Brown leaves FEMA payroll

Washington Former FEMA chief Michael Brown is no longer on the agency’s payroll, the Homeland Security Department said Wednesday, ending nearly two months of compensation after he resigned under fire.

Brown stepped down as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Sept. 12 in the wake of the government’s sluggish reaction to Hurricane Katrina and questions about his own disaster response experience. He remained on the FEMA payroll until Nov. 2.

Controversial reporter leaves New York Times

New York The New York Times announced Wednesday that reporter Judith Miller, who went to jail for 85 days rather than divulge a source in the CIA leak investigation, has resigned, effective immediately.

Miller has become a contentious figure in journalism, both for her actions in the leak case and for her reporting on Iraqi weapons programs in the months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. While New York Times editors had hailed her for going to jail to protect a source, the paper’s highest-ranking editor had also challenged some of her actions in the leak case, and the paper had publicly criticized her pre-war reporting.

In a letter to be published in the paper today, Miller wrote that “I have chosen to resign because over the last few months, I have become the news, something a New York Times reporter never wants to be.”

NRA challenges San Francisco gun ban

San Francisco The National Rifle Association sued Wednesday to overturn an ordinance San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approved a day earlier that bans handgun possession and sales of firearms in the city.

A state appeals court in 1982 nullified a similar gun ban largely on grounds that the city cannot enact an ordinance that conflicts with state law, which allows for the sale and possession of handguns and ammunition.