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The post Historic wildfires burn across Oregon appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]> 
Image copyright
Zak Stone via Reuters
Oregon Governor Kate Brown says the state could see the greatest loss of life and property from wildfires in its history
The US state of Oregon is battling record-breaking wildfires, which have destroyed at least five towns.
Three deaths in Oregon have been blamed on the wildfires, with another in neighbouring Washington state, where blazes are also burning.
In California, three people died in a wildfire that has forced thousands from their homes, authorities say.
Fires are raging in nine other western states, according to the National Fire Information Center.
Image copyright
Reuters
A colour infrared satellite image shows destroyed homes after the Alameda Fire in Phoenix, Oregon: burned vegetation and property appear grey, surviving vegetation is in red
Oregon Governor Kate Brown told a news conference on Wednesday: “This could be the greatest loss of human life and property due to wildfire in our state’s history.”
Image copyright
Reuters
Red sky and thick smoke in Salem City, Oregon
The fires are blazing across the state’s valleys and along the coast, causing mass evacuations.
One Oregon evacuee, Jody Evans, told NewsChannel 21 about her ordeal.
“Fire on both sides, winds blowing, ash flying – it was like driving through hell,” she said.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee said on Tuesday that more than double the acreage had been torched in the previous 24 hours than had been burned during all of last year in his state.
What’s happening in California?
California – in the middle of a 20-year mega-drought – is experiencing more than two dozen wildfires, including three of its five largest ever.
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The sheriff of Butte County, north-east of San Francisco, said two people had been found dead at one location and a third elsewhere.
One of the three was a motorist who was apparently trying to escape the Bear Fire, police told local media. The Bear Fire has scorched more than 200,000 acres since it began in mid-August.
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The latest deaths mean that fires in the state have now killed at least 11 people since last month. More than 2.3m acres have been burned this year in the state.
California Highway Patrol Officer Ben Draper told the East Bay Times that one of the fatalities discovered on Wednesday was someone who seemed to have been trying to flee the wildfire.
He said investigators believe the unidentified driver had fled his or her car after driving towards a ditch before being overcome by the smoke and flames.
“Somebody was just attempting to flee and it just didn’t work out,” he said.
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]]>The post HHS Sec. Alex Azar announces ‘historic’ COVID-19 vaccine deal with Pfizer appeared first on Virus Reports.
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]]>The post The EU agrees to a historic $860 billion recovery fund as the bloc fights the fallout of coronavirus appeared first on Virus Reports.
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STEPHANIE LECOCQ/Getty
- Leaders of the European Union reached a historic deal Tuesday on an $860 billion recovery fund aimed at the reconstruction of the 27-member bloc.
- By the end of a 4-day summit, the heads of states agreed on distributing 390 billion euros ($446 billion) in grants, and 360 billion euros ($412 billion) in loans after reaching a compromise with a group of nations nicknamed the “Frugal Four.”
- The EU’s seven-year budget, which supports long-term green and digital investments, was ratified at 1.8 trillion euros ($2 trillion).
- New debt from the recovery package is expected to be repaid by 2058.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
EU leaders have agreed on a landmark 750 billion euro ($860 billion) recovery fund for the reconstruction of the region disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
The agreement was made public after European council president, Charles Michel, tweeted “Deal!” early Tuesday.
“These were, of course, difficult negotiations in very difficult times for all Europeans,” he said in a statement.
French president Emmanuel Macron cheered the end of the successful 4-day summit as a historic day for Europe.
After heated debate and difference of opinion on the specifics of grants and loans since last Friday, the heads of states reached common ground on an outline of how to invest the new funds at their first in-person summit in five months.
The leaders finally agreed on distributing 390 billion euros ($446 billion) in non-repayable grants, down from an originally proposed 500 billion euros ($641 billon) which was opposed by the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, and Denmark — the so-called “Frugal Four.”
The 27-member bloc accepted low-interest loans worth 360 billion euros ($412 billion) following a compromise with the “Frugal Four” countries, which had raised concerns on whether the funds would be used only for the health crisis.
Originally, the total recovery fund was set at an amount of 500 billion euros in grants and 250 billion euros in loans.
The massive debt that will surface from the EU’s recovery plan is expected to be repaid by 2058.
During the summit, leaders also agreed on a 1.8 trillion euro ($2 trillion) seven-year budget and COVID-19 recovery package aimed at rebuilding the bloc and supporting investment in “green and digital transitions.”
The positive conclusion of the marathon Brussels summit will relieve many market participants whose hopes were pinned on the EU recovery agreement, said Sam Cooper, a vice president at Silicon Valley Bank.
Germany’s benchmark DAX index gained 1.5% in early European trading, rising to a 5-month high. The pan-continental Euro Stoxx 50 rose 1.3%.
However, the euro remained neutral and stayed at 1.14 against the dollar.
“Although the euro initially sold off in the aftermath in what appears to be a classic case of buy the rumor, sell the fact, many will welcome the developments and view the intraday weakness as an opportunity to buy a ticket for a long-term euro rally,” Cooper said.
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]]>The post EU reaches ‘historic’ deal on pandemic recovery after marathon summit appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union leaders clinched an “historic” deal on a massive stimulus plan for their coronavirus-throttled economies in the early hours of Tuesday, after a fractious summit that lasted almost five days.
European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen do an elbow bump at the end of a news conference following a four-day European summit at the European Council in Brussels, Belgium, July 21, 2020. Stephanie Lecocq/Pool via REUTERS
The agreement paves the way for the European Commission, the EU’s executive, to raise billions of euros on capital markets on behalf of all 27 states, an unprecedented act of solidarity in almost seven decades of European integration.
Summit chairman Charles Michel called the accord, reached at a 5.15 a.m. (0315 GMT), “a pivotal moment” for Europe.
Many had warned that a failed summit amid the coronavirus pandemic would have put the bloc’s viability in serious doubt after years of economic crisis and Britain’s recent departure.
News of the deal in Brussels saw the euro rise to a fresh four-month high of $1.1470.
“This agreement sends a concrete signal that Europe is a force for action,” a jubilant Michel told a news conference.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who spearheaded a push for the deal with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, hailed it as “truly historic”.
Leaders hope the 750 billion euro ($857.33 billion) recovery fund and its related 1.1 trillion euro 2021-2017 budget will help repair the continent’s deepest recession since World War Two after the coronavirus outbreak shut down economies.
But in an unwieldy club of 27, each with a veto power, the summit also exposed faultlines across the bloc that are likely to hinder future decision-making on money as richer northern countries resisted helping out the poorer south.
The Netherlands led a group of ‘frugal’ states with Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, insisted that aid to Italy, Spain and other Mediterranean countries that took the brunt of the pandemic should be mainly in loans, not in non-repayable grants.
“There were a few clashes, but that’s all part of the game,” said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, describing a “warm” relationship with his Italian counterpart Giuseppe Conte.
But Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said the frugals’ negotiating power was here to stay, suggesting Europe’s traditional Franco-German engine will face challenges from smaller states banding together.
ALMOST A SUMMIT RECORD
Frictions peaked on Sunday night as Macron lost his temper with the ‘frugals’, diplomats said, and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki branded them “stingy, egotistic states”.
The bickering spun the summit out, making it the EU’s second-ever longest, just 20 minutes short of a record set in 2000 in Nice, according to Rutte. “We would have broken the record at 6:05, but we ended at 5.45,” he said.
Under the compromise, the Commission will borrow 750 billion euros using its triple-A debt rating, disbursing 390 billion in grants – less than the originally targeted 500 billion – and 360 billion in cheap loans.
Given the difficulties, talk of Europe’s ‘Hamilton’ moment -hailed as such by German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz on Monday in reference to Alexander Hamilton’s decision to federalise debts of U.S. states in 1790 – is overblown.
The summit deal does not set the EU on the path towards a U.S.-style fiscal union, although some see it as a first step.
Rutte’s negotiations won an “emergency brake” to temporarily stop transfers of money from the recovery fund if an EU state was seen as not meeting reform conditions tied to the money.
The ‘frugals’ also secured larger rebates from the next multi-year EU budget, a payback mechanism first won by Britain in the 1980s and which France had hoped to phase out after Brexit.
The recovery plan now faces a potentially difficult passage through the European Parliament and it must be ratified by all member states, which will mean a delay getting the funds to economies that desperately need the help now.
($1 = 0.8748 euros)
Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux, Writing by John Chalmers and Robin Emmott; Editing by Michael Perry and Jon Boyle
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]]>The post ‘Historic corruption’: 2 Republican senators denounce Trump’s commutation of Stone appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>In a statement, Toomey (R-Pa.) noted that the president “clearly has the legal and constitutional authority to grant clemency for federal crimes,” but said commuting Stone’s sentence was a “mistake” due in part to the severity of the charges against him.
“While I understand the frustration with the badly flawed Russia-collusion investigation, in my view, commuting Roger Stone’s sentence is a mistake,” Toomey said. “He was duly convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstruction a congressional investigation conducted by a Republican-led committee.”
Toomey also noted that Attorney General William Barr earlier this week called the prosecution of Stone “righteous” and said his prison sentence of three years and four months was “fair.”
Romney was the lone Republican to vote to convict Trump in his impeachment trial in the Senate, and has openly criticized Trump in ways that his fellow Republicans have avoided. Toomey has occasionally broken with the president, in particular over trade policies.
Barr previously intervened in the Stone case to urge a more lenient sentence for Stone after prosecutors initially asked for seven to nine years behind bars. At the time, Barr expressed rare frustration with Trump, saying that the president’s public comments on Justice Department cases, including Stone’s, were making his job more difficult.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was supportive of the sentence commutation in part because “this was a non-violent, first-time offense” for Stone.
Similarly, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, in announcing the commutation on Friday, said Stone was “a victim of the Russia Hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years.” McEnany also dismissed the charges against Stone as “process-based” and said they “were the product of recklessness borne of frustration and malice.”
Shortly after Romney and Toomey commented, Mueller himself spoke out in rare form, writing a Washington Post op-ed in which he defended his investigation from Trump’s frequent attacks and said Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so,” despite Trump’s move.
“I feel compelled to respond both to broad claims that our investigation was illegitimate and our motives were improper, and to specific claims that Roger Stone was a victim of our office,” Mueller wrote, calling Stone a “central figure” in the investigation.
“When a subject lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government’s efforts to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable,” Mueller said of Stone making false statements to Congress. “It may ultimately impede those efforts.”
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]]>The post ‘Historic corruption’: Romney criticizes Trump for commuting Roger Stone’s prison sentence appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>WASHINGTON — Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, on Saturday criticized President Donald Trump’s decision to commute the prison sentence of Roger Stone, calling it “unprecedented, historic corruption.”
“An American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president,” Romney wrote on Twitter.
Romney, a leading critic of the president, was the first prominent Republican to condemn Trump for his decision to clear Stone’s 40-month prison sentence
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Other Republicans have been quick to rally around the president, taking to Twitter to voice their support for Stone’s commutation.
“In my view it would be justified if President @realDonaldTrump decided to commute Roger Stone’s prison sentence,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tweeted shortly before Stone’s commutation was officially announced.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote that “Trump has the constitutional right to commute sentences where he believes it serves the interests of fairness and justice.”
Democrats have fiercely criticized Stone’s commutation, likening Trump’s actions to that of a “Mafia boss.”
Romney was the only Republican to vote for Trump’s removal from office during the president’s impeachment trial earlier this year.
The White House announced Friday evening that Trump commuted the prison sentence of Stone, a former campaign aide, sparing his longtime adviser from having to report to prison next week.
Stone was sentenced in February to three years, four months in federal prison for obstructing a congressional investigation of Russia’s 2016 presidential election meddling. After the coronavirus pandemic swept the nation, the Bureau of Prisons gave him an extension on reporting to prison. He had been on home confinement in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
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]]>The post Just How Historic Is the Latest Covid-19 Science Meltdown? appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>When The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine pulled an influential pair of Covid-19 papers last Thursday, it was a rare event in scientific publishing. For medical researchers, this was like seeing The Washington Post and The New York Times take down related news stories at the same time—a confluence of editorial failures that raises dire questions about what went wrong and why. But how surprising is this scandal, really? Could these be among “the biggest retractions in modern history,” as one observer described the news about the paper in The Lancet? That depends entirely on how you read history. Science meltdowns of this type—and the “biggest” retractions that ensue—occur with shocking regularity. Again and again, over decades, scientists and the public have had their confidence in the enterprise shaken by these sorts of disturbing revelations; and then, again and again, over decades, everyone has been surprised. Cue Casablanca.
The latest scandal is, indeed, a bad one. At the moment, we don’t know the full story of what went wrong, beyond that the papers’ authors and the journals’ editors decided that they could no longer trust the underlying data. Both studies purportedly drew from the medical records of 96,000 patients with Covid-19, seen at hundreds of different hospitals around the world. The NEJM article reported that those with cardiovascular disease were at increased risk for death from Covid-19, and that the use of certain heart medications did not appear to compound that risk. The Lancet paper reported that the drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine did not help the 15,000 patients who took them; in fact, these medications seemed to cause significant harm.
The giant data set was never made available for inspection by other scientists, which would be critical for demonstrating that results are reproducible. More astounding, the private and secretive company that owned the data, called Surgisphere, denied full access to the papers’ authors too. That’s bad faith, and it violates best practices for respectable science.
The NEJM article didn’t make much of an impact, but the Lancet paper was a different matter. Upon publication, the World Health Organization paused an ongoing trial testing the malaria drugs for Covid-19. The trial only started up again when the journal expressed doubts about the validity of the results last week. (Whiplash notwithstanding, the bulk of the available evidence suggests that hydroxychloroquine is useless against the disease.)
Still, many other retractions have held at least as much significance for the public health and for the scientific fields in which they occurred. Remember Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced doctor whose bogus study linking vaccines to autism bred mistrust of lifesaving immunizations against measles, and cyclical outbreaks of the disease? Or Yoshitaka Fujii, a Japanese anesthesiologist whose misconduct led to the retraction of more than 180 papers in the last decade—a record so far for a single author?
How about Anil Potti, a former superstar at Duke University who fabricated data in his research on cancer therapies, which 60 Minutes called “one of the biggest medical research frauds ever” in 2012? Or John Darsee, a Harvard cardiologist caught falsifying data in a case from the early 1980s that, per the Times, raised “fundamental questions about the self-policing system of science”? You get the picture.
Some leaders in the areas of research affected by these episodes have taken stock and implemented reforms: new policies on data sharing, preregistration of studies, even hiring statisticians and image sleuths to look for suspicious findings in manuscripts. But in treating every new scandal as an aberration, scientists and policymakers allow themselves to sidestep a central issue they have failed to address for many years. Namely: Problematic research is not nearly as rare as the powers that be in science would like us to think, and efforts to self-police haven’t been particularly effective.
Assigning blame in the newest unraveling isn’t hard. The papers’ authors, led by Harvard researcher Mandeep Mehra, shouldn’t have put their names on a paper lacking transparent data. The journals’ editors are on the hook, too, for accepting articles with the same limitations on sharing. And coauthor Sapan Desai, the CEO of Surgisphere—who has written papers in the past on fraud and “moral turpitude” in medical publishing—well, we don’t quite know what he did or didn’t do.
The irony is that both The Lancet and NEJM have been burned before. It was The Lancet, after all, that published Wakefield’s paper linking the MMR vaccine to autism. NEJM was forced to retract a pair of Darsee’s fraudulent articles on heart disease in 1983. Until Thursday, those were two of the just 25 papers NEJM had ever retracted in its 208-year-history. Writing in the wake of the Darsee debacle, Arnold Relman, then the journal’s editor, declared: “Even if coauthors have not actually done any of the laboratory work, they should at least know that the experiments and measurements were carried out as described, and they ought to understand what was done and why.”
Read all of our coronavirus coverage here.
Regardless of what we end up learning about the origins of Surgisphere’s data, it’s reasonably clear that Mehra and his colleagues didn’t ask enough questions about the provenance of the findings. We’ve seen that movie before. Almost exactly five years ago, when the Times reported on the retraction of a Science paper on the effects of political canvassing, coauthor Donald Green explained why he’d never examined the data that was allegedly collected by his graduate student. “It’s a very delicate situation when a senior scientist makes a move to look at a junior scientist’s data set,” he said. “This is his career, and if I reach in and grab it, it may seem like I’m boxing him out.”
As usual, that earlier case of scientific misconduct was described as having “shaken” not only the science community but also “public trust in the way the scientific establishment vets new findings.” Yet the only thing we appeared to learn from the debacle—which was such a big story that it crashed our servers at Retraction Watch—is that, for scientists, it can be better to be polite than sure. Where retractions and the public health fit into that calculation is unclear.
The bigger lesson here—the one that’s been taught repeatedly for decades—is that peer review won’t save us by itself. Even back in 1983, Relman understood that the standard system for evaluating manuscripts was a blind watchman in the fight against scientific fraud. As he noted in his postmortem, the bulk of Darsee’s doctored research appeared in peer-reviewed journals, “and yet in none of the reviews was there enough suspicion to warrant rejection.”
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Thirty-seven years later, a different science editor drew the very same conclusion. In announcing three retractions from his geochemistry journal last Friday (one day after the Surgisphere retractions), he tweeted: “Do not blame the editors or reviewers that originally examined these papers. The problems identified could only be found by deliberately looking for them.” One might reasonably ask today, as one might reasonably have asked so many times before, why reviewers weren’t looking for those problems. The answer to that is simple: Reviewers simply have neither the time nor the incentive to spend the hours it would take to vet even a single manuscript for signs of funny business.
Instead, journals have essentially outsourced that function to a growing corps of sleuths who do that work—often anonymously—out of a sense of duty to the scientific literature. And admitting that would require editors and publishers to be far more honest, in general, about what our current system of peer review can and can’t do. That sort of honesty might be bad for their brands, and for publishers’ profits. Peer review isn’t worthless, of course. Despite its failings and limitations, the process serves a valuable function in keeping egregiously bad science out of the literature (for the most part). But as the history of research misconduct indicates, we need to be clear-eyed about what to demand from peer review, and what expectations are unrealistic.
It’s tempting to blame the latest mishaps, at least, on the scary pace of pandemic science. But while haste definitely is a growth medium for bad science, it’s not a necessary condition. If we often pretend otherwise, it’s because too many editors, publishers, and university officials would rather not acknowledge that more than one apple in the barrel is rotten. Instead, they’d like to think that former Science editor Daniel Koshland had it right when he argued, many years ago, that scientists are as pure as the driven snow. “We must recognize that 99.9999 percent of reports are accurate and truthful,” Koshland wrote in a 1987 editorial. “There is no evidence that the small number of cases that have surfaced require a fundamental change in procedures that have produced so much good science.”
If the late Koshland’s lines were a tweet, we would say it didn’t age well.
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]]>The post Historic Minneapolis restaurant burned down by rioters just days before reopening: ‘It’s really emotional’ appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>The owners of a historic restaurant in Minneapolis that was burned down by rioters told “Fox & Friends” on Monday that seeing the damage was “really emotional.”
Charles Stotts and Kacey White, the owners of Town Talk Diner & Gastropub, said their restaurant was burned down three days before it was set to reopen for outdoor service after months of being closed due to coronavirus.
“We first got a call on Thursday morning that one of our employees had biked down to see if everything was OK and she called us to let us know that the windows were broken out and the fire suppression system was on and it was a mess,” Stotts explained.
CONCERNS ABOUT NEW WAVE OF CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAKS AFTER PROTESTS
“So we went down and we saw it and called the emergency restoration company to come and try to clean up what we could. Later on that day, they put some lumber over the windows because they were blown out.”
He went on to say that around 4:30 in the morning he and his wife Kacey “got a phone call telling us to tune into the TV real quick, so we tuned into the TV and you could see that it was our building that was set on fire.”
As she held back tears, White said once the area was secure and safe she and her husband went to the restaurant to see the damage.
“To actually see the historic sign in the rubble, it’s really emotional,” she said.
Chaos broke out in many cities across the nation over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Video showed Floyd was in custody when Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on the man’s neck. Floyd screamed for help and later died in a hospital. Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, authorities said Friday.
White said insurance will cover part of the cost to rebuild, adding that “that’s just a drop in the bucket for everything that’s lost.”
“We’ve been shut down now for months because of COVID and now how much longer are we out of work,” she said.
White went on to say that insurance “doesn’t cover the bond, the spot that the neighbors keep going to day after day.”
“We have a team that was looking and excited to be back at work … today now that we could have opened for patio service,” she continued. “That team doesn’t have jobs anymore and that location will never get back, so insurance doesn’t cover all of that.”
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Stotts noted that there is a “disconnect between a peaceful, meaningful protest that keeps George Floyd’s name in everybody’s mind and the reason that we’re all talking about this, destruction of a community, its brick and mortars, its businesses, that will be the disconnect that will have me confused for days.”
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]]>The post SpaceX and NASA’s historic launch scrubbed as a result of weather appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>SpaceX and NASA’s historic launch was scrubbed Wednesday as a result of weather conditions.
Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken were scheduled to launch at 4:33 p.m. EDT on May 27 from Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A, which was also used for the Apollo and space shuttle programs. The launch was called off at just 16 minutes and 54 seconds before the launch time.
The mission had an instantaneous launch window, which meant that the flight was scheduled to launch exactly at 4:33 p.m. with no potential to extend the window.
SPACEX, NASA, ASTRONAUTS MAKING FINAL PREPARATIONS: ‘WE’RE GO FOR LAUNCH’
The weather violations included natural lightning and the strength of the electric field in the atmosphere.
“Standing down from launch today due to unfavorable weather in the flight path,” tweeted SpaceX.
“No launch for today – safety for our crew members @Astro_Doug and @AstroBehnken is our top priority,” tweeted NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
The launch would have been the first time a private company, rather than a national government, sent astronauts into orbit. It would also have been the first time that astronauts have launched since U.S. soil since the final Space Shuttle mission in 2011.
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The next launch attempt will be on Saturday at 3:22 p.m. EDT.
Fox News’ John Roberts and The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
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]]>The post SpaceX, NASA close to historic launch: ‘The hatch is closed’ appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>SpaceX and NASA are in the final stages of preparations for the historic launch that will send astronauts back to space from American soil for the first time since 2011.
Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken are scheduled to launch at 4:33 p.m. EDT from Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A, which was also used for the Apollo and space shuttle programs.
The astronauts are in the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft that will carry them to the International Space Station.
SPACEX, NASA, ASTRONAUTS MAKING FINAL PREPARATIONS: ‘WE’RE GO FOR LAUNCH’
NASA astronauts Bob Behnken (R) and Doug Hurley (L) walk out of the Operations and Checkout Building on their way to the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon spacecraft on launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on May 27, 2020 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
“The hatch is closed. The crew is settled in. #LaunchAmerica is on,” tweeted NASA shortly before 3 p.m. EDT.
Earlier the astronauts said farewell to their families, Vice President Mike Pence, second lady Karen Pence, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
President Donald Trump has also arrived at Kennedy Space Center to watch the launch.
The launch will be the first time a private company, rather than a national government, sends astronauts into orbit.
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Launched atop the Falcon 9 rocket, Crew Dragon will accelerate to approximately 17,000 mph, according to NASA, placing the capsule on course for the International Space Station.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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