Arriving at a gym in Gaithersburg, Md., Clare Kearney bounds inside -- 13 years old, petite, with fine brown hair and delicate glasses. Excited. This is a place where competitive cheerleaders practice, girls who can pull off perfect roundoffs and handsprings and back tucks.

WASHINGTON -- After encouraging gains in the 1990s, populations of loggerhead sea turtles are now dropping, primarily because of commercial fishing, according to a federal review.

KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii -- Robin Baird's research team gazes for hours into the horizon, searching for rarely seen beaked whales.

LOS ANGELES -- Nearly two dozen private hospitals in Los Angeles and Orange counties are in danger of bankruptcy or closure, according to hospital administrators, industry experts and state data.

MAHOPAC, N.Y -- It was just another morning at the senior center: Women were sewing, men were playing pool -- and seven demonstrators, average age 76, were picketing outside, demanding doughnuts.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The project that hopes to supply developing-world schoolchildren with $188 laptops will sell the rugged little computers to U.S. residents and Canadians for $400 each, with the profit going toward a machine for a poor country.

CAMARILLO -- Gas prices on average dropped 2.03 cents over the last two weeks, according to a national survey released Sunday.

YANGON, Myanmar -- About 20,000 protesters led by Buddhist monks and nuns on Sunday mounted the largest anti-government protest in Myanmar since a failed 1988 democratic uprising, shouting support for detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

UNITED NATIONS -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed hope Sunday that key Arab nations, including Syria, will attend a Mideast peace conference this fall hosted by President Bush.