Latest News

His departure had been widely expected, although as late as Thursday afternoon he was refusing to answer questions on the subject. The open slot at the Energy Department adds to a constellation of vacancies at the top of related agencies: the Environmental Protection Agency, the Transportation Department and the Interior Department.

President Obama said in a statement that Dr. Chu "brought to the Energy Department a unique understanding of both the urgent challenge presented by climate change and the tremendous opportunity that clean energy represents for our economy." The president said that in the four years of Dr. Chu's tenure, "we have doubled the use of renewable energy, dramatically reduced our dependence on foreign oil, and put our country on a path to win the global race for clean energy jobs."

He also praised Dr. Chu for expanded support for research into "groundbreaking innovations that could transform our energy future."

Dr. Chu presided over a $90 billion surge in expenditures in which the Obama administration tried to use the Energy Department to accomplish twin goals: stimulating the economy, and advancing energy efficiency and clean energy production. Dr. Chu said that some of the money would be used to "swing for the fences," promoting a variety of ventures, of which some were certain to fail. But the successes would more than compensate for the failures, he said, especially in the area of research and development, where key scientific breakthroughs could nurture whole new industries, he said.

The commercial verdict may not be delivered for some years to come on many of those investments. The initial outlook for the Obama administration's clean energy programs like wind and sun has been dimmed by the success of an Energy Department initiative of the 1990s, developing a method for drilling horizontally in shale formations and fracturing the rock to liberate natural gas, known as fracking, which cut the price of fossil energy just as the renewable technologies appeared poised to reach price parity.

Dr. Chu, a physicist, is the first cabinet secretary to come into office with a Nobel Prize (an honor he shared in 1997 for his work with supercooled atoms) and the first scientist to lead the department. His 15 predecessors as secretary included a dentist, an admiral from the nuclear navy, a former electric utility lobbyist and a variety of political figures.

But his scientific stature was such that he escaped the most severe criticism by Republicans when the department faced its biggest attack, over the bankruptcy of Solyndra, an innovative solar equipment company that got a $535 million loan guarantee from the department but declared bankruptcy because the market for its product had collapsed. Republicans accused the White House of cronyism, noting that among Solyndra's investors were some Obama campaign donors. But Dr. Chu was generally exempted by Republicans, or at worst, written off as outside his depth in financial matters.

While he had the political skills to manage the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its 4,000 employees, his job before he was chosen by Mr. Obama to be energy secretary, he also showed a physicist's penchant for speaking the truth plainly, in a way that people in politics generally avoid.

In September 2008, before Mr. Obama was elected, he told The Wall Street Journal, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," a quote that Republicans in Congress have used to hammer him. Three months earlier, in a lecture he gave in Washington on energy, he said that new houses could be made energy-efficient with an investment of an extra $1,000, "but the American consumer would rather have a granite countertop."

And he demonstrated technical skill almost unheard-of for a cabinet secretary. He was dispatched by Mr. Obama to Houston to take control of some of the federal efforts after the Deepwater Horizon blowout of April 2010. He assembled a team of nuclear physicists to consider the options, and made some key decisions.

Also still uncertain is the fate of a giant infrastructure nurtured by Dr. Chu's Energy Department for manufacturing batteries for electric cars, because demand for the cars has not reached anticipated levels. Appearing on Thursday at the Washington Auto Show, he indicated that the administration was unlikely to reach its goal of one million electric vehicles on the roads by 2015.

And the more exotic research projects – in advanced batteries, or technologies for making gasoline from plants and trees, or improving on photosynthesis as a way to store the sun's energy – were always expected to take far longer to pay off.

Meanwhile, despite enthusiasm from Dr. Chu, the department's efforts to nurture the construction of new nuclear plants have mostly fallen flat; inheriting a $17.5 billion fund for loan guarantees for new nuclear energy plants, and proposing an additional $35 billion, the department never succeeded in making a loan. Following up on a campaign promise by Mr. Obama, his department closed down the effort to open a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, but did not reach the point of starting a process to find another site. And the department has lagged in its efforts to clean up radioactive wastes left over from decades of nuclear weapons production.

A vocal proponent of efforts to control greenhouse gas emissions, he served in an era when his party could not get a bill through Congress to institute a "cap-and-trade" system, or any other method, to limit such emissions.

Dr. Chu sent a letter to the department staff early on Friday, focusing on the department's work on climate change, clean energy and research. He said he and his wife were eager to return to California and that he would return to academic work.

Dr. Chu will turn 65 on Feb 28. He told colleagues he would stay in place until the end of the annual "summit" of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program, known as Arpa-e, an energy version of the better-known Darpa, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The action was announced Friday by Derek Fisher, the union president, who made the move in conjunction with four other players on the union's interim executive committee. Hunter, 70, is under fire for questionable business practices and nepotism, which were documented exhaustively in a recently released audit. Those concerns are also the subject of a continuing investigation by the United States attorney's office in Manhattan and the federal Department of Labor.

Ron Klempner, the union's longtime deputy counsel, has been appointed interim executive director in Hunter's place.

"Unfortunately, it appears that union management has lost sight of the N.B.P.A.'s only task, to serve the best interests of their membership," Fisher said in a statement. "This is the reason I called for a review almost a year ago. The findings of that review confirm this unfortunate truth, and we must now move forward as players."

Fisher added, "Immediate change is necessary."

Barring a settlement in the next two weeks, Hunter's fate will probably be decided on Feb. 16, when the union holds its annual meeting at All-Star weekend. Players will hear from the law firm that conducted the audit, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and are then expected to vote on whether to retain Hunter.

The move to suspend Hunter came in tandem with the reformation of the executive committee, which had lapsed into near nonexistence, because a majority of the players on the nine-man committee either had their terms expire or were out of the league.

Fisher, who played briefly for the Dallas Mavericks this season, created the interim executive committee with the four other board members who are still in the league: Chris Paul, James Jones, Roger Mason and Matt Bonner. The decision to place Hunter on leave was unanimous, according to a union statement.

"We ask for the cooperation, trust and patience of the players, their representatives and some of our hard working N.B.P.A. staff as we navigate through this situation," Fisher said. "But rest assured that our goal is to do what is right for the players and we will emerge stronger than before."

The players are also retaining outside counsel to assist them "in moving the N.B.P.A. forward through All-Star weekend," the union's statement said. In the meantime, Fisher — who is not currently on an N.B.A. roster — plans to work from the union's offices in Harlem.

Hunter's suspension was greeted with immediate support by a number of players and agents, including the agent Arn Tellem, who earlier this week sent a letter urging his clients to fire Hunter.

"This is a necessary first step to enable the players to remedy this unfortunate situation," Tellem said Friday. "The players need a leader of integrity and strong moral character who will put the needs of the membership first and champion their cause."

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said the proposal would guarantee free coverage of birth control "while respecting religious concerns."

Churches and religious organizations that object to providing birth control coverage on religious grounds would not have to pay for it.

Under the proposal, the administration said, "eligible organizations would not have to contract, arrange, pay or refer for any contraceptive coverage to which they object on religious grounds." Female employees of such organizations would receive contraceptive coverage through separate individual health insurance policies, without having to pay premiums or co-payments.

The proposed rule is somewhat ambiguous about exactly who would pay the costs.

Insurers would bear the initial cost, but would save money in the long run because they would "experience lower costs from improvements in women's health and fewer childbirths," the administration said.

The White House has struggled for more than two years to balance its commitment to women's rights and health care for all with the need to protect religious liberty. The contraception plan provoked a furor during last year's presidential campaign, and the administration was forced to say that it would provide an accomodation for groups with religious objections. The subject of contraception coverage became part of a broader campaign dialogue over women's issues.

The new health care law generally requires employers to provide women with coverage at no cost for "preventive care and screenings." Under this provision, the administration says that most health plans must cover contraceptives for women free of charge.

Specifically, the administration says, employers must cover sterilization and the full range of contraceptive methods approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including emergency contraceptive pills, like those known as Ella and Plan B One-Step. Employers who do not provide such coverage will be subject to financial penalties.

The administration on Friday proposed a complicated arrangement to finance contraceptive coverage for employees of religious organizations that serve as their own insurers. The federal government would require health insurance companies to defray the cost indirectly, by paying higher fees for the privilege of selling health insurance to millions of Americans in new online markets run by the federal government.

The federal government was already planning to charge user fees to pay for operation of those marketplaces, known as insurance exchanges. The cost of the fees can be passed on to consumers.

Administration officials also proposed a new definition of "religious employers" who can be exempted from the requirement to provide contraceptive coverage.

The exemption would be available to churches, other houses of worship and certain affiliated organizations.

Under the proposal, the administration said, "a house of worship would not be excluded from the exemption because, for example, it provides charitable social services to persons of different religious faiths or employs persons of different religious faiths."

The administration had previously agreed to allow exemptions for certain religious employers. But church groups said the exemption was so narrow that it was almost meaningless.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a noncommittal statement saying he welcomed the opportunity to study the new proposed regulation.

Stephen F. Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America, said the proposed changes were "an important win for religious institutions."

Under the original standard, a religious employer could not have qualified for the exemption if it employed or served large numbers of people of a different faith, as many Catholic hospitals, universities and social service agencies do.

The administration said that the new definition, though simpler, "would not expand the universe of employer plans that would qualify for the exemption beyond that which was intended" in a final regulation issued last year.