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Ants do it. Lobsters do it. Even equatorial mandrills do it. Why don't many Americans do it: Wear masks and keep a wise social distance from each other?

Scientific American reports this week how several animals seem to know how to take precautions and keep their distance so they're less likely to be infected by a peer.

As the pandemic continues, children are still mostly at home. Summer activities are canceled or up in the air, and many children are suffering confusion and stress. Parents may be stressed themselves, but there are ways to help kids feel better.

During the first few weeks of staying at home, Maryam Jernigan-Noesi's 4-year-old son Carter was excited. His working parents were around him most of the day, and it seemed like a big extended weekend. But after a few weeks, she says, things changed.

I'm hearing a lot of talk about the coronavirus spreading through aerosols — is wearing a mask in a grocery store enough protection? What else should I do to stay safe?

Quick answer first: Going to the grocery store where you and everyone else is wearing a mask and keeping a distance from each other is still considered a low-risk activity. Go get your summer strawberries!

A momentous Supreme Court term is over. The last strokes of the pen were devoted to repudiating President Trump's claim that he is categorically immune from state grand jury and congressional subpoenas.

But the term also featured just about every flashpoint in American law — including abortion, religion, immigration and much more.

Here are six takeaways:

Lots of people, especially many Native Americans, loathe the name of the Washington, D.C., NFL team, the Redskins.

"The origin of that name is rooted in murder and violence and genocide and hate," says Crystal Echo Hawk, the founder and CEO of the advocacy group IllumiNative. "It's a dictionary-defined racial slur, full-stop."

After months of prohibiting in-person visits to relatives in nursing homes amid COVID-19 fears, New York says it will begin easing those restrictions for facilities that are certified as virus-free.

The change comes after the state — one of those hardest-hit by the virus — has seen thousands of deaths in nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

According to the revised rules issued Friday by the New York State Department of Health, visitors will be allowed if a nursing home or adult-care facility hasn't had any coronavirus cases for 28 days.

A federal judge in Eugene opened the door to placing an anti-gerrymandering measure on the Oregon ballot in November even though backers of the initiative failed to gather the number of signatures normally needed to qualify.

U.S. District Judge Michael McShane ruled that the stay-at-home orders issued by Gov. Kate Brown in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic placed an undue burden on groups seeking to qualify an initiative on the ballot that would put legislative and congressional redistricting in the hands of a non-partisan commission.

The Netherlands said Friday that it will sue Russia at the European Court of Human Rights for Moscow's alleged role in the shooting down of an airliner over Ukraine six years ago that killed all 298 aboard, two-thirds of whom were Dutch.

During a military briefing Friday, President Trump indicated he sent federal law enforcement officers to Portland to quell the nightly protests over police violence, and claimed Portland police were incapable of managing the protests themselves.

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis in May, hundreds and sometimes thousands of protesters in Portland have taken to the streets nightly, with demonstrations often ending when police use violence to disperse the crowds of mostly nonviolent protesters.

Updated Saturday at 10:22 a.m. ET

President Trump on Friday evening commuted the prison sentence of his longtime friend Roger Stone, a veteran Republican operative who was convicted of lying to Congress about his efforts to contact WikiLeaks during Russia's interference in the 2016 election.

Georgia's governor and the mayor of the state's capital and largest city are at odds over COVID-19 restrictions, with Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announcing a return to tough measures to control a spike in coronavirus infections and Gov. Brian Kemp insisting that her order is "non-binding and legally unenforceable."

Bottoms, a Democrat, announced Friday that she was bringing Atlanta back to Phase 1 reopening — the most restrictive post-lockdown measures that require all residents to stay home except for essential trips.

A pair of Vancouver police officers illegally searched a 27-year-old Black man’s home last year and arrested him for breaking a television in his home, according to a new federal lawsuit against the city.

Despite prosecutors dismissing the arrest charges months later, the officers never faced consequences until the man complained months later to the Vancouver police chief, then took the city to court.

Conspiracy theories need just the right ingredients to take off within a population, and the COVID-19 pandemic has been a breeding ground for them. A Pew Research Center survey recently asked people if they had heard the theory that the COVID-19 outbreak was intentionally planned by people in power. Seventy-one percent of U.S. adults said they had. And a third of those respondents said it was "definitely" or "probably" true.

A 45-year-old woman who loved going to Starbucks with her friends, writing letters and listening to music went to the emergency room in Oregon City in March because she had a fever.

One of the first questions medical professionals asked was whether the woman, Sarah McSweeney, had signed a document allowing physicians to withhold medical care.

Hospital personnel also immediately asked questions about the woman’s “quality of life,” Cooper said.

Mississippi's governor has imposed mandatory use of face masks and limited nonessential gatherings in 13 counties, including those that cover the state's most populous cities, as COVID-19 cases have surged in recent days, causing record hospitalizations.

Police have released few details about a fatal shooting Thursday evening, but others have taken to social media to identify the victim as Dominique Dunn, a Black man and target of a racist attack.

Police announced Friday they arrested Jordan Clark, 25, for murder in connection with the shooting. Authorities say he was booked at the Multnomah County Detention Center.