTREAL - AIRLINE passenger deaths continued to drop last year, by as much as 25 per cent year-over-year, following a downward trend started in 1990, the world's aviation watchdog said on Thursday.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) reported 439 people died in 11 airline accidents in 2008, down from 587 passenger fatalities in the same number of crashes the previous year, not including attacks.

WASHINGTON - A WARNING of a possible tsunami in the South Pacific was issued after a 7.9 magnitude earthquake was registered about 209 km southeast of Nuku'alofa, Tonga, the US National Weather Service's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said on Thursday.

'It is not known that a tsunami was generated,' a spokesperson said.

SYRACUSE (New York) - FEDERAL prosecutors say an American psychiatrist wanted on a charge he set up bogus organ transplants in the Philippines is in custody in Guam.

A federal grand jury in Syracuse, New York, indicted Jerome Howard Feldman last month on a wire fraud charge.