DeWine again tests negative for COVID-19
The fourth COVID-19 test result for Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine came back negative Saturday after he received conflicting positive and negative results two days before, ahead of a scheduled meeting with President Donald Trump.
The governor and first lady, Fran DeWine, were tested at Ohio State University “out of an abundance of caution” following a rollercoaster day Thursday that began with Mr. DeWine receiving a positive test result followed by two negatives. The governor announced the negative results on Twitter on Saturday afternoon.
The Republican governor had to take a COVID-19 test Thursday morning in Cleveland as part of White House protocol for anyone scheduled to come in contact with the president. Mr. DeWine was administered a rapid point-ofcare antigen test at a mobile testing site facilitated by the Republican National Committee, according to a DeWine spokesperson.
“I was fully expecting to see the president that morning,” Mr. DeWine said in a news conference Friday, “but as we were driving to the airport to meet him, I was called and told about my positive result.”
Mr. DeWine was immediately driven back to Columbus, where the governor, his wife and four members of his staff took a polymerase chain reaction test at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.
The results were checked twice, both negative.
Mauritius scrambles to counter oil spill
Anxious residents of the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius stuffed fabric sacks with sugar cane leaves Saturday to create makeshift oil spill barriers as tons of fuel leaking from a grounded ship put endangered wildlife in further peril.
The government has declared an environmental emergency, and France said it was sending help from its nearby Reunion island. Satellite images showed a dark slick spreading in the turquoise waters near wetlands the government called “very sensitive.”
Wildlife workers and volunteers ferried dozens of baby tortoises and rare plants from an island near the spill, Ile aux Aigrettes, to the mainland as fears grew worsening weather on Sunday could tear the Japanese-owned ship apart along its cracked hull.
A French statement from Reunion on Saturday said a military transport aircraft was carrying pollution control equipment to Mauritius and a navy vessel with additional material would set sail for the island nation.
Protesters decry Poland’s LGBT stance
A large crowd of LGBT rights supporters gathered in Warsaw on Saturday to protest the arrest of a transgender activist who had carried out acts of civil disobedience against rising homophobia in Poland.
“You will not lock all of us up!” people chanted at the demonstration that appeared to have drawn thousands, many of them young adults. Most wore masks to battle the coronavirus.
Saturday’s protest comes a day after LGBT rights supporters scuffled with police who arrested the activist, Malgorzata Szutowicz, known best as “Margot.” Police said they detained 48 people, while activists said police used rough tactics against them.
The protests come amid an intensifying standoff in Poland between the LGBT rights movement and the conservative government, which has declared it an alien, dangerous “ideology.” President Andrzej Duda, sworn in for a second term Thursday, won re-election on a strong antiLGBT platform, and social tensions have been rising.