Eastern Seaboard

Storm trackers are continuing to refine their predictions for a nor'easter set to strike Maryland later this week, calling for strong rain and wind on Wednesday - most heavily along the Eastern Shore - and possibly snow on Thursday. "We're not looking at Sandy-type numbers, but it looks like this thing could pack a pretty good punch," said Steve Goldstein, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, about what residents can expect from the storm on the heels of superstorm Sandy's pounding.

For the first time in 15 years, Maryland striped bass anglers will have a spring trophy season designed and managed by state fisheries officials. By an overwhelming margin, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission yesterday relinquished control of the state's most popular and lucrative season for 2008, thereby eliminating an annual quota that was often exceeded and allowing Maryland to regulate its season the way other Eastern Seaboard states do....

Even as Steve Zucker mapped travel plans yesterday for newly minted free agent Eric Swann, he tossed out a lifeline to Baltimore. The Ravens, Zucker said, are one of the teams on Swann's radar screen. "He wants to go to a contender," said Zucker, Swann's Chicago-based agent. "He would like to play on the eastern seaboard. And he lives in Reston, Va. He built a home there last year. "Baltimore would be on his list." It's a short list. One day after the veteran defensive tackle was cut by the Arizona Cardinals in a long-rumored salary-cap move, Swann visited the Carolina Panthers.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the first real Democrat to occupy the White House. Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767.What a life he led. Before he became president, he was a teen-age lawyer, a debt collector, a land speculator who engaged in "equivocal" deals (as one biographer put it), a slave owner who slew Indians, a duelist who killed a man, a military commander who hanged British soldiers in Spanish territory where he as a soldier had not been authorized to lead troops, a social climber who married a married woman.

JUST WHEN medical waste incinerators are going the way of dinosaurs, Baltimore is being stalked by the Tyrannosaurus rex of polluting technologies. The unusual saga of Baltimore's Phoenix Services incinerator - the largest medical waste incinerator in the country - is about to reach a new level of public scrutiny, and the stakes are high for the health of local families. City Councilman Edward L. Reisinger has introduced an ordinance to reduce the geographic area served by Phoenix from the current 250-mile radius - which includes New York City and other major metropolitan areas along the Eastern seaboard - to eight counties within Maryland.

NOW I KNOW we are living in a new age. Electing Republican majorities in the House and Senate was nice, but it didn't approach the epochal significance of this -- the Wall Street Journal has debunked recycling!If there is any issue on which millions of people have been more hoodwinked, I don't know what it might be. The propaganda machine urging us to recycle has been relentless, moralistic and, according to the Journal, utterly misleading.Listen up, Captain Planet, Barney the Dinosaur, Mr. Rogers and the rest of you commissars.

WASHINGTON - It was 25 years ago today that Hurricane Agnes raged up the East Coast, taking 122 lives and forcing 210,000 people to flee their homes in what was then the most costly natural disaster in the nation's history.During its four-day march from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada, Agnes devastated six states. Property damage exceeded $3.2 billion, and the entire state of Pennsylvania was declared a disaster area.If a hurricane like Agnes came ashore in 1997, meteorologists say property damage would be much worse but more lives would be saved.

With almost every regulatory hurdle cleared, planners believe they are about two weeks away from sinking a 563-foot former Navy destroyer off the coast of Maryland to create the largest artificial reef on the Eastern Seaboard. The Arthur W. Radford, docked in Philadelphia, is nearing the end of a laborious effort to remove all salvageable and toxic material and pass inspection by federal environmental and maritime safety officials, Erik Zlokovitz, artificial reef coordinator for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources told a state fisheries advisory commission Tuesday night.

The manufacturers of Asia just got a lot closer to Baltimore. Four massive cranes at the Seagirt Marine Terminal began writing the next chapter in the region's maritime history Thursday morning as they started unloading a 981-foot cargo ship laden with containers onto waiting trucks. The cranes are the most visible symbols of a $1.3 billion public-private partnership between the Port of Baltimore and Ports America Chesapeake that allowed the expansion of Seagirt to handle the world's largest ships and gives the facility a leg up on almost every port from Maine to Florida.

Families looking for a cheap getaway, friends looking to do a little duty-free shopping and couples celebrating over some drinks and gambling returned Sunday morning from a two-night stay on the Chesapeake Bay, after embarking on a Carnival Cruise Line deal spurred by Hurricane Sandy. The sold-out cruise, called the "cruise to nowhere," hosted many residents from the areas - Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania - along the eastern seaboard that were spared from the worst of the hurricane-turned-superstorm's wrath, many of whom said the convenience of hopping on Interstate 95 was a draw to the deal.