Wash Call: Watch out for 'Clunkers' scams; pirate lull may be over

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You knew it was only a matter of time before scammers latched on to the "Cash for Clunkers" program as the latest avenue for stealing our money or identity.

The Federal Trade Commission and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are warning consumers to be alert to a proliferation of Web sites and fake e-mails purporting to "help" you take advantage of the program or "pre-register" to ensure you'll be able to participate in the hotly popular program.

Reports are coming in about scammers offering to sign you up or give you a voucher if you'll just pay a deposit or "processing fee." Others say they'll guarantee you a spot in the program but they'll need your Social Security, credit card and/or checking account number.

Fraud busters say there is no pre-registering or guaranteed spots. They say you should go first to the only official government site for the Car Allowance Rebate System -- www.cars.gov -- for dependable information.

But wording on that very site set off its very own kerfuffle, which only now is dying down. Seems the Department of Transportation posted a link on cars.gov that carried a poorly worded privacy statement that led many to believe that using the site gave the feds the right to claim your computer and all its files as government property.

Turns out, the misleading verbiage -- which since has been rolled back and clarified -- actually was meant to apply to auto dealers participating in the clunker program, not consumers.

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Oh sure, asteroids a couple miles wide or more can still wipe us out, as scientists believe happened to the dinosaurs 65 million years back.

But new research from astronomers at the University of Washington concludes that it's highly unlikely that comets hitting our planet caused any mass extinctions in the last few billion years, although impacts do happen that could wipe out some life forms.

Most of the time, though, the gravity of the bigger outer planets (Saturn and Jupiter) snag comets before they reach our neighborhood on long loopy orbits that can take 200 years to millions of years to complete.

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The U.S. Navy is warning that the lull in Indian Ocean piracy could soon come to an end. The pirates operating off the coast of Somalia took a couple of months off during monsoon season, which generated waves that wreaked havoc with the small skiffs the pirates use. The monsoons are tapering off now and should be out of steam in the next few weeks.

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Among the first cases the Supreme Court will hear in October is one that has drawn howls of "censorship" from artists, journalists and others who object to a 1999 law that makes it a crime to create, possess or sell videos or other "depictions" of animal cruelty. The art and news media advocates say the statute amounts to an unconstitutional infringement of their First Amendment rights.

Congress crafted the law to prohibit fetish pornography showing animals being crushed or bitten to death, or otherwise tortured. The Radio-Television News Directors and the American Society of News Editors, along with arts groups, laud the intent of the law in preventing such cruelty, but argue that the media, in particular, have a long history of exposing animal abuse, and that images can be a powerful tool for doing so.

The case, U.S. v. Stevens, is slated for argument October 6.

(SHNS science and health correspondent Lee Bowman contributed to this column. E-mail Lee Bowman at bowmanl(at)shns.com and Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl(at)shns.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)

Washington Calling