Disaster

In what may be a very symbolic, if not necessarily humorous flame out, D.C. Fire and EMS are working to put out a blaze Wednesday afternoon in the Watergate complex. The fire is on the 13th floor at a building in the 700 block of New Hampshire Avenue NW, officials said. Several floors have smoky conditions, officials said quoted by NBC.

The blaze supposedly broke out as Washington focused on another political scandal as Donald Trump was blasted BuzzFeed and CNN over a “fake news” report.  It's not clear whether the building has been evacuated.

In what could be a giant blow to Big Pharma, Donald Trump has asked Robert F Kennedy Jr to chair a commission on vaccination safety ….and he has agreed. “President-elect Trump has some doubts about the current vaccine policies and he has questions about it,”  Kennedy told reporters after a meeting with Donald at the Trump Tower on Tuesday.

Since Donald Trump won the US election, small business optimism has exploded higher (from 94.9 in Oct to 105.8 in Dec). At the most optimistic since 2004, the last 2 months have seen the biggest spike in hope since 1980's Reagan era spike.

Notably, as @SentimentTrader notes, extreme small business optimism preceded: the '87 crash, '95 rally, '97 crash, '98 crash, '00 crash, and the '03-'06 rally.

A new theory suggests that a raging coal fire on board RMS Titanic, started before the ship had left on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, contributed to its demise. New evidence points to marks found on the hull where the ship came into contact with an iceberg. The marks point to a well-documented coal fire that had broken out in that part of the ship before Titanic had left Southampton on its ill-fated journey. It appears that the liner was rushing to get to New York while handicapped with a weakened hull and a smouldering fire below deck.

The US Coast Guard said on Thursday morning it was responding to a fire on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana.

A Coast Guard news release says the fire was reported around 2:30 a.m. Thursday on an oil platform about 80 miles south of Grand Isle, Louisiana. It was not immediately clear whose platform it was.

The Coast Guard says four people aboard the platform evacuated and were rescued by a supply vessel. No injuries have been reported.