NEWS SUMMARY AT THIS HOUR-MONDAY 10/1/2018

                                  (UPDATES, EDITING, EXPANSION UNTIL 745 AM)

The United States and Canada have cut a last minute trade deal Sunday night ahead of the midnight deadline for Canada to join the United States and Mexico in a trilateral trade arrangement.

Both sides reportedly made concessions to reach the last minute deal.  Word is that Canada will open up its dairy market to American producers and the US will not impose tariffs on cars made in Canada as President Trump had suggested.

Today is Election Day in Canada's second most populous province, Quebec.  Four political parties are expected to be dividing up the 125 seats in Quebec's National Assembly when the votes are counted tonight.

The last polls showed a small lead for the CAQ Party led by Francois Legault, which advocates for 20 percent reduction of immigration into the province and that all immigrants should accept that Quebec is a secular society that speaks the French language.

Running a close second is the currently governing Liberal Party  whose leader Premier Philippe Couillard stirred up controversy when he said a family grocery bill is 75 dollars a week in a recent media interview.

Also in the running are the Parti Quebecois and the most left leaning party, Quebec Solidaire.  They will both win seats as well with the mainstream media projecting the notion of no party winning a majority.

A political party committed to reducing US military presence has won the election in the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa.    This is the second victory in a row for the party and the first for its new leader Denny Tamaki who will become governor,   His party defeated the local party backed by Japan's mainstream political parties by 55 to 44 percent.

Tamaki is of mixed race heritage.   He has a Okinawan mother and a US Marine father, whom he has never met.  He says his background will help him in the fight to cut back US military presence, which many Okinawans associate with airplane noise, the danger of aircraft accidents and crimes committed by US military personnel.

There's a lot of political drama in the UK amidst the Conservative Party conference with many of the faithful dismayed by Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit position, which she defended again as the only way forward to reaching a deal.

Her Brexit Minister, Dominic Raab, is making a tougher sounding speechy today suggesting a withdraw from the European Union unilaterally if there is no deal.

Speaking to a crowd at a "Brexit Means Brexit" rally yesterday "Mr. Brexit" Nigel Farage said that the current situation with Brexit is:

".....about a matter of trust, a matter of trust between the people and our political class, who are doing their very best to dilute, to delay, to stop.  They are trying to betray Brexit...."

From Syria, word that one of the opposition groups has begun to comply with the Russian-Turkish agreement on a demilitarized zone in Idlib province.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the rebel group Faliq al-Sham is pulling its troops and heavy weapons out.

Opponents of the Assad regime in Syria are expected to move their heavy weapons out of the populated areas of Idlib by  October 10th and to be gone entirely by October 15th.

The demilitarized zone is designed to prevent civilian casualties in any fighting in northern Syria.

Iran says its launched missiles into eastern Syria in retaliation for the Saturday September 22nd attack on a military parade that killed 24.   The eight missiles were launched into an area of Syria where forces of ISIS are operating.

Rescue efforts continue in Indonesia on the island of Sulawesi where at least 844 are now reported dead.   Indonesia says it needs heavy equipment in the area following the 7.7 magnitude quake and resulting tsunami.

Typhoon Trami slammed into Japan's main island of Honshu late Sunday into early Monday.   Winds of 75 to 100 miles per hour were experienced in the Greater Tokyo Area.   Two are reported dead and more than 150 injured.   One of those killed was a truck driver caught in a landslide caused by the heavy rain accompanying the storm.

And the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology has been announced.   Two cancer researchers, James P. Allison of the University of Texas and Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University in Japan are the winners.

They have developed "immune checkpoint therapy" to treat advanced forms of skin cancer.

Allison and Honjo will share a prize worth 1.01 million dollars.