WASHINGTON -- President Bush's top advisers would recommend he veto a Senate bill to protect reporters from having to reveal their sources, Attorney General Michael Mukasey and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell said Friday.

The "Free Flow of Information Act," proposed by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., did not come up for a vote before lawmakers adjourned for the summer.

Supporters argue that confidentiality has been crucial to reporters' pursuit of important stories, and that a recent flurry of attempts to compel reporters to cough up their sources' identities is proof that the legislation is needed.

WASHINGTON -- The federal government is telling emergency managers to be on the lookout for fake emergency and commercial vehicles, as security tightens in the two cities hosting this year's presidential conventions.

Terrorists could used these "cloned vehicles" to conduct surveillance or to carry out an attack, according to an Aug. 21 bulletin from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

For about $2,000 someone can use a computer, color printer, typewriter, barcode label printer, an electric tool for cutting and an engraving pen to fake vehicle identification numbers, stickers and titles.

The Secret Service does not have any specific information about these cloned vehicles being used for surveillance or terrorist purposes, Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said. But the agency is aware of this type of potential threat, Zahren said.

STEINHATCHEE, Fla. -- As Tropical Storm Fay finally got on track Friday to make its way out of Florida, flood-stricken homeowners got an encouraging sign: Muddy brown water lines began appearing on the sides of homes, a clue that floodwaters were receding.

The fickle storm that stuck around for five days and carved a dizzying path that included three separate landfalls dumped more than two feet of rain in some places. But to the relief of Floridians, it was finally expected to veer west over the Panhandle before leaving for good later this weekend.

Officials in Melbourne, one of the hardest-hit areas on the central Atlantic coast, carried boats down streets where just a day earlier 4 feet of water made roads look like rivers.

The storm's death toll rose to six in Florida and nearly 30 overall since it first struck in the Caribbean. Florida officials said four people died in traffic accidents in the heavy rain and two others drowned in surf kicked up by the storm. Before the storm ever blew through the state, a man testing generators as a precaution also was killed.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The state of North Carolina is closing an adult admissions ward at Cherry Hospital, a state psychiatric facility in Goldsboro, where a dying man was ignored by nursing staff.

The head of the state Department of Health and Human Services said the 16 staffers on duty at the time of the death have been removed from direct patient care duties and given other assignments for a period of at least 60 days.

Those involved in the incident who remain on the hospital staff will receive more training until the hospital director decides they are ready to resume caring for patients under the supervision of a training director, Benton said.

Steven Sabock, 50, died at the mental hospital on April 29, after sitting in a chair for more than 22 hours without food or help using the bathroom. Hospital staff members were captured by security video playing cards and watching television in the room where Sabock sat.

NORFOLK, Va. -- An experimental rocket carrying $17 million worth of NASA experiments was destroyed early Friday morning after it veered off course soon after launch from the Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

Explosive charges on the nose of the rocket were detonated by NASA about 27 seconds after the 5:10 a.m. EDT launch. The agency said most of the wreckage probably fell into the Atlantic Ocean, although a resident of Modest Town, on the Eastern Shore, reported debris starting a fire on Assawoman Island.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- A train derailment in central Oklahoma on Friday sent fireballs into the sky but caused no injuries.

Eight cars on the 110-car Burlington Northern Santa Fe train derailed, seven of which were carrying either crude oil or ethanol, company spokesman Joe Faust said. He said he didn't know how many of the derailed cars had caught on fire.

He said only two people -- an engineer and a conductor -- were aboard the train, and neither was injured.

The derailment occurred around 3 p.m., about 30 miles northeast of Oklahoma City, close to the town of Luther. The train was traveling less than 40 mph from Tulsa to Temple, Texas, on tracks owned by Stillwater Central Railroad.

PHOENIX -- When it comes to marking up historic signs, good grammar is a bad defense.

Two self-styled vigilantes against typos who defaced a more than 60-year-old, hand-painted sign at Grand Canyon National Park were sentenced to probation and banned from national parks for a year.

Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson pleaded guilty Aug. 11 for the damage done March 28 at the park's Desert View Watchtower.

Deck and Herson, both 28, toured the United States this spring, wiping out errors on government and private signs.

The fiberboard sign has yellow lettering with a black background. Deck wrote that they used a marker to cover an erroneous apostrophe, put the apostrophe in its proper place with white-out and added a comma.

The misspelled word "emense" was not fixed, Deck wrote, because "I was reluctant to disfigure the sign any further. ... Still, I think I shall be haunted by that perversity, emense, in my train-whistle-blighted dreams tonight."

Deck, of Somerville, Mass., and Herson, of Virginia Beach, Va., pleaded guilty to conspiracy to vandalize government property.

They were sentenced to a year's probation, during which they cannot enter any national park or modify any public signs. They were also ordered to pay $3,035 to repair the watchtower sign.

The TEAL Web site now has only this message -- "Statement on the signage of our National Parks and public lands to come" -- without a period.

College presidents spark debate on drinking age

The college presidents said they wanted a national debate on the 21-year-old drinking age. They got it.

For years, former Middlebury College President John McCardell has been criticizing the law, saying it only encourages binge drinking and pushes alcohol into the shadows.

But then McCardell quietly enlisted about 100 college presidents in a campaign calling for the drinking age to be reconsidered. After The Associated Press reported on the effort this week, the issue erupted into the biggest discussion on the subject in years -- in blogs, over e-mail, in newspaper editorials and around office water coolers.

College presidents usually avoid contentious topics because alienating alumni and politicians poses big risks and offers few rewards. So it was big news when so many leaders of the nation's best-known institutions signed on to McCardell's "Amethyst Initiative," named for the Greek gemstone said to ward off intoxication.

Supporters included presidents of private universities such as Duke, Dartmouth and Johns Hopkins, and public schools including Ohio State and the University of Maryland.

"No matter where you stand on this issue, it's impossible to look at what has happened over the last three or four days and say this is a settled question," McCardell said Friday in one of nearly a dozen scheduled media interviews.

"It's also impossible to say the public isn't ready to participate in the debate the presidents are calling for."