The world at a glance . . . United States

Antioch, Calif.

Horrific captivity: A registered sex offender allegedly enslaved an 11-year-old girl he kidnapped in 1991 for 18 years, fathering two daughters by her and forcing all three to live in a ramshackle outbuilding in his backyard. Police said this week they missed several opportunities to uncover Phillip Garrido’s imprisonment of Jaycee Lee Dugard. Despite a parole officer’s twice-monthly visits to Garrido’s home, and a complaint by a neighbor that children were living in the yard, police failed to detect any criminal activity. “We are beating ourselves up over this and will continue to do so,” said Contra Costa Sheriff Warren Rupf. Garrido, 58, and his wife, Nancy, 55, are charged with felony kidnapping and rape and are being held without bail.

Los Angeles

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Fire on the mountain: A broad swath of forest northeast of Los Angeles was engulfed in flames this week, as seasonal wildfires spread even without the gale-force Santa Ana winds that usually blow this time of year. More than 140,000 acres have burned in the vicinity of Mount Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains, home to a famed observatory and several TV and radio towers. “This could have been the conflagration of the century with the Santa Anas,” said climatologist Bill Patzert. Two firefighters battling the blaze were killed when their truck tumbled into a fiery ravine. Falling temperatures and rising humidity have helped firefighters gain ground against the flames, which have destroyed 62 buildings and threaten more than 10,000 homes.

Duxbury, Vt.

New era dawns: Vermont this week officially became the fifth state to recognize gay marriage, and Stephanie Maheu and Janis LeBaron were ready. The couple was at the Duxbury town clerk’s office, 30 miles south of Burlington, when it opened for business at 7:30 a.m. on Sept. 1. “They were almost waiting for me,” said town clerk Ken Scott. Maheu, 42, says she and LeBaron, 50, took part in a civil union ceremony last year, but decided “we would legally upgrade without any lag in time” when the law changed. The other states that now allow same-sex marriages are Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.

Columbia, S.C.

Sanford defiant: South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford acknowledged this week that his political career had reached “the end of the road,” but he vowed to finish out the last year of his term. Once considered a presidential contender, Sanford has been facing mounting pressure to resign since June, when he acknowledged lying about his whereabouts to hide an extramarital affair. Republican legislators, who control the statehouse, said this week they had the votes to impeach him, but would wait for an ethics commission report on Sanford’s affair and his use of state aircraft for personal business. A new state poll found that 49 percent of South Carolina voters want Sanford to resign, compared with 36.6 percent who say he should finish his term.

Boston

Let the jockeying begin: As Massa­chusetts politicians began jockeying to fill Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat, Gov. Deval Patrick sought authority to fill the post with a caretaker. Patrick, a Democrat, set Jan. 19 as the date for the special election to replace Kennedy. He also asked the state legislature to give him the power to name an interim senator—which would return Democrats to the filibuster-proof 60-vote majority they enjoyed before Kennedy died. To allow for an interim appointment, Massachusetts lawmakers would have to overturn a 2004 law passed to prevent then–Gov. Mitt Romney from naming a fellow Republican to finish Sen. John Kerry’s term, had he been elected president. Kennedy’s widow, Victoria, said she’s not interested in replacing her late husband.

New York City

The politics of terror: The White House wanted the Department of Homeland Security to raise the terror alert level just before the 2004 presidential election, according to explosive revelations in a new book by former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge. In The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege, Ridge writes that he resisted pressure from Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to raise the color-coded alert level from yellow to orange in late October 2004. “I wondered,” Ridge writes, “Is this about security or politics?” But in interviews this week, Ridge appeared to backtrack, insisting that while he had suspected domestic politics were at play, he now does not believe that was the case. Ashcroft and Rumsfeld both denied the book’s claims.