Salt Lake City - A deadly booby trap rigged along a popular Utah trail could have killed someone if they had tripped a ground wire set up to send a 20-pound, spiked boulder swinging into an unsuspecting hiker, authorities said Monday.

Another trap was designed to trip a passer-by into a bed of sharpened wooden stakes, authorities said.

Two men arrested over the weekend on suspicion of misdemeanor reckless endangerment told authorities the traps were intended for wildlife, but investigators didn't believe the story.

The suspects built a dead-wood shelter as a possible lure for hikers who could step inside only through the two booby-trapped entrances, Utah County sheriff's Sgt. Spencer Cannon said.

The much-maligned Transport Security Authority (TSA) is once again in hot water after it accused an innocent four-year-old girl of attempted gun smuggling as she hugged her grandmother in the security zone.

­In a Facebook post that has since gone viral, Michelle Brademeyer describes the story of her family being detained as potential terrorists by the TSA on a flight out of Wichita, Kansas. The TSA is responsible for screening passengers as they board and disembark from planes.

Brademeyer was passing through security checks with her mother and her small daughter, Isabella. When the older lady triggered the metal detector, and was told to go for a pat-down, Isabella ran over to and briefly hugged her grandmother.

The TSA immediately said Isabella would now also have to undergo a pat-down, in case the grandmother passed contraband to her during the hug.

When the child shouted "I don't want to," the TSA declared Isabella a "high security threat," and said that they would close down the airport if she moved.

What would you expect to pay to have your appendix removed if so needed? $1,500? $182,000? How about any amount in between? A new study shows that hospital charges are all over the map when it comes to such procedures, and most people are left in the dark when it comes to medical costs, reports ABC News.

Researchers of the study, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found wide variations in charges for medical procedures even among appendectomy patients treated at the same hospital.

One such procedure, performed on Augustin Hong, a then-34-year-old financial professional living in San Francisco, cost a staggering $60,000. Hong, who went to the ER with severe abdominal pain, was diagnosed with acute appendicitis, and subsequently had his appendix removed by doctors.

Hong had not worried too much about the cost of the procedure because he had health insurance. But that all changed when the bills started to arrive. "That's when I got nervous," said Hong, who is now 36.

In all, Hong was charged $59,283, including $5,264 for the doctors. According to the Healthcare Blue Book, that figure is six times the fair price for an appendectomy in Northern California ($8,309, which includes a four-day admission).

"My initial thought was, it was a good thing I had insurance," said Hong. But he soon realized the hospital was not in his insurance network. And while the insurer agreed to pay more than half of his bill, Hong was still left with a $23,000 bill.

The researchers, as well as other healthcare experts, said the results aren't unique to California and show the system is definitely broken.

Several hundred protesters marched to Wells Fargo Bank headquarters in San Francisco Tuesday planning to disrupt the company's annual shareholder meeting, and police took positions around the building, NBC Bay area reported on Tuesday.

"A tax dodger and predatory lender, Wells Fargo Bank has corrupted democracy by quadrupling spending on lobbying since they helped cause the financial crisis," according to the web site for Occupy Wall Street, which advertised the event.

The demonstration is part of the rebirth of the Occupy movement this spring after many protesters took a hiatus for the winter.

Police were stationed around the Merchant's Exchange Building in the financial district in advance of the 1 p.m. meeting, The Associated Press reported. Bank stockholders were asked to show certificates or other proof of ownership before being shepherded through the gates, AP said.

Justice Dept. makes 1st arrest in BP oil spill; ex-engineer accused of obstruction of justice

A BP engineer intentionally deleted more than 300 text messages saying the company's efforts to control the Gulf of Mexico oil spill were failing, and that the amount of oil leaking was far more than what the company reported, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday.

In the first criminal charges related to the deadly explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in April 2010, the Justice Department arrested Kurt Mix and charged him with two counts of obstruction of justice for allegedly destroying evidence sought by federal authorities, officials announced in a statement.

The charges came a day before a federal judge in New Orleans was to consider a motion granting preliminary approval of a $7.8 billion civil settlement between BP and a committee of plaintiffs in a civil case. Shrimp processors have raised objections, saying the settlement does not adequately compensate them.

Oil industry computers taken off-line

Much of the world's oil comes from the Middle East. If those oil-producing nations were somehow unable to conduct operations, it would be a huge blow to the global economy. Reports claim that the Iranian oil industry has been hit with a large cyber attack. Iran has disconnected computer systems at a number of its oil production facilities from the web in response to a cyber attack that occurred over the weekend.

Reuters reports that a source at the National Iranian Oil Company told it that a virus had been discovered in the control systems at the Kharg Island Oil terminal. That oil terminal handles most of Iran's crude oil exports. Other computer systems at Iran's Oil Ministry and its national oil company were also hit by the attackers.

A spokesman for the oil ministry Ali Reza Nikzad-Rahbar claims that the attack didn't cause significant damage and that the worm used in the attack was discovered before infecting systems. Iran has offered no details on exactly what worm or malware was used in the attack and the oil facilities were allegedly disconnected from the Internet simply as a precaution.

This isn't the first time that Iran has been attacked by cyber criminals. In 2010, the country was the main target of the Stuxnet worm, which was found to be targeting Iran's uranium enrichment program. SecurityWeek also reports that Iran was attacked by the Duqu worm and the country bolstered its cyber defenses after those attacks.

"Iran's Revolutionary Guard claims to have created a "hack-proof" network for all sensitive data," blogged Chester Wisniewski, senior security advisor at Sophos Canada. "I have yet to see a hack-proof network and if they have convinced themselves it's true, perhaps that is part of the problem...One thing is clear, whether you are an oppressive regime, or simply an average small business, anyone who depends upon the internet will face malware threats and hacking attempts."

More than a billion people around the world would face starvation following a limited regional nuclear weapons exchange (such as a clash between India and Pakistan) that would cause major worldwide climate disruption driving down food production in China, the U.S. and other nations, according to a major new report released today by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and its U.S. affiliate, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR).

Dr. Ira Helfand, the author of Nuclear Famine: A Billion People at Risk--Global Impacts of Limited Nuclear War on Agriculture, Food Supplies, and Human Nutrition, said: "The grim prospect of nuclear famine requires a fundamental change in our thinking about nuclear weapons. The new evidence that even the relatively small nuclear arsenals of countries such as India and Pakistan could cause long lasting, global damage to the Earth's ecosystems and threaten hundreds of millions of already malnourished people demands that action be taken. The needless and preventable deaths of one billion people over a decade would be a disaster unprecedented in human history. It would not cause the extinction of the human race, but it would bring an end to modern civilization as we know it."

A Florida man was arrested and held on $6,500 bond after police in Collier County said he left a McDonald's without paying for a cup of soda valued at $1.

Mark Abaire, 52, had apparently asked staff at the Naples restaurant for a courtesy cup of water, but instead he allegedly filled the cup with soda from the soda fountain and sat outside of the restaurant, according to a story in the Naples Daily News which cited the police report of the Thursday incident.

Abaire allegedly refused to pay for the soda when he was asked to do so, refused to leave the restaurant and cursed at the manager, the Naples Daily News also reported.

Abaire, whose aliases include "Red" and "Clown," has a long list of prior arrests, according to records from the Collier County Sheriff's Department.

He was charged with petty theft, trespassing and disorderly intoxication after the Thursday arrest, and sent to Collier County jail. Petty theft is usually a misdemeanor, but because Abaire has previous convictions for theft, the charge was upgraded to a felony. The trespassing and disorderly intoxication charges are misdemeanors.

Edward Avery might be gone from the defense table at the landmark clergy-sex-abuse trial involving Archdiocese of Philadelphia priests, but he remains a pivotal figure in the case.

On Monday, prosecutors and defense lawyers clashed over what jurors could and should be told about Avery, a defrocked priest who was removed as a defendant last month after his last-minute plea to charges that he sexually assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy.

Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina suggested that jurors could even hear from Avery himself.

The issue emerged as prosecutors signaled plans to call to the witness stand this week a former altar boy who said he was abused in the late 1990s by Avery and another priest, the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, when both were at St. Jerome's Church in Northeast Philadelphia. Engelhardt faces a separate trial later this year because he belongs to an independent religious order, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales.

It also came on a day when jurors heard about one priest who began abusing a boy who admitted his sexual confusion during a confession, and a second priest who told a therapist he himself had been the target of a group rape at the seminary.

The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions has dropped its charges against a senior Scientologist who had been accused of telling an 11-year-old girl she should deny charges of sexual abuse against another member of the church.

Janice Meyer, also known as Jan Eastgate, is the head of the church's Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a group which works to discredit a number of conventional psychiatric treatments, including the use of medications such as Ritalin and Prozac.

In May last year, Ms Meyer was charged with two counts of perverting the course of justice over an alleged incident in 1985. Police had claimed that Ms Meyer told the 11-year-old girl she should deny any charges of sexual abuse to police and officers from the Department of Social Services.