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His surname comes from the Russian word for hope — and for hundreds of thousands of antiwar Russians, that is, improbably enough, what he has become.

Boris B. Nadezhdin is the only candidate running on an antiwar platform with a chance of getting on the ballot to oppose President Vladimir V. Putin in Russia’s presidential election in March. Russians who are against the war have rushed to sign his official petition inside and outside the country, hoping to supply enough signatures by a Jan. 31 deadline for him to succeed in joining the race.

They have braved subzero temperatures in the Siberian city of Yakutsk. They have snaked down the block in Yekaterinburg. They have jumped in place to stay warm in St. Petersburg and flocked to outposts in Berlin, Istanbul and Tbilisi, Georgia.

They know that election officials might bar Mr. Nadezhdin from the ballot, and if he is allowed to run, they know he will never win. They don’t care.

“Boris Nadezhdin is our collective ‘No,’” said Lyosha Popov, a 25-year-old who has been collecting signatures for Mr. Nadezhdin in Yakutsk, south of the Arctic Circle. “This is simply our protest, our form of protest, so we can somehow show we are against all this.”

The grass-roots mobilization in an authoritarian country, where national elections have long been a Potemkin affair, has injected energy into a Russian opposition movement that has been all but obliterated: Its most promising leaders have been exiled, jailed or killed in a sweeping crackdown on dissent that has escalated with the war.

With protests essentially banned in Russia and criticism of the military outlawed, the long lines to support Mr. Nadezhdin’s candidacy have offered antiwar Russians a rare public communion with kindred spirits whose voices have been drowned out in a wave of jingoism and state brutality for nearly two years.

Many of them don’t particularly know about or care for Mr. Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old physicist who was a member of Russia’s Parliament from 1999 to 2003, and who openly acknowledges lacking the charisma of anti-Kremlin crusaders like Aleksei A. Navalny, the jailed opposition leader.

But with a draconian censorship law stifling criticism of the war, his supporters see backing him as the only legal way left in Russia to demonstrate their opposition to Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. And they like what Mr. Nadezhdin is saying — about the conflict driving Russia off a cliff; about the need to free political prisoners, bring the troops home and make peace with Ukraine; about Russia’s anti-gay laws being “idiotic.”

“The purpose of my participation is to oppose Putin’s approach, which is leading the country to a dead end, into a rut of authoritarianism, militarization and isolation,” Mr. Nadezhdin said in a written response to questions from The New York Times.

“The more votes that a candidate against Putin’s approach and the ‘special military operation’ receives, the greater the chances are for peace and change in Russia,” he added, using the Kremlin’s term for the war to avoid running afoul of Russian law.

He has dismissed questions about his safety, noting in a YouTube appearance this past week that, in any case, the “tastiest and sweetest years of my life are already in the past.”

The Kremlin tightly controls the election process to ensure Mr. Putin’s inevitability as the victor, but allows nonthreatening opponents to run — to provide a veneer of legitimacy, drive turnout at the polls and give Russians opposed to his rule an outlet for venting their dissatisfaction. So far, 11 people, including Mr. Nadezhdin and Mr. Putin, have been allowed to register as potential candidates and are collecting signatures.

Many of Mr. Nadezhdin’s newfound supporters accept that he might have initially been viewed as just a useful tool for the Kremlin — a 1990s-era liberal with a folksy grandpa vibe who is willing to play the state’s game.

Of particular suspicion is his work in the 1990s as an aide to Sergei V. Kiriyenko, a prime minister under President Boris N. Yeltsin who is now the top Kremlin official responsible for overseeing domestic politics.

Skeptics also point to Mr. Nadezhdin’s presence on state television, where he has contributed to an illusion of open debate by serving as a token liberal voice, there to be shouted down by pro-Putin propagandists. Opposition figures the Kremlin considers a real threat, such as Mr. Navalny, have long been barred from appearing, let alone running for president.

Mr. Nadezhdin has countered that if he were a Kremlin marionette, he would not be scrambling for signatures and money, nor would the main state television channel have excluded his name from its list of presidential candidates.

“He may well turn out to be a decorative candidate, but if so, there’s a sense that everything hasn’t gone according to plan,” said Tatyana Semyonova, a 32-year-old programmer who showed up at a crowded courtyard in Berlin to sign her name.

She said she didn’t have any particular affinity for Mr. Nadezhdin but was signing as an act of protest.

Pavel Laptev, a 37-year-old designer standing next to Ms. Semyonova in line, said that even the smallest chance to change something should not be wasted. “Even if he is a decorative candidate, once he has all this power, maybe he will decide he’s not so decorative,” he said.

The unexpected groundswell of support for Mr. Nadezhdin has presented the Kremlin’s political maestros with a thorny question in the first presidential vote since Mr. Putin launched his invasion: Will they allow an antiwar candidate of any stripe to stand for election?

“I will be surprised, surprised but delighted, if I see you on the electoral ballot,” Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist based in Berlin, told Mr. Nadezhdin this past week during a YouTube show. “I’m not convinced that our political management at this stage in its development, of its evolution, can afford to take such risks.”

Mr. Nadezhdin’s campaign says it has far surpassed the 100,000 total signatures required, but a candidate is allowed to submit only a maximum of 2,500 from any single Russian region. On Friday, his campaign said it was on track to gather enough signatures from regions inside Russia and would not need any from abroad.

But even if Mr. Nadezhdin amasses enough signatures, the Russian authorities could find a way to disqualify him. The long, visible lines of support, he has said, will make that harder to do.

Many antiwar Russians initially coalesced around Ekaterina S. Duntsova, a little-known former television journalist and local politician who launched a campaign in November and quickly rose to prominence. But the Central Electoral Commission rejected her application to become a candidate because of what she called trivial mistakes in her paperwork.

She has since backed Mr. Nadezhdin.

Members of Mr. Navalny’s team, including his wife, have also publicly backed the former lawmaker. So has one of Russia’s most famous rock stars, Yuri Shevchuk, and another influential exiled opposition activist, Maxim Katz.

In Yakutsk, a frigid city in eastern Siberia, it was minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit when Mr. Popov, the head of the campaign there, started collecting signatures. Eventually, the weather warmed up and the crowd increased.

Few places downtown would allow Mr. Popov to set up a stand in support of an anti-Putin candidate. But he persuaded a shopping mall to give the operation a spot in a corridor, where people can sign their names at a school desk and folding table.

“If people don’t know Boris Nadezhdin, I can tell them who he is,” Mr. Popov said. But he emphasizes that he is not there because of Mr. Nadezhdin. “I am here collecting signatures against Putin,” he tells those who stop by. “We’re collecting signatures against Putin, yes, against military action.”

Those signing must give their full names and passport details — in effect a ready-made list of Russians who oppose the war — spurring fears of reprisal.

But that has not deterred Karen Danielyan, a 20-year-old from Tver, about 100 miles northwest of Moscow, whose entire adult life so far has been spent with Russia at war. “The fear that this will continue further is much stronger and heavier than the fear that they will do something to me for working as a signature collector,” he said.

Mr. Nadezhdin portrays himself as an unremarkable politician who decided to run as an “act of despair” and found himself accidentally at the forefront of a movement.

“But, comrades, I do have one quality — I endlessly love my family and my country,” he said this past week in a YouTube appearance alongside Ms. Schulmann, the political analyst. “I endlessly believe that Russia isn’t worse than any other country and can achieve, with the help of democracy, elections and the will of the people, tremendous results.”

Ms. Schulmann told him he would be judged by what happens to the people who have signed his petition.

“I won’t betray anyone,” he said. “I will fight.”

For Jürgen Klopp, the montages will be long and they will be emotional. There will, naturally, be artful drone shots of Liverpool’s skyline. There will be slow-motion footage of red-and-white scarves, twirling and writhing. There will, absolutely, be a stirring, possibly classical score.

But most of all, in the wake of Klopp’s announcement on Friday that he will step down as Liverpool manager, there will be images of all the memories he made: the bus parades and the trophy lifts, the fist pumps and the bear hugs, the rich and wide iconography of glory.

The chances are that when they come — and they will come, in great number, as Klopp’s last game at the club rolls around toward the end of May — they will not linger too long on the immediate aftermath of a 2-2 draw with West Bromwich Albion in 2015, a game that lifted Liverpool to the dizzying heights of ninth place in the Premier League.

And yet, more than eight years later, that night has the feel both of a signpost of what was to come and an encapsulation of how it would be achieved. Klopp had been in charge of Liverpool for only a couple of months back then. In the piercing clarity of hindsight, though, that match looks an awful lot like the moment Liverpool became his club.

To recap: A patchwork Liverpool team had required a late goal from Divock Origi — another leitmotif, there — to rescue a point at home to a West Brom squad battling relegation. At the end of the game, Klopp insisted his players link hands and walk over to the Kop, the soaring grandstand that is home to Liverpool’s most ardent fans, and thank them for their efforts.

In Germany, this is standard practice. Klopp had grown up knowing that teams do it, or are supposed to do it, after pretty much every game, regardless of the result. In the dim and distant past of England in 2015, though, it was unfamiliar. It was not the sort of thing English teams did. Or worse: It was a foreign affectation.

And so the fans did what they always do when faced with an unsolicited import: They immediately misunderstood it, mocking Klopp for encouraging his players to “celebrate” a draw at home with West Brom.

The perception of the Liverpool that Klopp has built in the years since makes it difficult to imagine that the Liverpool he found, upon agreeing to become its manager in October 2015, can ever have existed. It was not just that the team he inherited was not especially successful — the Luis Suárez-inspired title challenge of 2014 a lone beacon in a lustrum of mediocrity — it was that it lacked any real idea of how it might ever be successful again.

The club’s owners, Fenway Sports Group, had made several smart appointments in an attempt to turn it into a bastion of modernity — Michael Edwards, the sporting director, and Ian Graham, who would become director of research — but there had been resistance to their input from Brendan Rodgers, the coach. For years, the club seemed to have been lacking consensus, direction and, to some extent, purpose.

That had leached out into the stands. All fan bases contain multitudes of opinion, of course, but Liverpool’s had seemed irreconcilably split for years. Some liked the data-driven American owners. Some hated them. Some thought it their duty to protest. Some thought that bordered on treason. Some supported Rodgers. Some pined for the return of trophy-winning predecessors like Kenny Dalglish, or Rafael Benítez. Each camp thought the other not just misguided but somehow malicious.

A manager’s legacy is, of course, something that soccer believes can be relatively easily gauged. For clubs like Liverpool, it is measured in silver and gold: It is a thing that can be weighed. And by those standards, Klopp will be assessed more than kindly.

He led Liverpool to a Premier League title, a Champions League, a Club World Cup, a European Super Cup, an F.A. Cup and a League Cup. (He may yet win more trophies, of course: Liverpool remains alive in four competitions this season, and has reached the final of one of them already.) He is, without question, the club’s finest manager of the modern era, one who certainly warrants inclusion in the pantheon of Premier League greats.

There are other milestones, too, that burnish his credentials. He has recorded several of the highest points tallies in Premier League history. At one point, he had taken 106 out of an available 108 points in the self-proclaimed best league in the world. Between 2018 and 2022, he led Liverpool to three Champions League finals in five years.

In the tribal vapidity of soccer fandom, of course, that is taken as a sign that he should have won more. Even Klopp might, at times, wonder whether life might have been a little more enjoyable had Pep Guardiola and Manchester City not been around. A kinder reading would suggest that not only was the consistency of Klopp’s Liverpool astonishing, but that occasionally falling short served to humanize him and his team.

The very best managers, though, should not solely be assessed on how much they win, but on what they leave behind. It was on Klopp’s watch that Liverpool was transformed from a faded giant, a nostalgia brand, into probably — at least alongside Manchester City — the most progressive, the most cutting-edge of the game’s modern superpowers.

Klopp, proudly, is a natural delegator. He did not understand how the club’s data department reached its conclusions. He did not pretend that he knew how their algorithms or data pipelines worked. But he knew that he trusted their judgment, and that he wanted to work with them rather than against them.

And so, instead of resisting, he empowered Edwards and Graham to lead the club’s recruitment efforts. One story goes that when Klopp wanted to sign the German playmaker Julian Brandt in the summer of 2017, Edwards, not exactly a shrinking violet, had to be characteristically intractable to persuade him that Mohamed Salah was the better bet.

The same approach played out in almost every facet of the club’s existence. He handed over control of the players’ diet to Mona Nemmer, the nutritionist he had brought in from Bayern Munich. They used to joke that one day the club should publish a recipe book. Nemmer assumed they were joking, anyway. The book came out in 2021.

And, most of all, Klopp made a point of outsourcing to the fans the job of making Anfield imposing once more, the sort of place where West Bromwich Albion did not come in thinking it might steal a point, or three. At times, that required being a little belligerent, exhorting the fans to be more vocal, even encouraging those who did not want to join in to hand their tickets to someone else.

It was, though, worth it. For eight years, what has marked Liverpool out has been the sense of unity, something he — quite deliberately — engineered. That awkward moment of communion against West Brom was the first step in rebuilding the bond between field and stands, between players and fans.

That, ultimately, is what the very best managers do. No individual is ever bigger than a team. Players and coaches are fleeting, temporary. The institution of the club is eternal. But just occasionally a figure comes along who, through sheer force of personality, can bend and shape and twist a club’s identity, whose charisma is so great that it can change the code of a place.

Liverpool is — not uniquely, but perhaps more than most — prone to that. To some extent, it yearns for it. It is a club that believes ardently in the Great Man Theory of history, a place that is desperate for a leader to follow, an idol to worship, a creed to believe. Klopp fit the bill perfectly.

The Liverpool that he will leave behind in May is identifiably his, different from the Liverpool that he found, to the Liverpool that came before. Its style of play, rooted in the high-pressing philosophy that Klopp brought from Germany, is his, but so is its belief in data, its urge to experiment, its conviction that success is collective, not individual. All of that owes something to Klopp. All of that is what he leaves behind, and the best measure of his legacy: that the place he leaves is not the same as the place he found.

The derelict rail bridge stretches across a busy north London street, green foliage peeking out of the gaps between the beams overhead, where bright blue paint flakes from rusting steel.

Farther east, the railway’s grand Victorian-era arches span a small slice of park wedged between two streets, where tents belonging to homeless people, a discarded mattress and broken bottles are scattered about.

While the elevated train line and some of the areas it cuts through may look neglected now, if all goes according to plan, it will become the site of the Camden High Line, a planned public park that aims to turn this disused stretch of the city into a thriving green space.

“They’re all unloved bits of Camden,” said Simon Pitkeathley, the chief executive of Camden Town Unlimited, the business improvement district behind the initiative, of the areas that will one day provide the ground-level entrances to the High Line.

Strolling along the route of the planned park, which will sit some 25 feet above the streets, allows for a different view of London. Up here, the air feels fresher and the bustle below fades away as the view stretches over a patch of north London peppered with homes and office buildings.

The backers of the Camden High Line project, which carries an estimated price tag of 35 million pounds, or about $44.5 million, hope it will one day become a vibrant draw for both tourists and locals, bringing much-needed foot traffic to the area, much as its New York namesake has in the Chelsea neighborhood.

Rather than any attempt to disguise the inspiration, the London high line will have intentional echoes of the hugely successful one in New York.

It, too, harnesses a railway that has sat empty for decades, around 30 years in the case of the Camden line.

During a recent walking tour of the planned route, Mr. Pitkeathley pointed to a brick archway that will eventually have a sleek staircase rising through it, bringing visitors to the elevated park. Design drawings show Londoners strolling leafy walkways, past wildflower gardens and viewing platforms where they can admire the streetscapes.

The Camden High Line’s planned width varies greatly along its route, expanding more than 65 feet in some areas that used to be full station platforms, while shrinking to under 10 feet in other sections.

The project’s design team was headed by James Corner Field Operations, the lead architecture firm for the New York High Line, working with other designers as well as London-based social enterprises that helped consult residents on their vision for the park.

So while the links to the original High Line are clear — and hopes for the same success are front of mind — the design is adapted to serve the neighborhood where it sits, Mr. Pitkeathley said.

There are a number of differences, first among them an active train line running directly beside where the park will one day unfold.

Much of the surrounding area it passes through is publicly owned land filled with affordable housing, so both affluent and lower-income Londoners will benefit from proximity to the new green space, Mr. Pitkeathley said.

But it will still be some time before Londoners and visitors can enjoy the park.

Planning permission was given in January 2023 for the first section, running from Camden Gardens east to Royal College Street.

Construction will not begin until late 2025, with the first section of the High Line expected to open in early 2027, he added. Two additional sections are still years away.

Fund-raising is still underway, and Mr. Pitkeathley declined to say how much was left to raise.

But when the entire project is completed, it will wend its way for three-quarters of a mile east from Camden Town, already a popular destination, to King’s Cross, a transport hub and the site of another urban regeneration project.

The plan for the Camden High Line has already been applauded by lawmakers and conservation groups, including Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London; Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour Party; and the National Trust. But it is the opinions of those living locally that have been the focus of the planning team.

Lyn Walls, 57, lives in the Maiden Lane Estate, a residential complex with a mix of public and private housing, adjacent to where the easternmost section of the new park will eventually stand. For now, the only walkway that connects her home to the area directly to the west is a graffiti-riddled, badly lighted path.

The Camden High Line will eventually offer a walkable link to the neighborhoods to her west, she said. For now, Ms. Walls usually “takes the long way around” when walking there, she said, because of a secluded passageway that currently links the two areas.

“Going that way just isn’t appealing — it needs more lighting and just more people using it,” she said. The High Line, she added, “will make such a difference.”

On a recent winter afternoon, she was walking her dog with her two grandchildren and her daughter-in-law in an enclosed basketball court on the grounds of the complex. While there is a handful of green space dotting the area, Ms. Walls said the addition of the High Line would add much-needed park space.

At a cafe at the western end of the High Line’s route, Kiran Duggal, 25, and Barnaby Fishwick, 20, sipped coffee in the sun of a mild winter afternoon.

The friends, who work in a pub nearby, both said they were excited about the possibility of more green space and better walking routes.

“That will make life so much easier,” said Ms. Duggal, who lamented the lack of a good walkable route connecting the eastern and western parts of this area of London.

“Around north London, there are just so many dead sites,” Mr. Fishwick said, adding that he was eager for to see the new park come to life. “I do just love a good stroll.”

The United Nations’ highest court said on Friday that Israel must take action to prevent acts of genocide by its forces in the Gaza Strip, adding to the international pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reduce death and destruction in the battered Palestinian enclave.

But the court did not rule on whether Israel was committing genocide, and it did not call on Israel to stop its military campaign to crush Hamas, as South Africa, which brought the case, had requested.

While the ruling had elements that each side could embrace, the court allowed the case charging Israel with genocide to proceed, which will likely keep the country under international scrutiny for years to come.

“The court is acutely aware of the extent of the human tragedy that is unfolding in the region, and is deeply concerned about the continuing loss of life and human suffering,” Joan E. Donoghue, the president of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, said as she announced the interim ruling. The decision also ordered the delivery of more humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and called for the release of hostages held by armed groups in Gaza.

The South Africans who argued the case this month have equated the oppression they faced under apartheid with the plight of Palestinians.

The genocide accusation is acutely sensitive for Israel, which was founded in 1948 in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Many Israelis argue that it is Hamas that should face charges of genocide after its attack on Oct. 7, when about 1,200 people were killed in Israel and about 240 were taken captive, according to Israeli officials.

“The very notion that Israel is perpetrating genocide is not only false, it is outrageous, and the court’s willingness to discuss it is a mark of shame that will last for generations,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement on Friday.

For many Palestinians, the court decision was a rare moment of reckoning for Israel, whose campaign has been defended by the United States and other close allies. More than 25,000 people in Gaza have been killed since Israel’s offensive began, nearly 2 million have been displaced, and half of the population is at risk of starvation, according to the territory’s health officials and the United Nations.

“States now have clear legal obligations to stop Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people in Gaza and to make sure that they are not complicit,” said Riad Malki, the foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority, which partly administers the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to Britain, said the decision should force the United States and its allies to rein in Israel’s military. “For 75 years, Israel has been getting away with murder,” Mr. Zomlot said in an interview. “But it is not going to get away with genocide.”

But some Palestinians expressed extreme disappointment that the court had not ordered Israel to stop its military offensive. “You failed Palestinians again,” Hind Khoudary, a journalist in Gaza, wrote on social media.

The U.S. State Department said the decision was “consistent with our view that Israel has the right to take action to ensure the terrorist attacks of Oct. 7 cannot be repeated, in accordance with international law.”

The Biden administration has staunchly backed Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas, while urging that it do more to protect civilians.

“We continue to believe that allegations of genocide are unfounded,” the State Department said in a statement, “and note the court did not make a finding about genocide or call for a cease-fire in its ruling and that it called for the unconditional, immediate release of all hostages being held by Hamas.”

Although the ruling is considered legally binding, the court has no means of enforcing it, but ordered Israel to report back on its progress in one month. The court, established by the founding charter of the United Nations in 1945, was created to settle disputes between member states.

Also known as the World Court, it typically has a panel of 15 judges who are elected by the General Assembly and Security Council. In this case, Israel and South Africa each appointed an additional judge to sit on the bench on their behalf.

In a packed courtroom earlier this month, lawyers for South Africa argued that Israel had meant to “create conditions of death” in Gaza and urged the judges to immediately suspend Israel’s military campaign.

Israel argued that it has taken steps to protect civilians by warning them to evacuate northern Gaza before it invaded and restarting deliveries of food and fuel into the enclave.

Israel said that Hamas was to blame for putting Gazans at risk, asserting that the group hides its fighters and weapons in tunnels, schools and hospitals. Israel also said that statements by its government ministers, which South Africa had cited as evidence of genocidal intent, were either taken out of context or made by officials without executive power over the military.

In its 29-page interim ruling, the court said that Israel must “take all measures within its power” to prevent violations of the Genocide Convention adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948.

In particular, it said Israel must not take certain actions with the intent to destroy, wholly or partly, Palestinians as a group, including killing them; causing them “serious bodily or mental harm”; deliberately inflicting on them “conditions of life” calculated to bring about their “physical destruction in whole or in part”; or imposing measures to prevent births.

The court said Israel must also prevent and punish “direct and public incitement to commit genocide,” and allow more urgently needed aid into Gaza.

Mr. Netanyahu noted that the court had not ordered Israel to end its military offensive, which he has said would continue until Hamas is dismantled and the remaining hostages, numbering more than 100, are freed.

“Like any state, Israel has the basic right of self-defense,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “The court justly rejected the disgraceful demand to nullify that right.”

Raz Nizri, a former Israeli deputy attorney general, said Israel was already taking most of the actions the court ordered, such as ensuring the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza and punishing statements that could incite genocide.

“And there was no injunction to stop the fighting,” he said. “It’s extremely important that no such order was given.”

But some Palestinians said the ruling could increase pressure on Israel to curtail its military offensive.

“It is impossible to implement the I.C.J. decisions without immediate and permanent cease-fire,” said Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian opposition politician based in Ramallah, in the West Bank. He and others said the ruling was a rare example of Israel being held to account on the world stage after long being protected from scrutiny at the United Nations by the United States and other powerful allies.

“The problem for the past 112 days is that Israel has been operating with complete impunity,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian Canadian lawyer and former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization. “This now is a departure from that impunity, because now there is a court saying there is a plausible risk of imminent genocide.”

South Africa also welcomed the ruling, with members of the country’s governing party, the African National Congress, chanting “Free! Free! Palestine!” in Johannesburg, as the decision was announced.

The ruling was “a decisive victory for the international rule of law and a significant milestone in the search for justice for the Palestinian people,” South Africa said in a statement.

Reporting was contributed by Edward Wong, John Eligon and Isabel Kershner.

When Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times, hired Kevin Merida to be the newspaper’s top editor nearly three years ago, he hailed the journalist as someone who would maintain the publication’s high standards and journalistic integrity.

By this winter, the professional warmth between the two men had chilled. Their relationship was strained in part by an incident in December when Dr. Soon-Shiong tried to dissuade Mr. Merida from pursuing a story about a wealthy California doctor and his dog, three people with knowledge of the interactions said. The doctor was an acquaintance of Dr. Soon-Shiong’s, the people said.

The previously unreported incident occurred as The Los Angeles Times, the largest news organization on the West Coast, struggled to reverse years of losses amid a difficult market for newspapers. Mr. Merida resigned this month. Shortly afterward, the company laid off roughly 115 journalists, or about 20 percent of its newsroom.

It is not unheard-of for the owner of a publication to be consulted on sensitive reporting, particularly if it could jeopardize the newspaper legally or financially. But it is unusual for an owner or a publisher to pressure editors to stop reporting on a story well before publication, especially in cases that do not put government secrets or human lives at risk.

In a statement on Friday, Dr. Soon-Shiong disputed the characterization of how he had acted, calling it “factually incorrect.” The Los Angeles Times said in a statement that Dr. Soon-Shiong, who bought the newspaper in 2018, had made a request for “truthful, factual reporting” on the story.

In a note to staff this month, Mr. Merida said he had decided to step down after “considerable soul-searching about my career at this stage.” Dr. Soon-Shiong said at the time that it had been “mutually agreed” that Mr. Merida would leave.

Dr. Soon-Shiong’s confrontation with Mr. Merida over the unfinished article stemmed from work that a business reporter was doing on Dr. Gary Michelson, a California surgeon who made his fortune with medical patents, the three people with knowledge of the situation said.

The reporter was looking into dueling lawsuits that involved Dr. Michelson and accusations that his dog had bitten a woman at a Los Angeles park. In a suit filed by Dr. Michelson in May, he said the woman had tried to extort him. The woman filed a personal injury lawsuit against Dr. Michelson.

Dr. Michelson, who lives in Los Angeles, and Dr. Soon-Shiong belong to a small and rarefied group of medical professionals who have become billionaires through their innovations and investments. Dr. Soon-Shiong made his fortune in biotechnology. Both are philanthropists.

A spokesman for Dr. Michelson did not return a request for comment.

By last month, before the reporting on Dr. Michelson had reached fruition, Dr. Soon-Shiong had become aware of the story and contacted Mr. Merida to register his displeasure, the people said. Dr. Soon-Shiong told Mr. Merida that he did not believe the paper should pursue the article.

Mr. Merida relayed Dr. Soon-Shiong’s concerns to editors including Scott Kraft, a senior editor, and Jeff Bercovici, the business editor, the people said. The editors agreed to keep Mr. Merida posted on the article, which the newspaper continued working on. Mr. Bercovici was laid off this month.

At one point, Dr. Soon-Shiong asked to see a draft of the article, which Mr. Merida regarded as inappropriate, the people said. Dr. Soon-Shiong also told Mr. Merida on a call that he would fire journalists if he learned they were concealing the completed article from him, the people said.

A Los Angeles Times spokeswoman said in a statement that Dr. Soon-Shiong didn’t want the newspaper to be used as a “source of exploitation” in the dispute between Dr. Michelson and the woman who had sued him.

“Dr. Soon-Shiong had urged that the facts be gleaned from both sides,” she said. “This request for truthful, factual reporting was made by Dr. Soon-Shiong, irrespective of who was involved in this ‘dog bite’ story. He simply urged the editors to ensure that an investigation was done before any story was published.”

The incident weighed on Mr. Merida, two of the people said. The editor had already found himself at odds with the Soon-Shiong family on issues including the newspaper’s budget. Mr. Merida was prepared to potentially resign if the article on Dr. Michelson was ready and Dr. Soon-Shiong blocked its publication, the two people said.

The newspaper has not recently published any article on Dr. Michelson.

Laurence Darmiento, the reporter working on the article, said he had continued to cover the story. He said he was aware the story was sensitive, like all articles on wealthy Los Angeles residents, adding that his editors had never told him to stop working on it.

“Beyond that, I didn’t have any firsthand knowledge of what was going on behind the scenes,” Mr. Darmiento said. “Just this past week, despite all the turmoil at The Times, I was doing some reporting on it.”

Vince McMahon, the longtime chairman and former chief executive officer of World Wrestling Entertainment, resigned from his positions with W.W.E. and its parent company, the TKO Group, on Friday, one day after a former employee accused him of sexual assault and trafficking in a federal lawsuit.

W.W.E. employees were informed of the changes in an email sent by Nick Kahn, the president of W.W.E. “He will no longer have a role with TKO Group Holdings or W.W.E.,” Mr. Kahn wrote in the email, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Connecticut, accused Mr. McMahon of trafficking the employee, Janel Grant, as well as physically and emotionally abusing her. The graphic complaint, which also named John Laurinatis, a W.W.E. executive, and the company itself as defendants, says Mr. McMahon and Mr. Laurinatis once took turns raping her, among numerous other allegations.

Mr. McMahon eventually pressured Ms. Grant to sign a nondisclosure agreement in exchange for $3 million, according to the complaint, but paid her only $1 million.

In a statement released after his resignations, Mr. McMahon called Ms. Grant’s lawsuit a “vindictive distortion of the truth” and said he looked forward to clearing his name. But he decided to resign “out of respect” for TKO, W.W.E., their employees and wrestlers.

The lawsuit is far from the first time Mr. McMahon has been accused of sexual misconduct. In 2022, a special committee of W.W.E.’s board conducted an investigation into Mr. McMahon’s conduct, and found that over 16 years he had spent $14.6 million in payments to women who had accused him of sexual misconduct. A further company investigation found he had made an additional $5 million in payments to two different women.

Mr. McMahon temporarily resigned from W.W.E. during the investigation. But he remained the company’s largest shareholder, and in 2023 he returned to chair its board and initiate a sale process that resulted in sports and entertainment conglomerate Endeavor purchasing it. Endeavor then combined W.W.E. and another one of its holdings, the mixed martial arts promotional company Ultimate Fighting Championships, into a new public company, TKO Group.

Nikki Haley criticized Donald J. Trump on Friday, saying, “America can do better than Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” after a Manhattan jury had ordered the former president to pay $83.3 million for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll.

It was the latest iteration of Ms. Haley’s new attack line against Mr. Trump, portraying another Trump presidency as just as bad for the country as another four years of President Biden. Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, began making similar statements after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida dropped out of the race on Sunday, leaving her as the last serious threat to Mr. Trump’s candidacy.

“Donald Trump wants to be the presumptive Republican nominee and we’re talking about $83 million in damages,” Ms. Haley wrote on social media, adding that Mr. Trump’s legal troubles continued to be a distraction. “We’re not talking about fixing the border. We’re not talking about tackling inflation.”

Ms. Haley is preparing for what may be the final stand of her presidential campaign, facing off against Mr. Trump next month in a critical primary in her home state of South Carolina. Ms. Haley has largely avoided commenting on Mr. Trump’s legal cases, but the former president leads her by wide margins in polls, and she appears to be turning up the heat in an effort to catch him.

Mr. Trump lashed out on social media soon after the verdict, attacking the civil trial as a “Biden Directed Witch Hunt” despite the fact that Ms. Carroll sued Mr. Trump in 2019, before he had left office and while Mr. Biden was just one of many Democratic presidential candidates.

The verdict was an extraordinary moment for a front-runner in a presidential nominating contest. A jury penalized Mr. Trump $83.3 million for defamation just three days after he had won a second nominating contest — in New Hampshire, by 11 percentage points. Mr. Trump also faces 91 felony counts in four separate criminal cases.

“Absolutely ridiculous,” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, of the verdict, adding, “Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”

Surrogates for Mr. Trump’s campaign also criticized the verdict. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wrote on social media that Mr. Trump “was denied a fair trial in NY where judges are now political” activists. Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, who is seen by many to be in the running to be Mr. Trump’s vice president, said the trial was an effort by Democrats to weaponize the justice system and “bankrupt” Mr. Trump.

Ms. Carroll accused Mr. Trump in 2019 of raping her in a department store dressing room decades earlier. Last May, a different Manhattan jury awarded her $5 million after finding Mr. Trump liable for sexually abusing her and for defaming her in a social media post.

Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, a national co-chair of Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, said in an interview on CNN that the verdict “tells you something about” Mr. Trump’s character, adding that “this is someone who thinks that presidents should have immunity to allow them to do whatever they want.”

The State Department notified Congress on Friday that it had approved a $23 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets and related equipment to Turkey after the country’s leader signed documents to allow Sweden’s long-delayed entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, department officials and the Pentagon said.

Although Congress could move to formally block the sale, four senior lawmakers told the State Department on Friday evening that they would not object, after their aides reviewed the documents signed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, U.S. officials said.

Congressional officials had demanded to see the documents before signaling their approval of the sale, so the State Department asked Turkey to fly the documents to New York on Friday. The department had someone pick up the documents in New York and bring them to Washington by Friday evening to show the lawmakers.

The department’s subsequent formal notification to Congress means the sale will almost certainly occur, satisfying Mr. Erdogan’s main condition for supporting Sweden’s accession to NATO and potentially helping bring to a close an episode that has strained relations between the United States and Turkey.

Turkey was, along with Hungary, one of two NATO members withholding approval of Sweden’s entry into the alliance. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had undertaken intense diplomacy since last year, including meeting with Mr. Erdogan in Istanbul this month, to try to change the Turkish leader’s mind.

Mr. Blinken discussed the issue with Mr. Erdogan in a visit to Turkey in February 2023, and said three times that Turkey would not get the F-16s if it refused to approve Sweden’s accession, a U.S. official said.

The drawn-out process with Turkey has also delayed the sale of F-35 jets to Greece, which became linked to the F-16s in diplomatic talks because Turkey and Greece are longtime rivals, despite both being members of NATO. The State Department also formally told Congress on Friday night it was going ahead with that sale.

Both Sweden and Finland asked to join NATO after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and almost all of the alliance’s members quickly agreed. Finland joined the alliance in April, but Sweden’s application languished. While Hungary did not raise specific objections, Turkish officials blamed Sweden for harboring Kurds who Turkish officials said were terrorists.

The Turkish Parliament voted on Tuesday to allow Sweden to join NATO, and Mr. Erdogan signed that measure into law on Thursday.

In exchange, the White House made a fresh endorsement of the F-16 sale in a letter sent on Wednesday to the top Democratic and Republican lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which have oversight of arms transfers by the State Department to other nations.

The White House urged the four lawmakers to give their approval, despite their longstanding reservations about some of Turkey’s foreign policies and military actions, including its growing airstrikes in northeastern Syria against Kurdish fighters who are partners of the U.S. military in its campaign against the Islamic State.

On Friday night, Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House committee, said Mr. Erdogan’s signing of the protocols for Sweden’s accession was “welcome, if overdue, news for the alliance and the broad bilateral relationship.”

The State Department gave the two congressional committees informal notification of the F-16 sale more than a year ago, starting the review process by lawmakers.

Besides asking the department to address concerns over Turkish strikes on the Kurds, lawmakers had also wanted to see assurances from Turkey that it would de-escalate any tensions with the Greek military in the Aegean Sea.

Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, praised Turkey’s approval in a statement on Friday evening but expressed concern about some of the country’s policies.

“While Turkey plays a critical role in the region as a NATO ally, there is an urgent need for improvement on its human rights record, including the unjust imprisonment of journalists and civil society leaders, better cooperation on holding Russia accountable for its invasion of Ukraine and on lowering the temperature in its rhetoric about the Middle East,” Mr. Cardin said.

He also criticized Hungary’s “intransigence” on Sweden. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary promised on Wednesday to get his legislature to approve Sweden’s accession, but gave no timeline for a vote. Mr. Cardin said Mr. Orban had “shown himself to be the least reliable member of NATO.”

So far, unlike Mr. Erdogan, Mr. Orban has not asked for a specific quid pro quo, the U.S. official said. But the Biden administration is watching for signs it might need to engage in intense diplomacy with Mr. Orban, too.

Former President Donald J. Trump was ordered by a Manhattan jury on Friday to pay $83.3 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of a decades-old rape, attacks he continued in social media posts, at news conferences and even in the midst of the trial itself.

Ms. Carroll’s lawyers had argued that a large award was necessary to stop Mr. Trump from continuing to attack her. After less than three hours of deliberation, the jury responded by awarding Ms. Carroll $65 million in punitive damages, finding that Mr. Trump had acted with malice. On one recent day, he made more than 40 derisive posts about Ms. Carroll on his Truth Social website.

On Friday, Mr. Trump had already left the courtroom for the day when the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, called in the nine-member jury shortly after 4:30 p.m., warning the lawyers, “We will have no outbursts.” The verdict was delivered nine minutes later to utter silence in the courtroom.

In addition to the $65 million, jurors awarded Ms. Carroll $18.3 million in compensatory damages for her suffering. Mr. Trump’s lawyers slumped in their seats as the dollar figures were read aloud. The jury was dismissed, and Ms. Carroll, 80, embraced her lawyers. Minutes later, she walked out of the courthouse arm in arm with her legal team, beaming for the cameras.

“This is a great victory for every woman who stands up when she’s been knocked down and a huge defeat for every bully who has tried to keep a woman down,” Ms. Carroll said in a statement, thanking her lawyers effusively.

Mr. Trump, who had walked out of the courtroom earlier during the closing argument by Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, said in a Truth Social post that the verdict was “absolutely ridiculous.”

“Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon,” he said, pledging to appeal. “They have taken away all First Amendment Rights.”

Notably, he did not attack Ms. Carroll.

Outside the courthouse, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, combined complaints about how Judge Kaplan had handled the case with sloganeering, echoing Mr. Trump’s claims that he was being ill-treated by a corrupt system. “We did not win today,” she told reporters, “but we will win.”

Mr. Trump’s appeal will likely keep Ms. Carroll from receiving the money she is owed anytime soon.

Ms. Carroll’s lead lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, said the verdict “proves that the law applies to everyone in our country, even the rich, even the famous, even former presidents.”

The verdict vastly eclipsed the $5 million a separate jury awarded Ms. Carroll last spring after finding that Mr. Trump had sexually abused her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and had defamed her in a Truth Social post in October 2022. The verdict came after Mr. Trump attended nearly every day of the latest trial, and testified, briefly, this week.

Judge Kaplan, who presided over both trials, had ruled that the jury’s findings last May would carry over to the current one, limiting the second jury’s focus solely to damages. Mr. Trump, who is running for president again, was not allowed to stray beyond that issue in his testimony. On Thursday, the judge, out of the jury’s presence, asked Ms. Habba for a preview of that testimony. “I want to know everything he is going to say,” the judge said.

In the end, Mr. Trump, by his actions and words, was his own worst enemy. During the trial, he attacked Ms. Carroll online and insulted her last week at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. Inside the courtroom, the judge warned Mr. Trump that he might be excluded after Ms. Carroll’s lawyers complained that he was muttering “con job” and “witch hunt” loudly enough for jurors to hear.

In their closing arguments on Friday, Ms. Carroll’s lawyers, Ms. Kaplan and Shawn G. Crowley, used Mr. Trump’s presence in court as a weapon against him. Ms. Crowley said his actions demonstrated his belief that he could get away with anything, including continuing to defame Ms. Carroll.

“You saw how he has behaved through this trial,” Ms. Crowley said. “You heard him. You saw him stand up and walk out of this courtroom while Ms. Kaplan was speaking. Rules don’t apply to Donald Trump.”

There could be more financial damage to come for Mr. Trump. He is still awaiting the outcome of a civil fraud trial brought by New York’s attorney general that concluded this month. The attorney general, Letitia James, has asked a judge to levy a penalty of about $370 million on Mr. Trump.

The former president is also contending with four criminal indictments, at least one of which is expected to go to trial before the November election. His civil cases will soon be behind him, but the greater threat — 91 felony charges, in all — still looms.

The verdict on Friday provided a coda to two weeks of political success for Mr. Trump. He completed an Iowa and New Hampshire sweep in the first two presidential nominating states of 2024 and cemented himself as the likely Republican nominee.

He has used his courtroom appearances as a fundamental element of his campaign, painting himself as a political martyr targeted on all sides by Democratic law enforcement officials, as well as by Ms. Carroll. His loss to her will most likely sting for some time.

During the trial, Ms. Carroll testified that Mr. Trump’s repeated taunts and lashing out had mobilized many of his supporters. She said she had faced an onslaught of attacks on social media and in her email inbox that frightened her and “shattered” her reputation as a well-regarded advice columnist for Elle magazine.

Ms. Carroll told the jury she had been attacked on Twitter and Facebook. “I was living in a new universe,” she said.

The trial took about five days over two weeks, and was marked by repeated clashes between Mr. Trump’s lawyers and Judge Kaplan, who is known for his command of the courtroom. The former president’s testimony was highly anticipated for days, but on Thursday, he was on the stand for less than five minutes, and his testimony was notable for how little he ended up saying.

On Friday, Ms. Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, asked the jury in a crisp and methodical summation to award Ms. Carroll enough money to help her repair her reputation and compensate her for the emotional harm Mr. Trump’s attacks had inflicted.

Ms. Kaplan also emphasized that Mr. Trump could afford significant punitive damages, which come into play when a defendant’s conduct is thought to have been particularly malicious. She cited a video deposition excerpt played for the jury in which he estimated that his brand alone was worth “maybe $10 billion” and that the value of various of his real estate properties was $14 billion.

“Donald Trump is worth billions of dollars,” Ms. Kaplan told the jury.

“The law says that you can consider Donald Trump’s wealth as well as his malicious and spiteful continuing conduct in making that assessment,” Ms. Kaplan said, adding, “Now is the time to make him pay for it, and now is the time to make him pay for it dearly.”

Mr. Trump was not present to hear her. After scoffing, muttering and shaking his head throughout the first few minutes of Ms. Kaplan’s closing argument, Mr. Trump rose from the defense table without saying anything, turned and left the 26th-floor courtroom. Ms. Kaplan continued to address the jury as if the stark breach of decorum had not occurred.

“The record will reflect that Mr. Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom,” Judge Kaplan said.

Mr. Trump returned about 75 minutes later, when his lawyer Ms. Habba began her summation.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers cast Ms. Carroll as a fame-hungry writer who was trying to raise a diminishing profile when she first made her accusation against Mr. Trump in a 2019 book excerpt in New York magazine about an encounter she has said traumatized her for decades.

Ms. Habba, her voice loud and heavy, her tone mocking and sarcastic, argued that Ms. Carroll’s reputation, far from being damaged, had improved as a result of the president’s statements. And she said Ms. Carroll’s lawyers had not proved that the deluge of threats and defamatory statements the writer received were a response to Mr. Trump’s statements.

“No causation,” Ms. Habba thundered, adding, “President Trump has no more control over the thoughts and feelings of social media users than he does the weather.”

Ms. Crowley, in an animated and passionate rebuttal to Ms. Habba, rejected her contention that Mr. Trump’s statements did not prompt the threats Ms. Carroll received. “There couldn’t be clearer proof of causation,” Ms. Crowley said.

The jurors remained attentive during the closing arguments. One watched Ms. Kaplan intently during much of her summation; others alternated between looking at the lawyers, staring at the exhibits on the screens and taking notes.

During the summations, Mr. Trump’s account on his Truth Social website made about 16 posts in 15 minutes mostly attacking Judge Kaplan and Ms. Carroll, with his familiar insults — the kinds of insults that have now become very costly.

Ms. Kaplan said in her closing argument that the only thing that could make Mr. Trump stop his attacks would be to make it too expensive for him to continue.

The jury, in its verdict, appears to have agreed.

Olivia Bensimon, Anusha Bayya, Maggie Haberman, Shane Goldmacher and Michael Gold contributed reporting.

Animal welfare authorities seized more than 100 animals from a Long Island home this week — including a South American ostrich, a giant African snail, two prairie dogs and an endangered tiger salamander — after a tip they received about exotic animals led them to their owner’s doorstep.

“He was running a pop-up circus,” said Detective Matt Roper, director of law enforcement for the Nassau County SPCA. “Bringing these animals out in public and letting children play with these animals.”

Detective Roper said the animals’ owner was given court summonses for several state and local violations, including endangering the public and housing and possessing endangered species. Federal authorities are also investigating, he said.

Detective Roper emphasized that there were no signs that the animals had been abused or neglected.

“They were all cared for,” Detective Roper said. “They were just in violation of being held or kept as either pets or for exhibition purposes.”

Detective Roper, who declined to name the animals’ owner because the investigation is continuing, said that on Tuesday the authorities took 104 animals from the basement and backyard of the house, which is in North Bellmore.

Humane Long Island, an animal advocacy organization that took custody of dozens of the animals that were seized, identified their owner as Matthew Spohrer, 32. He was issued 30 violations relating to illegal possession of animals, the group said in a news release.

A person who answered the phone at a number listed to Mr. Spohrer’s father on Friday said that Matthew Spohrer had no comment.

A large number of the animals that were seized are legal to possess in New York, but “illegal to possess in Nassau County without the proper variances,” Detective Roper said. “You shouldn’t have a peacock in your backyard, you know.”

Some of the animals were dangerous. A lesser rhea, a bird popularly known as a South American ostrich, can be aggressive and has talons that can reach up to six inches in length.

At least one of the animals, the giant African snail, is federally banned in the United States. The snail, which can carry a parasitic nematode that can lead to meningitis, is considered an invasive species.

“Prairie dogs have been known to transmit the bubonic plague,” Detective Roper said. “Do we need an outbreak of the bubonic plague in Nassau County because somebody had an illegal animal that he bought on the internet?”

“This gentleman that’s our subject, he’s this self-proclaimed Steve Irwin,” Detective Roper said, referring to the famous zookeeper and conservationist known as the Crocodile Hunter. “There’s no way that a gentleman of his age could have the experience to handle these animals in his parents’ basement.”

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the Hempstead Building Department and the United States Department of Agriculture were also present for the search, Detective Roper said.

John Di Leonardo, an anthrozoologist and executive director of Humane Long Island, said dozens of animals that his agency took in included the five-month-old rhea, which the owner called “Edgar.”

“He thought she was male,” he said, “but she’s female.”

Mr. Di Leonardo said the animals’ owner admitted to buying the rhea egg on eBay while he was drunk.

“Wild animals belong in the wild,” he said. “They don’t belong, you know, at a fair. They don’t belong in someone’s basement or someone’s shed. You know, they really don’t belong in the suburbs.”

Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.