Isolation

Last week's tragic shooting in Newtown, Conn., has the country asking itself: What has happened to our society? Is it lax gun control laws? Underfunding for treatment of the seriously mentally ill? The breakdown of the nuclear family? Violent video games? All of the above? Although much remains unknown about the shooter's mental state, it appears he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, which typically is not associated with violent behavior. But one aspect of the shooter's emerging profile is that he was socially isolated.

Pockets of dense fog and isolated shower storms will move through the Baltimore region on Tuesday morning, according to the National Weather Service. Temperatures will remain steady in the low- to mid-30s, but will steadily rise through sunrise, the weather service said. This afternoon will be mostly sunny, with highs in the low-50s and a westerly wind gusting up to 30 mph. There is also a diminished chance of rain in the afternoon. Tonight will see temperatures drop to the upper 20s in the suburbs, the weather service said.

A Fort Detrick researcher who officials feared might have been accidentally infected with the Ebola virus left the Army's quarantine unit yesterday, healthy and relieved to be free after nearly three weeks in enforced isolation. "She was very happy to get out, and she expressed her gratitude to everyone who supported her containment care," said Chuck Dasey, an Army spokesman. At the researcher's request, her name has not been released. The researcher, a virologist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, grazed her hand with a needle Feb. 11 while inoculating Ebola-infected mice.

At the halfway point of recording "The Lion, the Beast, the Beat" - Grace Potter and the Nocturnals' fourth album, released last June - things seemed to be progressing smoothly. The band's hybrid of blues, rock and folk sounded locked-in and tight, co-producer Jim Scott was capturing the group's live intensity on tape and executives at Hollywood Records were happy with early material. So when Potter, the band's leader and primary songwriter, halted recording at the end of 2011, it was a major shock to everyone involved.

A female researcher at Fort Detrick in Frederick may have been exposed to the Ebola virus last week when she grazed her hand with a needle she was using to inject mice with the virus. The researcher, who was working in the Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, has been staying in an isolation area since the incident Feb. 11, said spokesman Chuck Dasey. She has shown no signs of infection, he said. Medical technicians have been testing blood samples from the researcher for traces of the virus, Dasey said.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- At the end of a long and emotional campaign, Sweden yesterday voted solidly to abandon its Arctic isolation and join the European Union.Sweden's approval follows similar yes votes in Austria and Finland this year and is expected to give a boost to a referendum at the end of the month in neighboring Norway, where opposition has been strong.The addition of all four countries would make the EU the world's largest and richest free-trade bloc, surpassing North America, and could help speed the integration of the Eastern and Central European countries hoping to join.

A Hampstead man accused of e-mailing child pornography to a New Jersey girl, 11, and sexually assaulting a neighborhood girl, 8, is being held in an isolation unit at the county jail in lieu of $55,000 bail.Calvin Gary Horelick, 47, of the 4800 block of Hillock Lane may post 10 percent, or $5,500, and be released while awaiting trial.Horelick, who was arrested Saturday, was placed in isolation for his protection, a jail official said.According to court documents, Horelick is charged with nine counts of distributing child pornography, possession of child pornography and using a computer to distribute child pornography.

Eleven-year-old Joseph Smarr and his 9-year-old brother Benjy, of Urbana, Illinois, in an article on this page (February 2) criticized school for not being the computerized, video-saturated world in which most children live.The Smarrs rhetorically inquire, ''Why do kids prefer video games and computers over school?'' and conclude that, ''At school the teacher just tells you things that you are suppose to remember. With personal interactive software you are in charge of a rapidly changing 'virtual' world that you alone create.

Baltimore health officials said yesterday that a 34-year-old woman who developed symptoms of SARS after a trip to Toronto is in isolation at her Southwest Baltimore home - Maryland's third suspected case of the deadly respiratory illness. Dr. Peter L. Beilenson, the city health commissioner, said the woman, who works at a correctional facility in Northern Virginia, came down with a dry cough and fever after visiting family in Toronto between April 9 and 14. The woman went to the emergency room at St. Agnes Hospital on Friday, Beilenson said, but had a temperature of 100.4 degrees - not high enough to meet the official definition of severe acute respiratory syndrome.

A federal jury found yesterday that a group of guards violated the civil rights of a former inmate at Maryland's Supermax prison when they placed him in special leg and hand irons in the prison's now-closed "pink room" isolation cell for disruptive prisoners.Jurors awarded Quentin L. Jackson $9,501 in compensatory and punitive damages from five correctional officers.After a four-day trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, the jury found that the guards acted improperly when they placed Jackson in shackles in the isolation cell.

Last week's tragic shooting in Newtown, Conn., has the country asking itself: What has happened to our society? Is it lax gun control laws? Underfunding for treatment of the seriously mentally ill? The breakdown of the nuclear family? Violent video games? All of the above? Although much remains unknown about the shooter's mental state, it appears he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, which typically is not associated with violent behavior. But one aspect of the shooter's emerging profile is that he was socially isolated.

Speed kills. Between 2001 and 2010, excessive speeding caused one-third of all traffic fatalities in Maryland. Maryland suffered 154 speed-related traffic fatalities in 2010. In comparison, the Maryland State Fire Marshall announced 71 fire fatalities in Maryland in 2010 - less than half the number who died from speeding. Ninety-five percent of those speed-related fatal accidents took place on urban roads. Speeding kills more than twice as many Marylanders as fires do, and it kills most of its victims on city streets.

Meet the parents. Bonnie Gladden, the mother of the 15-year-old charged with shooting a fellow student at Perry Hall High on the first day of the new school year, has a ninth-grade education and was 19 years old and four months pregnant with a daughter when she married Robert Wayne Gladden Sr. Four years later, in 1996, authorities filed charges of assault with intent to murder against him, listing Ms. Gladden as the victim, though he was acquitted...

Your editorial about solitary confinement in Maryland's prisons mischaracterizes how Maryland utilizes inmate administrative and disciplinary segregation ("Torture by another name," July 7). State regulations make it effectively impossible for Maryland's prisons to hold inmates in solitary confinement. In Maryland, an inmate can only be placed in isolation for up to 48 hours, and even this can be done only in consultation with medical and mental health professionals. Inmates with mental disorders cannot ever be placed in isolation.

Your recent editorial about the use of disciplinary and administrative segregation in Maryland prisons reflects the challenges I have experienced in attempting to secure data about solitary confinement in the state ("Torture by another name," July 8). As a member of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, which is addressing this issue across the nation, our team has found from our work in other states that reducing the population in solitary confinement - or isolation, as it is often euphemistically called - can result in considerable cost savings, less recidivism and a decrease in violent or suicidal behavior.

The National Weather Service is calling for Tuesday to be mostly sunny in the Baltimore area, with a high near 94 and south winds around 6 miles per hour. Forecasters warn that isolated thunderstorms are possible Tuesday afternoon and evening and that a few thunderstorms may produce large hail and damaging winds. Tuesday night is expected to be mostly cloudy, with a low around 80 and southeast winds around 7 to 10 miles per hour becoming southwesterly after midnight. There is a 30 percent chance of precipitation.

BIG SUR, Calif. -- On the sun-drenched patio of Nepenthe's, tourists are sipping lemonade and admiring the ocean view for the first time in nearly four months.At the Ventana Inn, Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs are once again pulling into the parking lot, and guests are lounging on the clothing-optional sun deck. At the Big Sur Lodge, the phone is ringing nonstop with reservations.A whole season after winter storms felled redwoods, gouged out hundreds of feet of scenic state Route 1 and forced helicopter evacuations of visitors and residents, Big Sur is coming back to life.

George Stevenson grew up in a family that cared for numerous foster children, and after mentoring and coaching boys in youth baseball for years, he decided to adopt a child of his own. He became the father of an 8-year-old boy and named him Galen, after his brother. As the boy grew older, relatives say, it became apparent that he was troubled, and at one point he had to be sent away to a treatment facility. Still, they say, none of that could have foretold what happened in late April, when police say Galen stabbed his 43-year-old father repeatedly inside their North Baltimore apartment.

The Ting Tings - the English dance-punk duo of Katie White and Jules de Martino that will play Rams Head Live on Saturday - found inspiration for its latest album, March's "Sounds from Nowheresville," from three Jewish New Yorkers rapping about Humpty Dumpty, "The Empire Strikes Back" and Patty Duke. The Beastie Boys' 1989 landmark album "Paul's Boutique" seems at first like an odd muse for the Ting Tings Its platinum-selling singles ("That's Not My Name," "Shut Up and Let Me Go")