The IMF, which is monitoring Spain's banking reforms after a European bailout last year, said in a report on Monday the lenders' solvency had improved.

But economic problems including record unemployment had left the sector mired in a deepening credit crunch.

That pressure could push banks, whose profits will likely suffer, to further cut lending as they shore up capital, hitting growth and potentially forcing the government to rethink its plans for restructuring the sector.

"Financial sector dynamics still contribute to recessionary pressures, with credit contraction accelerating, lending standards tightening, and lending rates to firms rising," the IMF said, in its third progress report on the sector.

Spanish bank lending to the private sector was down 7 percent year-on-year in May and the contraction was one of the fastest among advanced economies, the IMF said.

Spanish banks, crippled by a 2008 property market crash, had to make billion of euros worth of provisions against losses last year to repair their balance sheets. The sector had to be bailed out with 41 billion euros ($53.5 billion) in European aid to reinforce capital.

The European Commission has so far ruled out the need for extra cash to help Spanish banks.

RESTRUCTURING REVIEW?

The IMF said Spain may have to revisit the plans it laid out with Brussels for bailed-out lenders if the credit contraction persisted. The rescued banks are supposed to shrink their balance sheets under current restructuring plans.

The IMF also urged Spain to clarify its plans for some state-controlled banks to avoid increasing the cost to taxpayers' if their business is hurt by uncertainty.

The Bank of Spain recently urged Spanish lenders to limit 2013 cash dividends to the equivalent of 25 percent of annual profit, to help them maintain capital.

The IMF added that Spain should consider helping banks boost their capital by changing the status of some deferred tax assets, which will no longer be counted towards capital under international Basel III rules being phased in.

Spanish lenders have built up close to 50 billion euros in these DTAs - created when a bank makes losses that it can offset against future tax bills when it returns to profit - and are lobbying the state to backstop some of them.

But in exchange banks should forgo cash dividends for a number of years, increase the pace of sales of distressed assets or ease the pace of credit contraction, the IMF proposed.

The IMF said Sareb, the 'bad bank' created to take on rescued lenders' soured property assets, should base its business plan on more conservative assumptions, after the vehicle projected house prices would rise again as soon as 2017.

It added that "new operational challenges could erode Sareb's cash flows, profitability and capital," and that Sareb should conduct more analyses of its balance sheet.

($1 = 0.7661 euros)

(Reporting by Sarah White; Editing by John Stonestreet)

"Most women think that if they had cancer as a child, then they'll never have children. It turns out that many of them can get pregnant. It just might be a little harder," said senior author , chief medical officer of Dana-Farber/Boston Children's and medical director of theat Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

The paper, published July 13 in Lancet Oncology, is the first large-scale study of female childhood cancer survivors that examines outcomes for those who experienced infertility, as defined by the typical clinical definition of infertility (attempting to conceive for a year or more without success).

Overall, 15.9 percent of women who survived childhood cancer were affected by infertility, with 12.9 percent trying to conceive for at least one year without success. The remainder of survivors included in the infertile group had ovarian failure and may not have even attempted pregnancy. In a comparison group comprised of sisters of childhood cancer survivors, 10.8 percent experienced infertility. This translates to a roughly 50 percent higher risk of infertility among the survivors of childhood cancer.

The new study is based on data from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, a cohort study of five-year survivors from 26 institutions who were under 21 when diagnosed with cancer between 1970 and 1986. Researchers studied 3,531 sexually active female survivors, age 18-39, and a control group of 1,366 female siblings of participants in the large-scale survivor study.

"This is the first study to examine direct questions about infertility and the use of infertility services," said lead author Sara Barton, MD, a clinical fellow of reproduction and infertility at Brigham and Women's Hospital at the time of the research. "Previous studies used surrogate markers. Parenthood. Pregnancy. Births. These don't take into account people's intent. They don't take into account how long it took to achieve pregnancy."

Among survivors of childhood cancer who had been trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant for at least a year, 64 percent conceived after, on average, another six months, compared with an average of five months for clinically infertile women in the control group who eventually conceived.

Women whose cancer was treated with alkylating agent chemotherapy or high-dose radiation to the abdomen or pelvis were most at risk of infertility. Although pediatric oncologists have changed a number of treatment protocols over the last several decades to reduce late effects, alkylating agents and radiation continue to be used.

"Women getting alkylating agents or radiation to the pelvis or abdomen should be triaged for fertility preservation. In addition to being at highest risk to report infertility, female cancer survivors who received those cancer therapies were the least likely to conceive once they had infertility," said Barton, who is now a staff physician at the Heartland Center for Reproductive Medicine and clinical professor at the University of Nebraska Medical School. The new research, she added, will help clinicians offer guidance to current patients based on the treatment protocol for their cancer. "If you're newly diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, for instance, you may be slightly more likely to experience infertility, but I don't necessarily think you need to delay your therapy to freeze your eggs."

The researchers also found that only 42 percent of cancer survivors who sought treatment for infertility were prescribed medication, compared with 75 percent in the control group. Both groups 69 percent of survivors and 73 percent in the control group were similarly likely to seek medical help for their infertility.

Prior research has found that survivors of childhood cancer face a greater risk of infertility but, once pregnant, are not at greater risk for miscarriage or stillbirth.

"What we found delivers a really nice message to clinicians," Diller said. "If you have a patient who is a childhood cancer survivor and is self-reporting clinical infertility, the chances are good that she will become pregnant. Women who have a history of childhood cancer treatment should consider themselves likely to be fertile. However, it might be important to see an expert sooner rather than later if a desired pregnancy doesn't happen within the first six months."

Additional coauthors are Julie S. Najita, Ph.D. of Dana-Farber; Elizabeth S. Ginsburg, M.D., of Brigham and Women's; Wendy M. Leisenring, Sc.D., of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute; Marilyn Stovall, Ph.D., and Rita E. Weathers, M.S. of University of Texas M.D. Anderson Center; Charles A. Sklar, M.D., of Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; and Leslie L. Robison, Ph.D. of St. Jude Children's Hospital. The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute (Grant U24 CA55727) and Swim Across America, Inc.

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Thebrings together two internationally known research and teaching institutions that have provided comprehensive care for pediatric oncology and hematology patients since 1947. The Harvard Medical School affiliates share a clinical staff that delivers inpatient care atand outpatient care at the's Jimmy Fund Clinic. Dana-Farber/Boston Children's brings the results of its pioneering research and clinical trials to patients' bedsides through five clinical centers: theCenter, theBrain TumorCenter, theCenter, theCenter, and theCenter.

CONTACT:Irene SegeDana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center617-919-7379(On July 12, contact Anne Doerr, 617-632-5665, )

Marjorie Montemayor-QuellenbergBrigham and Women's Hospital617-534-2208

SOURCE Boston Children's Hospital

Chief prosecutor Hesham Barakat has received testimony from a court in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia that will be the base for an investigation by state security prosecutors into the jailbreak by Mohammed Morsi and more than 30 other Muslim Brotherhood leaders, according to the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity Thursday because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The question of whether Hamas helped them escape during the chaos surrounding the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak has been debated in the media for months and proved a political headache for Morsi during his one-year rule as Egypt's first freely elected president. Critics in the opposition and judiciary have suggested that proof of foreign intervention on Egyptian soil could lead to treason charges.

The issue has taken on more significance since Morsi was ousted on July 3 by the military following a wave of protests in which millions of Egyptians called on him to step down. The toppled Islamist leader has been kept at an undisclosed Defense Ministry facility and no charges against him have been announced.

Hamas has denied any role in the Jan. 29, 2011, jailbreak at Wadi el-Natroun prison northwest of Cairo. Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders have said local residents helped them escape after most inmates left the facility.

The investigation stems from a court case against a former inmate, but judge Khaled Mahgoub turned what was in effect a low-profile trial into a public inquiry into the escape by Morsi and the other Brotherhood officials. A series of prison officials, police and intelligence agents testified, some behind closed doors.

In the end, Mahgoub referred the testimony he collected to the chief prosecutor's office with a request that he investigates the matter further.

The trial in Ismailia fits into a picture of strained relations between Morsi and the judiciary after what many judges saw as his encroachment on the independence of the judiciary.

A string of top police, prison and intelligence officials have blamed Hamas, a close ally of Morsi's Brotherhood, saying the militant group sent fighters from the Gaza Strip to join with Bedouins from the Sinai Peninsula to storm prisons and break out the jailed Hamas members.

In Egypt's polarized political climate, opponents of the ousted leader used the issue against him, saying friends of the Brotherhood violated the country's security and fed its instability. The eagerness of some in the intelligence and security agencies to blame Hamas reflect in part resentment of the Brotherhood's ties with the militant group, which they have long seen as a threat.

News of the intended investigation came one day after authorities issued arrest warrants for the Brotherhood's spiritual leader, Mohammed Badie, and nine other Islamists accused of inciting violence after deadly clashes the latest moves by the new military-backed government as it tries to choke off the group's campaign to reinstate Morsi.

The warrants drew an angry response from the Brotherhood, which said "dictatorship is back" and insisted it will never work with the interim rulers.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Egypt's Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Ali Amr to express his "deep concern about continued detentions in Egypt and arrest warrants issued against Muslim Brotherhood leaders and others."

Ban said, "There is no place for retribution or for the exclusion of any major party or community in Egypt."

Badie's whereabouts are not known, but many of the others are believed to be taking refuge somewhere near a continuing sit-in by the group's supporters outside the Rabaah al-Adawiya Mosque in an eastern Cairo district that is traditionally a Brotherhood stronghold.

Security agencies have jailed five leaders of the Brotherhood, including Badie's powerful deputy, Khairat el-Shaiter, and shut down its media outlets.

The prosecutor general's office said Badie, another deputy, Mahmoud Ezzat, el-Beltagy and popular preacher Safwat Hegazy are suspected of instigating Monday's clashes with security forces outside a Republican Guard building that killed 54 people most Morsi supporters in the worst bloodshed since he was ousted.

The Islamists have accused the troops of gunning down the protesters, while the military blamed armed backers of Morsi for attempting to storm a military building.

___

Associated Press writer Peter Spielmann at the United Nations contributed.

ROME (Reuters) - Silvio Berlusconi's party boycotted a summit of Italy's fragile coalition government and blocked parliamentary activity on Wednesday in protest against a supreme court decision to fast track a ruling that could ban him from public office.

Almost all activity in both chambers of parliament was suspended for a day because of the protest by Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party, one of the two main partners in Enrico Letta's left-right coalition government.

The court decision has aggravated tension in the squabbling coalition which was already under fire for the slow pace of reforms desperately needed to boost recovery from the worst recession since World War Two.

The supreme court was forced on Wednesday to issue an unusual statement defending its decision to hear Berlusconi's final appeal on July 30 against a tax fraud conviction. The 76-year-old media magnate's lawyers had not expected a ruling until late in the year.

The court will rule on whether to uphold a four-year jail term and five-year ban on holding public office for complicity in tax fraud at Berlusconi's Mediaset television empire.

Although Berlusconi will probably escape jail because of his age if the sentence is confirmed, he could be thrown out of parliament in what would be a major shock to Letta's fragile government.

Letta said on Tuesday night the government would survive whatever happened but some hawks in Berlusconi's party are thought to want to force an election as early as October if he is condemned.

In an attempt to ensure PDL loyalty, Letta again promised in a television interview that he would abolish a hated housing tax which is the PDL's central demand, despite the difficulty of doing this while remaining within European Union budget constraints.

The supreme court said it had been forced to call a special summer holiday sitting on July 30 because otherwise part of the case against Berlusconi would have expired under the statute of limitations on August 1.

Berlusconi's legal team say the expiration would not occur until late September.

"UNDEMOCRATIC PERSECUTION"

Berlusconi and his aides believe the court decision, in sharp contrast to the usual snail's pace of Italy's legal system, is another example of what he calls sustained and undemocratic persecution by leftist magistrates.

The former premier said the decision was inspired by his enemies in the Milan prosecutor's office who have brought many cases against him, including his recent conviction for paying for sex with a Moroccan-born underage nightclub dancer nicknamed "Ruby the Heartstealer" and abusing his office to try to cover it up.

He was sentenced to seven years jail in the "bunga bunga" case last month but that sentence will not become definitive until two appeals are exhausted.

Berlusconi has played a key role since Letta's government was formed in April in keeping his hawkish lieutenants on a tight leash, but the supreme court decision has caused anger and resentment in his party with demands for street protests and blocking of all parliamentary activity.

A substantial faction of Letta's own center-left Democratic Party also opposes the government alliance with Berlusconi but President Giorgio Napolitano, the effective godfather of the coalition, is adamantly opposed to early elections in the midst of Italy's worst postwar recession.

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's cut Italy's sovereign credit rating on Tuesday to just two notches above junk because of concerns about the economy, third largest in the euro zone, which has been dogged by extremely sluggish growth for more than a decade.

Napolitano, 88, who has greatly increased his loosely defined powers since last year, stepped in to bang heads together and force the formation of a coalition government following a long hiatus after inconclusive elections in February.

Analysts say there are several factors that may force Berlusconi to resist the temptation to bring down the government even if the supreme court rules against him.

One is that the dueling coalition partners have still not reformed a dysfunctional electoral law which could produce another impasse if an election is held in the autumn.

The second is that if the PDL walks out of the government, Letta's Democratic Party could form an anti-Berlusconi alliance with the populist 5-Star Movement of former comic Beppe Grillo, which would aggravate the billionaire businessman's problems.

(Additional reporting by Roberto Landucci and Naomi O'Leary; Editing By Barry Moody and Ralph Boulton)

LONDON (Reuters) - The final novel of Scottish author Iain Banks was released on Thursday to bittersweet acclaim 11 days after he died of the very disease around which the plot revolves.

"The Quarry" describes the final weeks in the life of a man named Guy in his 40s battling terminal cancer who is being cared for by his 18-year-old son Kit.

The best-selling writer, who died on June 9 at the age of 59, asked his publisher Little Brown to bring forward its release date after telling fans about his illness, but he did not live to see it in public hands.

Banks had said and his widow Adele has reiterated that he did not know he had cancer until the novel was almost finished.

"Had he known he had cancer, he would never have written about it," Adele Banks said on the Banksophilia website, started by the novelist's friends.

Early reviews said Banks's instinct for fierce black comedy and biting dialogue remained as sharp as ever and the Guardian called it a poignant, difficult and distressing read.

"Reading this book, one is hit again and again with the fact - tragic and astonishing in equal measure - that Banks didn't know he was dying until he'd almost finished the first draft, that the cancer that was the subject matter of his novel would soon become the urgent subject matter of his life," wrote Alex Preston in the Guardian.

MONSTERS

Telegraph writer Jake Kerridge said in his review of "The Quarry" that the cruel character of Guy - who deceives and runs down his son even as Kit carries out his most intimate care - is the final examination of the monstrous characters that Banks has presented to his readers from the very beginning of his career.

"It may be this element of unsentimental compassion that accounts for why so many readers are now experiencing a keen grief for the loss of a writer who has the rare gift of being infallibly entertaining," Kerridge wrote last week.

Born in Fife, Banks was an only child in a household full of books. His parents encouraged him to develop a fantasy life.

He knew from an early age that he wanted to be a writer, completing his first, unpublished novel at the age of 16.

After the success of "The Wasp Factory", Banks began to write full-time and agreed with his editor to try and produce a book year, pursuing two writing careers - as Iain Banks the mainstream fiction writer and as Iain M. Banks, the science-fiction writer who emerged with "Consider Phlebas" in 1987.

The first Iain made more money from his books, which included "The Crow Road" and "Complicity", and received the greatest literary praise. The second Iain, with an M., was more political and had a loyal cult following.

Banks, a larger-than-life character who wore his politics and passions on his sleeve, once joked that he had considered adding a few more pseudonyms to the list, writing Westerns as Iain Z. Banks and erotica as Iain X. Banks.

Proud of his Scottish heritage, Banks reveled in his love of malt whisky, even making it the subject of a book "Raw Spirit" that took him across Scotland.

But after hitting 50 and with the collapse of his first marriage in 2006 he took stock of his life and made changes.

The man who once ran for rector of the University of Edinburgh on behalf of the Drunken Bastards Party cut back on his drinking and also gave up recreational drugs after years of marijuana, LSD and cocaine use.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Japan's Nikkei 225 index surged 2.6 percent to 14,472.90 and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was up 1.5 percent to 4,881.70.

The move higher came a day after concerns over a sustained China slowdown prompted a selloff in Asia.

Other regional markets rose only moderately, reflecting continued caution. South Korea's Kospi inched up 0.7 percent to 1,830.35 and Taiwan's Taiex rose 1.1 percent to 7,971.18. Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.5 percent to 20,683.01.

Mainland Chinese shares made small gains, with the Shanghai Composite up 0.4 percent to 1,965.45. The smaller Shenzhen Composite Index rose 0.4 percent to 892.93.

"Investors now worry about the economic outlook with no signs showing a recovery," said Li Jianfeng, an analyst at Caida Securities in Shanghai.

European markets extended the previous days's gains. Britain's FTSE 100 was up 1 percent to 6,515.02 and France's CAC 40 gained 0.7 percent to 3,851.17. The DAX in Germany was up 1 percent to 8,051.03.

Wall Street has been buoyed by stronger-than-expected U.S. hiring figures released Friday that suggested the world's biggest economy is on a firm footing. The strong jobs growth has outweighed jitters about the prospect that the Fed will soon start winding down its unprecedented support for the economy

Futures augured more gains on Wall Street. Dow futures were up 0.4 percent to 15,218 and S&P 500 futures rose 0.5 percent to 1,643.

Given the prevailing focus on the U.S., the key day this week will likely be Wednesday, when the minutes of the last policy meeting of the Fed are published. The Fed's chairman, Ben Bernanke, is also due to deliver a speech.

Benchmark crude for August delivery was down 3 cents to $103.11 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Among major currencies, the euro rose to $1.2872 from $1.2866 late Monday. The dollar rose to 101.24 yen from 100.90 yen.

___

Researcher Fu Ting in Shanghai contributed.

In its sixth-ever test flight, SpaceX's experimental hopped to a maximum altitude of 1,066 feet (325 meters) on June 14. It then made a slow and controlled descent back to Earth at the company's rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas.

SpaceX released a 95-second on Friday (July 5), showing the action from above as seen by a small robotic "hexacopter" drone.

Most rockets are designed to be expendable, burning up in Earth's atmosphere after delivering their payloads to space. wants to develop fully reusable launch vehicles, which experts say would make spaceflight much cheaper and more efficient.

The 10-story-tall Grasshopper is a big step in this direction, company officials say. The rocket takes off and lands vertically, touching down on four metallic legs back at its launch pad.

Grasshopper incorporates the first-stage tank of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which launches the California-based firm'sDragon capsuleon unmanned cargo missions to the International Space Station for NASA. But Grasshopper uses just one Merlin engine while the Falcon 9 sports nine (as its name suggests).

SpaceX's Grasshopper has been leaping higher and higher with every successive test flight. Its previous launches took place in September, November and December of 2012, and March and April of this year. Those hops reached peak altitudes of 8.2 feet (2.5 m), 17.7 feet (5.4 m), 131 feet (40 m), 263 feet (80 m) and 820 feet (250 m), respectively.

In addition to reaching unprecedented heights, the most recent flight also incorporated new navigation technology, company officials said.

"For the first time in this test, Grasshopper made use of its full navigation sensor suite with the F9-R closed loop control flight algorithms to accomplish a precision landing," SpaceX officials wrote in a description accompanying the flight video. "Most rockets are equipped with sensors to determine position, but these sensors are generally not accurate enough to accomplish the type of precision landing necessary with Grasshopper."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitterand.Follow us , or . Originally published on.

Quebec provincial police Sgt. Benoit Richard said eight more bodies had been found in the wreckage after firefighters doused the flames and cooled down some of the oil tankers that were in danger of exploding. Five bodies were found over the weekend, and police would not say where the newly discovered ones were, for fear of upsetting families.

All but one of the train's 73 tanker cars were carrying oil when they came loose early Saturday, sped downhill nearly seven miles (11 kilometers) into the town of Lac-Megantic, near the Maine border, and derailed. At least five of the cars exploded.

Maude Verrault, a waitress at downtown's Musi-Cafe, was outside smoking when she spotted the blazing train barreling toward her.

"I've never seen a train moving so fast in my life, and I saw flames ... Then someone screamed 'the train is going to derail!' and that's when I ran," Verrault said. She said she felt the heat scorch her back as she ran from the explosion, but was too terrified to look back.

The rail tankers involved in the derailment are known as DOT-111 and have a history of puncturing during accidents, the lead Transportation Safety Board investigator told The Associated Press in a telephone interview late Monday.

TSB investigator Donald Ross said Canada's TSB has gone on record saying that it would like to see improvements on these tankers, though he acknowledged it's too early to say whether a different or modified tanker would have avoided this weekend's tragedy.

The DOT-111 is a staple of the American freight rail fleet. But its flaws have been noted as far back as a 1991 safety study. Among other things, its steel shell is too thin to resist puncture in accidents, which almost guarantees the car will tear open in an accident, potentially spilling cargo that could catch fire, explode or contaminate the environment.

"It's too early to tell. There's a lot of factors involved," Ross said. "There's a lot of energy here. The train came down on a fairly significant grade for 6.8 miles before it came into the town and did all the destruction it did."

The Saturday blasts destroyed about 30 buildings, including a public library and Musi-Cafe, a popular bar that was filled with revelers, and forced about a third of the town's 6000 residents from their homes. Much of the area where the bar once stood was burned to the ground. Burned-out car frames dotted the landscape.

The derailment raised questions about the safety of Canada's growing practice of transporting oil by train, and was sure to bolster arguments that a proposed oil pipeline running from Canada across the U.S. one that Canadian officials badly want would be safer.

Raymond Lafontaine, whose son and two daughters-in-law were among the missing, said he was angry with what appeared to be lack of safety regulations.

"We always wait until there's a big accident to change things," he said. "Well, today we've had a big accident, it's one of the biggest ever in Canada."

The fires sparked by the exploding tanks burned for two days, impeding investigators from reaching some of the "hot spots," including the area near the destroyed Musi-Cafe.

"It's a zone that we've started to work on and we'll work on it more in the hours to come," Richard said.

The area remained part of a criminal investigation and investigators were exploring all options, including the possibility that someone intentionally tampered with the train, Richard said.

Canadian Transport Minister Denis Lebel said the train was inspected the day before the accident in Montreal and no deficiencies were found. Lebel defended his government against criticisms it had cut back on rail safety measures. He said the rail remains a safe way to transport goods the vast majority of the time.

Earlier Monday, Queen Elizabeth II expressed deep sadness over the disaster, saying in a message through the federal government that the loss of life "has shocked us all." Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper toured the town Sunday and compared it to a war zone.

The train's owners said they believed brake failure was to blame. "Somehow those brakes were released, and that's what is going to be investigated," Joe McGonigle, Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway's vice president of marketing, told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Officials were also looking at a locomotive blaze on the same train a few hours before the derailment. Ross also said the locomotive's black box has been recovered, and investigators were looking into whether the air brakes or the hand break malfunctioned.

Meanwhile, crews were working to contain 100,000 liters (27,000 gallons) of light crude that spilled from the tankers and made its way into nearby waterways. There were fears it could flow into the St. Lawrence River all the way to Quebec City.

Quebec's Environment Ministry Spokesman Eric Cardinal said officials remained hopeful they could contain more than 85 per cent of the spill.

Local fire chief Denis Lauzon said firefighters in a nearby community were called to a locomotive blaze on the same train a few hours before the derailment. Lauzon said he could not provide additional details about that fire since it was in another jurisdiction. McGonigle confirmed that a fire was reported after the first engineer tied up and went to a local hotel.

"We know that one of our employees from our engineering department showed up at the same time to assist the fire department. Exactly what they did is being investigated so the engineer wasn't the last man to touch that train, we know that, but we're not sure what happened," McGonigle said.

McGonigle said there was no reason to suspect any criminal or terror-related activity.

The growing number of trains transporting crude oil in Canada and the United States had raised concerns of a major disaster. Harper, who has been pushing the Obama administration to approve the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast, has said railroad transit is more "environmentally challenging" than pipelines.

The train's oil was being transported from North Dakota's Bakken oil region to a refinery in New Brunswick on Canada's East Coast. Because of limited pipeline capacity in the Bakken region and in Canada, oil producers are increasingly using railroads to transport oil to refineries.

The Canadian Railway Association recently estimated that as many as 140,000 carloads of crude oil will be shipped on Canada's tracks this year up from 500 carloads in 2009. The Quebec disaster is the fourth freight train accident in Canada under investigation involving crude oil shipments since the beginning of the year.

Wayde Schafer, a North Dakota spokesman for the Sierra Club, has predicted such a catastrophe ever since crude began leaving the North Dakota by rail in 2008.

"I think anybody could have foreseen this," said Schafer. "It seemed like a disaster waiting to happen and it happened."

___

Associated Press writers Gillies and Charmaine Noronha contributed from Toronto. James MacPherson contributed from Bismarck, North Dakota.

The online blueprints for a fully functional 3D-printed gun have disappeared faster than a speeding bullet.

On Wednesday, the State Department ordered the company that posted the schematics, Defense Distributed, to remove them from the web. (Watch a Defense Distributed video explaining the gun above.) According to the State Department, publicly posting the instructions may have violated the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which governs the "transfer of, and access to" certain weapons and their technical details. By posting the files to the web where anyone in the world could download them, the company may have inadvertently violated those export restrictions.

"Please note that disclosing (including oral or visual disclosure) or transferring technical data to a foreign person, whether in the United States or abroad, is considered an export," the State Department  in a letter.

However, the State Department did not say that the instructions must remain offline for good. Rather, the department asked that Defense Distributed file the necessary paperwork for the government to determine if the blueprints are, in fact, a violation of ITAR. In the meantime, State wrote, the company "should treat the above technical data as ITAR-controlled."

That letter came just two days after Defense Distributed, through its open-source printing project DEFCAD, posted the instructions for its "Liberator" handgun to the Internet. In just three days, the instructions had already been downloaded more than 

Here's how it works, :

Fifteen of the gun's 16 pieces are constructed on the $8,000 Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer, Forbes said. The final piece is a common nail, used as a firing pin, that can be found in a hardware store. []

And indeed, by Thursday evening, the webpage to download the instructions had been updated with the : "This file has been removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information."

Still, the federal order does not mean all copies of the blueprints have been be wiped from the web. The instructions have been posted to the file-sharing sites Pirate Bay and Mega, among others, meaning they're still available for download.

Wilson, who claims to have been inspired by anarchist writings, himself made that point in an , saying he thought he would ultimately be free from the government's oversight.

"I still think we win in the end," he said. "Because the files are all over the Internet, the Pirate Bay has it to think this can be stopped in any meaningful way is to misunderstand what the future of distributive technologies is about."

Lawmakers at the state and federal level have already moved to ban printable firearms.

In California, Democratic state Senator Leland Yee said in athat he would soon introduce a bill to ban weapons that "are invisible to metal detectors and that can be easily made without a background check." At the federal level, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have likewise called for legislation to ban such firearms.

"A terrorist, someone who's mentally ill, a spousal abuser, a felon can essentially open a gun factory in their garage," Schumer

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The triangle consists of three of the brightest stars in the sky, each the brightest star in its own constellation. The brightest is the bluish-white star Vega, in Lyra, the lyre. Next in brightness is yellow-whitein Aquila, the eagle. Finally there is white Deneb, in Cygnus, the swan.

From our viewpoint, Vega appears twice as bright as Altair and more than three times brighter than Deneb. But sometimes things are not always what they seem. We know that Vega clearly is more luminous compared to Altair, because its situated at a greater distance from us. Altair is 17 light years away, while Vega is just a little farther out at 25 light years away. []

The light you're seeing from Altair tonight started on its journey to Earth in 1996, and the light from Vega started on its way toward Earth back in 1988. But brilliant Vega actually pales in comparison with Deneb, one of the greatest supergiant stars known.

Deneb's distance measures 1,467 light-years from Earth with a luminosity computed to be more than 60,000 times that of the sun. Because its light takes nearly 15 centuries to reach us, Deneb merely appears as a fairly conspicuous but by no means particularly notable star.

See the Milky Way

With the moon arriving at new phase on Monday (July 8), and then waxing to just a thin crescent phase by week's end, there is no better time than now to observe the beautiful summer Milky Way.

Under a dark sky with a good pair of binoculars or ayou can now observe millions of sparkling little stars that make up this glowing, irregular belt of luminosity.

It appears to arch from the north-northeast to the south-southeast, with its brightest and most spectacular region running across the summer triangle and beyond toward the south-southeast horizon.

There appears to be a great black rift dividing it into two streams (called the "dark bifurcation"), beginning with Cygnus and extending down toward the south. Also in Cygnus is the black void known as the "northern coal stack." The coal stack and the rift are not holes in the , but rather are vast clouds of dust "floating" out in interstellar space which present a solid and impenetrable curtain between us and the more distant stars.

Star-crossed lovers

There have been many stories, myths and legends told about the Milky Way in many different cultures.

In a Japanese legend involving the galaxy, the starrepresented Orihime, the weaving princess, who produced brilliantly colored fabrics. Across the "heavenly river" (the Milky Way), Altair represented the cow herder Hikoboshi, who was also known as Kengyu.

After meeting each other, they received divine permission to marry, whereupon both abandoned their occupations. This angered the gods who consequently separate them and send them back to their original jobs on opposite sides of the heavenly river.

The couple, however, received permission from the gods to get together for one night each year. That special night is July 7 but only if the sky is clear.

As a result, the evening of July 7 has evolved into a young-peoples holiday in Japan called Tanabata, meaning "evening of the seventh." Prayers are offered for clear skies so that Orihime and Hikoboshi, the star-crossed lovers can be reunited.

Popular customs relating to the festival vary by region, but generally, girls wished for better sewing and craftsmanship, and boys wished for better handwriting by writing wishes on strips of paper. The date of Tanabata also varies by region, but the first festivities begin on July 7 of the Gregorian calendar.

The original Tanabata date was based on the Japanese lunisolar calendar, which is about a month behind the . As a result, some festivals are held on July 7, some are held on a few days around August 7, while the others are still held on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month of the traditional Japanese lunisolar calendar, which is usually in August in the Gregorian calendar.

This year, the Gregorian date of "the seventh day of the seventh lunar month of the Japanese lunisolar calendar" will fall on Aug. 13.

Editor's note: If you snap an amazing picture of the night sky that you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery send photos, comments and your name and location to Managing Editor Tariq Malik at .

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for "Natural History" magazine, the "Farmer's Almanac" and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York. Follow us on ,and . Original article on SPACE.com.