The Department of Veterans Affairs has made significant improvements to its health system, but comparing it to other systems is difficult, according to a new report released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Weld County commissioners have refused to allow Democratic U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey to use a county facility to meet with constituents about health care reform.

The Netherland Antilles issued a tropical-storm watch for St. Maarten, Saba and St. Eustatius on Saturday as Ana raced west through the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Bill, the second named storm of the Atlantic season, formed farther to the east, and forecasters said they expected it to strengthen.

A southeastern North Dakota town thinks it has set a world record for having the most firetrucks in a parade.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarze- negger urged residents to heed mandatory evacuation orders Saturday as 6,800 firefighters battled to control nearly a dozen blazes across the parched state.

Faded numbers stamped into small concrete blocks marked the graves of more than 3,200 mentally ill patients buried at Western State Hospital between the 1870s and 1953.

The Mormon Church’s vigorous, well-heeled support for Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California last year, has turned the Utah-based faith into a lightning rod for gay-rights activism, including a nationwide “kiss-in” Saturday.

Lawmakers are debating a bill that would make marital rape a crime in the Bahamas, overturning the current system in which consent to sexual intercourse is presumed in a legal marriage.

Farmers freed 13 police officers and four civilians seized at a hydroelectric dam in Peru’s Andean region after local officials agreed Saturday to provide them with fertilizer. Authorities said the hostages were held for nearly 24 hours at a church in Huallamayo, a town about 133 miles northeast of the capital, Lima.

Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi announced the formation of a social and political movement on his website Saturday, defying a renewed government campaign of intimidation aimed at him and his supporters.