Railroaded: Negotiators last night reached a tentative deal to avert a nationwide freight rail strike. Union members will have to vote to ratify it. 

  Amtrak had already cancelled long distance passenger service in anticipation of a strike tomorrow by the 115,000 people who operate freight trains. While Amtrak is not affected by the freight unions, they do use many of the same tracks and shut down to avoid having passengers stranded.

  Most of the union leaders had already agreed to a significant pay raise, but the engineers and conductors were holding out over requirements that put them on call for several days at a time, sometimes working 12-hour shifts with little notice, and penalizing them when they call in sick.

  Rail freight has been critical to the economy since the invention of the freight container that makes it easy to move cargo from ship, to train, to truck. It’s a critical link in the movement of goods. Freight trains move roughly two-fifths of long-distance American freight and one-third of exports. 

  With more demand for all kinds of goods from televisions to exercise machines during the pandemic, the freight lines have been making record profits. The Association of American Railroads, an industry group, claims that a strike  would cost the economy more than $2 billion per day and create widespread product shortages and job losses. 

  One of the union presidents told The NY Times, ““It’s no longer about money — it’s about unpaid time off to go to the doctor without getting fired.”

The War Zone: A volley of Russian cruise missiles broke a dam in the industrial Ukrainian industrial city of Kryvyi Rih on Wednesday, sending water rushing downstream.

  Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelensky said that Russia “continues to wage a war against civilians” and promised “a fair response and retribution” for the missile strike. “All the occupiers can do is to sow panic, create an emergency situation, try to leave people without light, heat, water and food,” he wrote on the web service Telegram.

  Social media video showed pedestrian bridges along the Inhulets River being washed away and water rising along the banks in the city, threatening flooding.

  UN Secretary-General António Guterres spoke yesterday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and later told reporters that he thinks an end to the Ukraine war isn’t close. “A ceasefire is not in sight,” he said. “I would be lying if I said it would happen.”

  But answering a shouted question from a CBS News correspondent in Izyum, Zelensky said, “The main thing is that we are coming back and we are on the way to the end.”

The Long Goodbye: As many as half a million British mourners are expected to file past the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II as she lies in state at Buckingham Palace. On top of the Queen’s coffin sits the Imperial State Crown, set with nearly 3,000 stones, including 2,868 diamonds, 273 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, and five rubies.

  The coffin was brought to the palace on a gun carriage in a military procession followed by King Charles III and his sons William and Harry among other family members.

Free Returns: Yvon Chouinard, the mountaineer who founded the Patagonia clothing and gear company becoming a billionaire, has given away the company, putting it in a trust dedicated to fighting climate change. The company is valued at about $3 billion and makes $100 million a year in profits.

  The 83-year-old Chouinard told The NY Times, “Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people.” 

The Obit Page: Rommy Hunt Revson, who invented the simple fabric and cloth hair band that became known as the Scrunchie, has died at age 78.

  Recently divorced from John Revson, an heir to the cosmetics fortune, Revson was living in Southampton, New York in the summer of 1986 and instead of going to the beach she became obsessed with creating a replacement for plastic to hold back a woman’s ponytail.

  The Scrunchie became a common object, worn by millions of women. 

The Spin Rack: The IRS is refunding $1.2 billion in late filing penalties for the tax years 2019 and 2020 in an acknowledgment of the trouble people had filing returns during the first two pandemic years. The average refund check will be about $750. — Millions of Americans next year will get an increase in their Social Security checks of roughly 8.75 percent, a reflection of the rising cost of living. — R&B star R. Kelly was convicted yesterday in federal court on child pornography charges for making videos of himself abusing his 14-year-old goddaughter. Kelly had already been sentenced to 30 years on separate charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.

Thrown for a Loss: On a subject we’ve been avoiding, CNN now reports that Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady, the seven time Super Bowl winner, and his model wife Gisele Bundchen, are living separately because of a spat over his return to football at age 45. The tabloids have been on this for weeks.

  Brady retired last February only to announce his return to the game six weeks later. His wife is reported to be, putting it mildly, unhappy about it. Brady took an unexplained 11-day leave of absence during the summer training weeks to “deal with personal things,” according to the Bucs coach.

  The QB said in a recent interview, “I haven’t had a Christmas in 23 years and I haven’t had a Thanksgiving in 23 years, I haven’t celebrated birthdays with people that I care about that are born from August to late January. And I’m not able to be at funerals and I’m not able to be at weddings.” His wife, evidently, has noticed.

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