In Annapolis, the Maryland Port Administration will dredge 15,000 cubic yards of sediment from Annapolis Harbor to make sure those big swift vessels in the Volvo Ocean Race don’t get hung up next spring, port officials announced last week. Another 15,000 cubic yards will be scooped out of Baltimore Harbor. Leg 6 of the 32,700-mile race, which began last month, runs from Annapolis to New York beginning May 7…

Also In Annapolis, Wal-Mart Watch, the group bedeviling the world’s biggest retailer, has opened a statewide advocacy campaign to push for an override next month of Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s veto of the Fair Share Health Care Act. The bill aims to force Wal-Mart to provide better health care benefits for its workers. Wal-Mart Watch, made up of labor and church groups, held over 1,200 educational events across the country last month in hopes of bringing reforms to the multi-billion-dollar company…

In Chesapeake Country, Bay history may get a rewrite. This fall, scientists drilled a record depth of 5,795 feet into the Bay, bumping on the way into a giant slab of granite. The International Continental Scientific Drilling Program and the U.S. Geological Survey drilled their 2.2-kilometer well north of Cape Charles in southern Delmarva to study the late Eocene crater that helped create the Bay tens of millions of years ago. It’s one of some 160 impact craters that have been identified on Earth…

On Backbone Mountain in Garrett County, Maryland Department of Natural Resources wants to prevent a company called Synergics from building wind turbines and roads on large swaths of the western Maryland landmark. The Associated Press reported that in a filing last week with the Public Service Commission, DNR wrote that disturbing some areas would destroy habitat for several rare and endangered species, among them the Allegheny woodrat and the timber rattlesnake…

Our Creature Feature is an uplifting tale of an eagle nursed back to health in Virginia and then returned to the wild last week in the Caledon Natural Area along the Potomac River. It was a story with a surprise ending.

The flightless eagle was brought to the Wildlife Center of Virginia suffering from an infection beneath her wing. But she was big and oh so feisty, lunging at her captors, according to the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star. Wildlife experts thought her to be in her late teens. On the way to release her, someone thought to check a tracking band on her foot that revealed her true age — 28 — well beyond the age eagles normally survive in the wild.