In brief: Remains ID’d as missing U. Va. student’s

Charlottesville, Va. – Remains found nearly a week ago in a rural area of Virginia are those of a missing university student, authorities said Friday, as they turned their attention to filing possible additional charges against the suspect accused of abducting her.

University of Virginia sophomore Hannah Graham, 18, disappeared Sept. 13 after a night out with friends. The remains were found Oct. 18 about 12 miles from the Charlottesville campus, in a heavily wooded area of Albemarle County.

The state medical examiner’s office confirmed that the remains were Graham’s.

The man Graham was last seen with, 32-year-old Jesse Leroy Matthew Jr., has been charged with abduction with intent to defile Graham.

Egyptian troops killed at Sinai checkpoint

El-Arish, Egypt – A coordinated assault on an army checkpoint in the Sinai Peninsula killed 30 Egyptian troops Friday, making it the deadliest single attack in decades on the military, which has been struggling to stem a wave of violence by Islamic extremists since the overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but officials said the assault bore the hallmarks of the country’s most active militant group – named Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, or Champions of Jerusalem – which has claimed a string of past attacks on security forces.

Reagans’ astrologer Joan Quigley dies

San Francisco – Joan Quigley, the astrologer who helped determine President Ronald Reagan’s schedule and claimed to have convinced him to soften his stance toward the Soviet Union, has died at the age of 87.

Quigley died Tuesday at her San Francisco home after an unspecified illness, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday.

Nancy Reagan began consulting Quigley after the 1981 assassination attempt on her husband. She wanted to keep him from getting shot again, Nancy Reagan wrote in her 1989 memoir, “My Turn.”

Entertainer Merv Griffin had told her that Quigley had predicted that the day the president was shot was going to be a dangerous one for him.

Quigley would go on to advise Nancy Reagan on dates for presidential trips and news conferences.

The consultations were revealed to great embarrassment for the White House in a 1988 book by former White House chief of staff Donald Regan, who blamed the first lady for his ouster a year earlier. Regan said almost every major move and decision the Reagans made during his time as chief of staff were cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up horoscopes. He did not know her identity.

The woman was, in fact, Joan Quigley, an heiress and Republican political activist. Quigley told the Associated Press in 1988 after her identity was revealed that she was a “serious, scientific astrologer.”

“I am really not one of these clowns, and I really don’t like this circus atmosphere,” she said.