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The death toll has risen to three after a runaway train carrying crude oil derailed in Quebec early Saturday morning. The blistering explosion destroyed a town center, and officials say the ongoing fires are keeping rescuers from searching the rest of the area.

Police aren't saying how many other people are missing, but warn there may be more deaths to report.

Meanwhile, The Montreal Gazette says 2,000 people have evacuated the picturesque town of Lac-Megantic, about 160 miles east of Montreal and bordering Maine and Vermont. The explosion sent a huge fireball hundreds of feet into the air when the 72-car train plowed into the downtown area.

Four of those cars were carrying 30,000 gallons of crude oil from North Dakota, NPR's Dan Karpenchuk reports, destroying dozens of downtown buildings — in an area that was crowded with party-goers. Reports vary, but the Gazette puts the number of people missing at 60 right now.

"Stunned residents were crying in the streets once the extent of the disaster had sunk in," Karpenchuk says.

Company officials say a broken fuel line caused the fire, the Gazette says, though much about the accident is still unknown, like "what caused the locomotive to move on its own and catch fire."

"Authorities are still investigating what happened to the locomotive between 11:30 p.m. on Friday when the fire department put out a fire on part of the train, and 1:30 a.m. when the train exploded a few kilometres away."

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Say you're in Midtown Manhattan at rush hour. You need to go a mile uptown, and you can't find a cab. A pedicab, a taxi-bicycle hybrid (like the one in the picture) may not be a bad option.

Riding through the middle of Manhattan on the back of a bike, dodging buses and cabs, feels like the Wild West of transportation options. The pricing feels that way too: Unlike buses or cabs, pedicabs don't charge a set fee. It's whatever the rider and the driver agree to. And, like in the Wild West, innocents often get fleeced.

"Last August, somebody was charged $442 to go from Mary Poppins to a restaurant called Milos," says Laramie Flick, a pedicab driver and president of the pedicab owners association. That's a trip of less than a mile. It took about 15 minutes.

"Before the ride, [the driver] told them it was a dollar a block," Flick says. "After the ride, he told them it was a dollar a block, yes, but it was $100 minimum per person. Then he asked them for a tip."

New York City does not want tourists to leave town feeling like they got hosed by a pedicab driver. So the city worked with Flick and the pedicab drivers to come up with new rules, which are set to take effect next week. The drivers can still choose their own rates. But those rates have to be posted clearly, and they have to apply to all customers. Per minute. No matter what.

Flick likes the new rules. Other drivers don't. Ibrahim Donmez, who has been a driver for eight years, says the price should be based on an upfront individual negotiation — perhaps charging more if the route is uphill, if it's raining, or if there's a large number of passengers. Or charge less, if it's an easy ride. "It's a human-powered business," Donmez says.

The news that the leaders of Venezuela and Nicaragua say they're willing to give asylum to "NSA leaker" Edward Snowden raises an obvious question:

If Russian authorties give him permission to leave, can he get to either country from Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, where he's been lingering in legal limbo for nearly two weeks?

ABC News points out that:

"The only 'safe' commercial flight across the Atlantic — one that would avoid U.S. extradition treaties — is to Cuba. Cuba has an extradition treaty from 1904, but the Castro government could chose to ignore it. From Havana, Snowden could connect to Caracas, Venezuela, or Managua, Nicaragua."