LITTLE ROCK — Todd Barrow, 49, saved the day after the St. Louis Post-Dispatch deliveryman saw flames climbing up the side of an apartment building at 2:30 a.m. and banged on doors to rouse the building’s occupants, including a woman and her three teenagers who lived in the unit closest to the blaze.

Kinde Durkee, a former Democratic campaign treasurer who defrauded high-profile clients, including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has been sentenced in Sacramento, Calif., to 97 months in a federal prison and ordered to pay $10.5 million in restitution.

Ray Mabus, secretary of the Navy, fired the top two administrators of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., for mismanagement after an investigation by the service’s inspector general found that President Daniel Oliver and Provost Leonard Ferrari broke Navy regulations and inappropriately accepted gifts from a private foundation that supports the school.

Felipe Calderon, the outgoing president of Mexico, is headed to Harvard University, where he will become a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government.

Christopher Vaughn, 38, who prosecutors said shot and killed his family so he could start over in the Canadian wilderness, has been sentenced in Joliet, Ill., to four consecutive life terms in the deaths of his wife, Kimberly, and three children.

Gov. Lincoln Chafee, I-R.I., who was criticized last year when he called the Statehouse Christmas spruce a “holiday” tree, won’t be hosting a treelighting ceremony this year and instead will welcome student choral groups to the Statehouse to participate in a series of performances leading up to Christmas, his spokesman said.

Mary Beth Heffernan, Massachusetts’ public-safety secretary, told state lawmakers that 195 inmates so far have been released from prison and their cases put on hold as a result of a scandal at a state drug testing lab.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/29/2012