NAGS HEAD A case of hepatitis A has been diagnosed in a food worker at the Nags Head Bowling Center, the Dare County Department of Public Health announced Wednesday. Anne Thomas, Dare County health director, said in a statement that anyone who ate or drank at the establishment between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Aug. 18 or 19 may be at risk of developing hepatitis A.

The suborbital rocket that was destroyed during launch last week was about 8,500 feet high and 3,000 feet downrange from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, lower than initially reported, the space agency said on Wednesday. In addition, the flight was only 20.1 seconds old when range safety personnel halted it because the ALV X-1 rocket was veering off track.

CAPE CHARLES Snap, Crackle and Pop left Virginia with a bang on Tuesday. The three endangered sea turtles, rescued earlier this summer from an intake canal at a New Jersey nuclear power plant, drew throngs of Eastern Shore residents and tourists to a public beach in this town on the Chesapeake Bay.

The Virginia Aquarium Stranding Response Team will release three Kemp’s ridley sea turtles tomorrow morning on the Eastern Shore.

The release of the turtles named Snap, Crackle and Pop, will happen at Cape Charles at 11 a.m., according to a news release from the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center.

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.

A launch planned for this morning from Wallops Island has been delayed by one day. The launch is scheduled for tomorrow morning between 5:10 and 6:10 a.m. Tomorrow’s event will test a new rocket carrying instruments to study hypersonic flight and a new design for spaceships entering the atmosphere.

MACHIPONGO The real estate stampede that brought soaring land values, golf communities and waterfront vacation homes to the Eastern Shore's lower peninsula has left its schools in the dust. Northampton County steadily lost students over the boom years and received very little of the windfall from escalating property prices.

WACHAPREAGUE Out here on the Eastern Shore, where voracious greenhead flies rule the marsh and waves of grass roll to the sunrise, scientists are fishing for sharks so they can learn how not to catch them. More than 11 million sharks die every year on fishing hooks that aren't intended for them. Up until recently, few people really cared - at least no one who remembers "Jaws."

They look like something the environmental artist Christo might have done. Elegant in their sheer starkness. Tall and narrow and white, and dead. Hundreds of pine trees, their bark now gone, stand like nature's tombstones, demanding attention just before cars pass the toll booth on the north side of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.

CHINCOTEAGUE, Va.  About 150 wild ponies are now recuperating after the annual crossing of the 200-yard channel between Assateague Island, Md., and Chincoteague.