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The secretary general of the United Nations warned on Monday that humanity was “just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” citing the war in Ukraine among the conflicts driving the risk to a level not seen since the height of the Cold War.

“All this at a time when the risks of proliferation are growing and guardrails to prevent escalation are weakening,” the official, António Guterres, said. “And when crises — with nuclear undertones — are festering from the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

Mr. Guterres was speaking at the opening session of a conference at the U.N. headquarters in New York about upholding and securing the 50-year-old global Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, meant to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, aiming for eventual disarmament.

The conference took place after a two-year delay because of the Covid-19 pandemic and was attended by high-level representatives from member states, including the prime minister of Japan, the U.S. Secretary of State and dozens of foreign ministers and delegations.

The threat of a nuclear confrontation or a nuclear accident emerging from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a recurring theme in many of the day’s speeches.

President Vladimir V. Putin and other Russian have repeatedly suggested that nuclear war could erupt if NATO intervened in the war in Ukraine. His forces used the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as a staging ground in the spring and have now turned a nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, into a battle fortress.

In his remarks to the session, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the treaty had made the world safer but was under increasing strain. Mr. Blinken mentioned Russia, Iran and North Korea as examples of nuclear-related concerns.

Mr. Blinken condemned Russia for engaging “in reckless, dangerous nuclear saber rattling,” and said North Korea was preparing to conduct its seventh round of nuclear testing. He said Iran had not yet agreed to return to its commitments under a nuclear deal with world powers and “remained on a path of nuclear escalation.”

Russia and Iran are among the 191 signatories to the nonproliferation treaty. Iran says that its nuclear program is for peaceful energy purposes, a stance the West has questioned, and that has prompted efforts to work out a deal with Iran to blunt its nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Blinken also criticized Russia for using the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant as a staging ground for attacks on Ukrainian forces, saying the Ukrainians were unable to fire back out of concern they might strike a nuclear reactor or stored radioactive waste.

“That brings the notion of having a human shield to an entirely different and horrific level,” Mr. Blinken said.

The conference, which normally meets every five years, will be reviewing the three priorities of the treaty: preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, promoting and supporting peaceful nuclear energy and working toward global disarmament. But little concrete outcome is expected, given the current divisions among world powers.

Mr. Putin, who put his nuclear forces into “special combat readiness” in the early days of the invasion in February, also sent a message to the nonproliferation conference.

“We believe that there can be no winners in a nuclear war, and it must never be fought,” Mr. Putin wrote, according to Tass, the Russian news agency. “We advocate equal and inseparable security for all members of the international community.”

Deshaun Watson, the Cleveland Browns quarterback accused by more than two dozen women of sexual misconduct during massage treatments, was suspended Monday for six games for violating the N.F.L.’s personal conduct policy and was not fined.

The N.F.L. and the N.F.L. Players Association did not immediately return calls for comment.

The ruling was made by Sue L. Robinson, the retired federal judge jointly appointed by the N.F.L. and the players union to oversee player discipline. The league and the players union have three business days to submit a written appeal, which would be handled by Commissioner Roger Goodell or a person of his choosing. The players union said in a statement on Sunday night — before Robinson informed both sides of her decision — that it would not appeal and called on the N.F.L. to let the ruling stand.

By the time Watson is eligible to return from suspension it will have been about 22 months since he last played in an N.F.L. game.

The ruling comes after a 15-month investigation into allegations that Watson, then quarterback of the Houston Texans, had engaged in sexually coercive and lewd behavior toward women he hired for massages from the fall of 2019 through March 2021. Watson denied the claims and grand juries in two Texas counties declined to charge Watson criminally.

Watson has reached settlements with all but one of the 24 women who filed civil lawsuits against him. Twenty suits were settled in June, and shortly before Robinson issued her ruling, Watson reached agreements with three more women, including Ashley Solis, the licensed massage therapist who filed the first claim against Watson in March 2021, a lawyer for the women confirmed.

Among the conduct prohibited by the league’s personal conduct policy are sex offenses, actions that endanger the safety and well-being of another person and anything that undermines the league’s integrity. The policy purports to hold the people who represent the league to a “higher standard,” regardless of how cases are adjudicated elsewhere.

The Browns made a significant investment in Watson, trading top draft picks to acquire his services and then signing him a five-year, $230 million fully guaranteed contract to be their franchise quarterback. An elite talent, Watson requested a trade from the Texans after the 2020 season when Houston struggled to a 4-12 record.

He was traded to the Browns in March, after a first Texas grand jury declined to charge him criminally, for three first-round picks and three additional selections in the N.F.L. draft. A second grand jury also opted not to bring charges against Watson.

The league and Watson’s representatives could not negotiate a mutually agreed upon discipline, putting the initial decision in Robinson’s hands. She oversaw a three-day hearing in late June, during which the N.F.L. recommended that Watson be suspended indefinitely and required to wait at least a full season to reapply, while the union and Watson’s representatives argued against a lengthy ban.

This was the N.F.L.’s first personal conduct case to be heard by a disciplinary officer instead of Goodell, a protocol established in the 2020 collective bargaining agreement. In advance of Robinson’s decision, the union called the new process impartial and legitimate while imploring the N.F.L. not to ask Goodell or his designee to override her ruling on an appeal.

The decision on Watson’s discipline was widely anticipated, not only as a result of the Browns’ investment in him, but because the breadth of allegations against Watson set this apart from any other personal conduct case that has been considered by the league. The decision comes as scrutiny of the N.F.L.’s treatment of women has included a congressional inquiry into the workplace treatment of female employees at the Washington Commanders and a warning from attorneys general in six states, including New York, that they will investigate the league unless it addresses allegations of workplace harassment of women and minorities.

The N.F.L. began its investigation of Watson in March 2021, when the first accusers’ lawsuits were filed. The league’s investigators, who do not have subpoena power, met with 10 of the women who filed lawsuits against Watson, contemporaneous witnesses to verify their accounts and other women who have worked with Watson.

The Browns anticipated Watson to be suspended for at least part of the 2022 season and structured his contract accordingly, loading most of his $46 million compensation for this year into a signing bonus. He will lose only a portion of his approximately $1 million base salary.

Watson can continue working out with the Browns during training camp. Pending any potential appeals, his suspension will begin with the Browns first regular season game on Sept. 11 against the Carolina Panthers and he would be eligible to return for the Browns’ seventh game, against the Baltimore Ravens, on Oct. 23.

Social scientists have made it a priority in recent years to understand upward mobility. They have used tax records and other data to study which factors increase the chances that children who grow up in poverty will be able to escape it as adults.

Education, spanning pre-K through college, seems to play a big role, the research suggests. Money itself is also important: Longer, deeper bouts of poverty can affect children for decades. Other factors — like avoiding eviction, having access to good medical care and growing up in a household with two parents — may also make upward mobility more likely.

Now there is another intriguing factor to add to the list, thanks to a study being published this morning in the academic journal Nature: friendships with people who are not poor.

“Growing up in a community connected across class lines improves kids’ outcome and gives them a better shot at rising out of poverty,” Raj Chetty, an economist at Harvard and one of the study’s four principal authors, told The Times.

The study tries to quantify the effect in several ways. One of the sharpest, I think, compares two otherwise similar children in lower-income households — one who grows up in a community where social contacts mostly come from the lower half of the socioeconomic distribution, and another who grows up in a community where social contacts mostly come from the upper half.

The average difference between the two, in terms of their expected adult outcomes, is significant, the authors report. It’s the same as the gap between a child who grows up in a family that makes $27,000 a year and one who grows up in a family that makes $47,000.

The study is based on a dizzying amount of data, including the Facebook friendships of 72 million people. (You can explore the findings through these charts and maps from The Upshot.)

Robert Putnam — a political scientist who has long studied social interactions, including in his book “Bowling Alone” — said the study was important partly because it hinted at ways to increase upward mobility. “It provides a number of avenues or clues by which we might begin to move this country in a better direction,” he said.

In recent decades, the U.S. has moved in the opposite direction. Rising economic inequality and a shortage of new housing in many communities have helped increase economic segregation. Even within communities, cross-class social interactions seem to have declined.

This chart shows the extent to which Americans segregate themselves by class:

Mari Bowie’s story

There seem to be three main mechanisms by which cross-class friendships can increase a person’s chances of escaping poverty, Chetty told me.

The first is raised ambition: Social familiarity can give people a clearer sense of what’s possible. The second is basic information, such as how to apply to college and for financial aid. The third is networking, such as getting a recommendation for an internship.

My colleague Claire Cain Miller, after speaking with the study’s authors in recent weeks, set out to find some real-life examples of its findings. Claire focused on Angelo Rodriguez High School in Fairfield, Calif., a midsize city between Sacramento and Oakland. The school has an unusually high number of cross-class interactions. One of the people whom Claire interviewed was Mari Bowie, a 24-year-old who grew up in a lower-middle-class family that coped with divorce, layoffs and lost homes — and who made friends with richer girls in high school.

“My mom really instilled working hard in us — being knowledgeable about our family history, you have to be better, you have to do better,” Bowie said. “But I didn’t know anything about the SAT, and my friends’ parents signed up for this class, so I thought I should do that. I had friends’ parents look at my personal statements.”

Today, Bowie is a criminal-defense lawyer. She found her job through the friend of one of her high school friends.

How churches shine

Angelo Rodriguez High School is a telling case study because it is more economically and racially diverse than most schools. That diversity is necessary for a high level of socioeconomic integration. But it is not sufficient, the study’s authors say. In some diverse communities, lower- and upper-income Americans lead relatively segregated lives.

In others, cross-class interactions are more common. The study does not contain a complete explanation for the differences. But Claire discovered that the high school had taken intentional steps to connect people.

The school didn’t draw its students from only one community. It instead had an unusually shaped district, including both poorer and richer neighborhoods, and also accepted some students from outside that district’s boundaries. The school’s open architecture also encouraged serendipitous socializing. “Accidental, unstructured interactions between students was a very high priority,” John Diffenderfer, one of the school’s architects, said.

What might increase cross-class interactions elsewhere?

Among the promising possibilities, the researchers say: more housing, including subsidized housing, in well-off areas; more diverse K-12 schools and colleges; and specific efforts — like public parks that draw a diverse mix of families — to encourage interactions among richer and poorer people.

Churches and other religious organizations may have some lessons to teach other parts of society. Although many churches are socioeconomically homogeneous, those with some diversity tend to foster more cross-class interactions than most other social activities. Churchs have lower levels of what the researchers call socioeconomic “friending bias.”

Youth sports, by contrast, have become more segregated, as affluent families have flocked to so-called travel teams.

A successful effort to increase interactions would probably need to address the particular roles of race, too. More racially diverse places tend to have fewer cross-class friendships, the study found.

“Our society is structured in ways that discourage these kinds of cross-class friendships from happening, and many parents, often white, are making choices about where to live and what extracurriculars to put their kids into that make those connections less likely to happen,” Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at Indiana University said. Claire’s story delves into more detail on the role of race.

The bottom line

The stagnation of living standards for working-class and poor Americans is such a giant problem that no single change will solve it. But the explosion of academic research about upward mobility, including this new study, has at least offered a clearer sense of what might help. Social integration seems to play a crucial role.

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A fast-growing wildfire fueled by strong winds from thunderstorms and high temperatures in Northern California has grown to more than 52,000 acres in two days, becoming the state’s largest wildfire so far this year and forcing evacuations in rural neighborhoods.

The blaze, named the McKinney fire, began burning through dry timber on Friday in the Klamath National Forest in Siskiyou County, Calif., near the Oregon state line, the authorities said.

No deaths or injuries associated with the fire had been reported as of Sunday evening. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California declared a state of emergency for Siskiyou County on Saturday, and nearly 3,000 people have been ordered to evacuate since then.

By Sunday morning, the fire had not moved much closer to the city of Yreka, which has a population of about 7,800. But it had already destroyed more than 100 structures — including homes, a grocery store and a community center — in the surrounding area, Courtney Kreider, a spokeswoman for the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office, said.

Joel Brumm, a spokesman for Klamath National Forest, said a more detailed assessment of the damage was pending. “We know that some structures have been lost but we don’t have any idea how many or the severity of the damage,” he said.

The heat from the fire generated a huge cloud called a pyrocumulonimbus, which has been referred to as “the fire-breathing dragon of clouds,” that essentially generated its own weather and reached more than 39,000 feet into the sky, according to the National Weather Service in Medford, Ore.

“The fire created thunderstorms, which could have caused new fires nearby,” Brad Schaaf, a meteorologist with the Weather Service in Medford, said by phone on Sunday.

The fire, which was zero percent contained as of Sunday night, is one of more than 50 large wildfires and fire complexes that have burned across parts of the United States so far this year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. In the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California, the Oak fire has burned more than 19,000 acres and threatened thousands of homes and businesses. That fire was about 67 percent contained on Sunday.

The McKinney fire comes at a precarious moment for the state, which, along with the Pacific Northwest, is facing abnormally high temperatures this week as a heat wave blankets the region.

Days of scorching temperatures and drought conditions have contributed to the intensity of fires by making vegetation drier and more likely to ignite. Analyses have shown that human-caused climate change has increased the likelihood of such extreme heat waves.

On Saturday, firefighters shifted their focus from battling the perimeter of the fire to helping residents evacuate and protecting structures, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Videos and photos of the fire showed wisps of smoke spiraling up from trees as flames covered the Klamath National Forest with an orange glow. Cars fled on nearly empty roadways, and officers with the Redding Police Department helped residents evacuate as they watched the forest burn in the distance.

“Heads up to those in the far north state,” the state’s Office of Emergency Services said on Twitter on Saturday. “The #McKinneyFire is moving quickly and aggressively driven by weather conditions.”

Three additional fires in the county — the China 2, Evans and Kelsey Creek fires — have merged and burned about 115 acres, Ms. Kreider said. The Kelsey Creek fire was caused by a lightning strike overnight, she added.

Officials and meteorologists were worried on Sunday about possible thunderstorms that could develop through Tuesday evening. Mr. Schaaf said such thunderstorms could create more fires in the area if lighting struck.

Smoke from the McKinney fire, however, could lower temperatures and “counteract some of those thunderstorm ingredients,” he added.

Still, the Klamath National Forest said in a statement on Sunday that “these conditions can be extremely dangerous for firefighters” as erratic winds push the fire in random directions.

“It makes for a challenging and complex forecast,” Mr. Schaaf said.

Vimal Patel and Derrick Bryson Taylor contributed reporting.

CHENNAI, India — Amul Vasudevan, a vegetable hawker in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, thought she was going to go out of business.

The state had forbidden retailers to use disposable plastic bags, which were critical for her livelihood because they were so cheap. She could not afford to switch to selling her wares in reusable cloth bags.

Tamil Nadu was not the first state in India to try to curtail plastic pollution, but unlike others it was relentless in enforcing its law. Ms. Vasudevan was fined repeatedly for using throwaway bags.

Now, three years after the ban took effect, Ms. Vasudevan’s use of plastic bags has decreased by more than two-thirds; most of her customers bring cloth bags. Many streets in this state of more than 80 million people are largely free of plastic waste.

Yet Tamil Nadu’s ban is far from an absolute success. Many people still defy it, finding the alternatives to plastic either too expensive or too inconvenient. The state’s experience offers lessons for the rest of India, where an ambitious countrywide ban on making, importing, selling and using some single-use plastic took effect this month.

“Plastic bags can only be eliminated if the customer decides it, not the seller,” Ms. Vasudevan said from her stall on Muthu Street in Chennai, the state capital. “Getting rid of it is a slow process; it can’t happen overnight.”

Across India’s metropolises and villages, daily life is intertwined with disposable plastic, considered one of the worst environmental hazards. Shopping of all sorts is carried home in throwaway bags, and food is served on single-use dishes and trays. The country is the world’s third-biggest producer of disposable plastic waste, after China and the United States.

But now Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has banned some of those ubiquitous items, including disposable cups, plates, cutlery, straws and ear swabs. Single-use bags are forbidden, but thicker, reusable ones are allowed. The ban does not include soda bottles and plastic packaging for chips and other snacks.

India follows places like Bangladesh, the European Union and China in a large-scale effort to reduce plastic waste. But its plan is among the most ambitious, experts said, as it targets the entire supply chain, from the making to the use of disposable plastics.

What remains to be seen is how committed the authorities will be to enforcing the new law.

“A blanket ban is very difficult to implement unless local governments take strict actions against the violators and build partnership with people,” said Ravi Agarwal, who heads Toxics Link, an advocacy group that focuses on waste management. “Otherwise we will end up with some sporadic fines here and there, and some newspaper reports.”

Last year, the federal government banned very thin plastic bags, but enforcement, left to local authorities, was not stringent. Enforcing the new law is also up to local authorities, but now the government says it will involve the public, who will be able to report violators and their locations with an app.

Public pressure on politicians — to fix drain and sewage blockages caused by plastic, for example — is another key reason for the relative success in Tamil Nadu.

On a recent Friday morning, plainclothes police officers milled about Muthu Street, hunting for perpetrators. Near a section of hawkers selling vegetables and jasmine flowers, they found a street vendor bagging up produce for customers in disposable bags. The police fined that vendor and proceeded to seize dozens of pounds of the contraband from others, fining them and threatening them with prison.

Since December 2019, authorities in the state have collected more than $1.3 million in fines; the smallest is about $7. But the job is never-ending — after the officers dispersed that day on Muthu Street, some vendors resumed using the banned bags.

“We have to find cheap solutions to stop the use of plastic bags,” said Ms. Vasudevan, who was not fined that day. “The rich understand what is at stake, but for the poor the government has to make cloth bags cheap.”

Tamil Nadu has tried to address that issue with subsidies and campaigns promoting cloth bags.

At the entrance of Chennai’s Koyembedu wholesale market, the authorities installed two vending machines that hold 800 cloth bags, which go for 12 cents each. The machines are refilled twice a day. While the ban has undoubtedly hurt livelihoods, such as people involved in making and selling single-use plastic, it has been a boon to others.

About 25 miles west of Chennai, in the village of Nemam, around two dozen seamstresses churn out cloth bags while Bollywood music plays. Part of a cooperative, they have been able to increase their own earnings by making more bags.

“We are producing more cloth bags than we ever have,” said Deepika Sarvanan, head of an all-woman local self-help group, which was initially funded by the government but now sustains itself. “We are not producing even 0.1 percent of the demand.”

But for some businesses, like those selling live fish, plastic is hard to replace. “No one wants to destroy the environment,” said Mageesh Kumar, who sells pet fish at the Kolather market in Chennai. “But if we don’t sell them in plastic there is no other way; how will we feed our families?”

For now, Mr. Kumar and his cohort are using thicker bags that they ask customers to return.

Still, Tamil Nadu has made more progress than other states that have tried to curtail plastic use. Its beaches, residential enclaves and industrial areas are largely devoid of plastic litter. Many residents dutifully collect plastic for recycling and separate waste.

The trailblazer in the state was the district of Nilgiri, an area popular with tourists for its hill towns and tea plantations, which banned disposable plastic in 2000. There, the charge was led by Supriya Sahu, a civil servant who realized the dangers of plastic pollution after she saw pictures of dead bison with plastic bags in their stomachs. She started a public awareness campaign.

“We made people understand that if you want tourism to survive, we have to stop using plastic,” said Ms. Sahu, who is now a state-level environmental official. “Any government-led program can only be successful if it becomes a people’s movement.”

On a recent humid afternoon, the Koyembedu market offered a sign of success. Out of more than two dozen shops, only two were selling flowers packed in plastic.

“We have been selling flowers wrapped in newspapers for years now,” said Richard Edison, a flower seller. “People are demanding it.”

Nichelle Nichols, the actress revered by “Star Trek” fans everywhere for her role as Lieutenant Uhura, the communications officer on the starship U.S.S. Enterprise, died on Saturday in Silver City, N.M. She was 89.

The cause was heart failure, said Sky Conway, a writer and a film producer who was asked by Kyle Johnson, Ms. Nichols’s son, to speak for the family.

Ms. Nichols had a long career as an entertainer, beginning as a teenage supper-club singer and dancer in Chicago, her hometown, and later appearing on television.

But she will forever be best remembered for her work on “Star Trek,” the cult-inspiring space adventure series that aired from 1966 to 1969 and starred William Shatner as Captain Kirk, the heroic leader of the starship crew; Leonard Nimoy (who died in 2015) as his science officer and adviser, Mr. Spock, an ultralogical humanoid from the planet Vulcan; and DeForest Kelley (who died in 1999) as Dr. McCoy, a.k.a. Bones, the ship’s physician.

A striking beauty, Ms. Nichols provided a frisson of sexiness on the bridge of the Enterprise. She was generally clad in a snug red doublet and black tights; Ebony magazine called her the “most heavenly body in ‘Star Trek,’” on its 1967 cover. Her role, however, was both substantial and historically significant.

Uhura was an officer and a highly educated and well-trained technician who maintained a businesslike demeanor while performing her high-minded duties. Ms. Nichols was among the first Black women to have a leading role on a network television series, making her an anomaly on the small screen, which until that time had rarely depicted Black women in anything other than subservient roles.

In a November 1968 episode, during the show’s third and final season, Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura are forced to embrace by the inhabitants of a strange planet, resulting in what is widely thought to be the first interracial kiss in television history.

Ms. Nichols’s first appearances on “Star Trek” predated the 1968 sitcom “Julia,” in which Diahann Carroll, playing a widowed mother who works as a nurse, became the first Black woman to star in a non-stereotypical role in a network series.

(A series called “Beulah,” also called “The Beulah Show,” starring Ethel Waters — and later Louise Beavers and Hattie McDaniel — as the maid for a white family, was broadcast on ABC in the early 1950s and subsequently cited by civil rights activists for its demeaning portraits of Black people.)

But Uhura’s influence reached far beyond television. In 1977, Ms. Nichols began an association with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, contracting as a representative and speaker to help recruit female and minority candidates for spaceflight training; the following year’s class of astronaut candidates was the first to include women and members of minority groups.

In subsequent years, Ms. Nichols made public appearances and recorded public service announcements on behalf of the agency. In 2012, after she was the keynote speaker at the Goddard Space Center during a celebration of African American History Month, a NASA news release about the event lauded her help for the cause of diversity in space exploration.

“Nichols’s role as one of television’s first Black characters to be more than just a stereotype and one of the first women in a position of authority (she was fourth in command of the Enterprise) inspired thousands of applications from women and minorities,” the release said. “Among them: Ronald McNair, Frederick Gregory, Judith Resnick, first American woman in space Sally Ride and current NASA administrator Charlie Bolden.”

Grace Dell Nichols was born in Robbins, Ill., on Dec. 28, 1932 (some sources give a later year), and grew up in Chicago. Her father was, for a time, the mayor of Robbins, and a chemist. At 13 or 14, tired of being called Gracie by her friends, she requested a different name from her mother, who liked Michelle but suggested Nichelle for the alliteration.

A ballet dancer as a child, she also had a singing voice with a naturally wide range — more than four octaves, she later said. While still attending Englewood High School, she landed her first professional gig in a revue at the College Inn, a well-known Chicago night spot.

There she was seen by Duke Ellington, who employed her a year or two later with his touring orchestra as a dancer in one of his jazz suites.

Ms. Nichols appeared in several musical theater productions around the country during the 1950s. In an interview with the Archive of American Television, she recalled performing at the Playboy Club in New York City while serving as an understudy for Ms. Carroll in the Broadway musical “No Strings” (although she never went on).

In 1959, she was a dancer in Otto Preminger’s film version of “Porgy and Bess.” She made her television debut in 1963 in an episode of “The Lieutenant,” a short-lived dramatic series about Marines at Camp Pendleton created by Gene Roddenberry, who went on create “Star Trek.”

Ms. Nichols would appear on other television shows over the years — among them “Peyton Place” (1966), “Head of the Class” (1988) and “Heroes” (2007). She also appeared onstage occasionally in Los Angeles, including in a one-woman show in which she did impressions of, and paid homage to, Black female entertainers who preceded her, including Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey and Eartha Kitt.

But Uhura was to be her legacy: A decade after “Star Trek” went off the air, Ms. Nichols reprised the role in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” and she appeared as Uhura, by then a commander, in five subsequent movie sequels through 1991.

Besides a son, her survivors include two sisters, Marian Smothers and Diane Robinson.

Ms. Nichols was married and divorced twice. In her 1995 autobiography, “Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories,” she disclosed that she and Roddenberry, who died in 1991, had been romantically involved for a time. In an interview in 2010 for the Archive of American Television, she said that he had little to do with her casting in “Star Trek” but that he defended her when studio executives wanted to replace her.

At the time she took the role of Uhura, Ms. Nichols said, she thought of it as a mere job, valuable as a résumé enhancer, but she fully intended to return to the stage; she wanted a career on Broadway. Indeed, she threatened to leave the show after its first season and gave Mr. Roddenberry her resignation. He told her to think it over for a few days.

In a story she often told, that Saturday night she was a guest at an event in Beverly Hills — “I believe it was an N.A.A.C.P. fund-raiser,” she recalled in the Archive interview — where the organizer introduced her to someone he described as “your biggest fan.”

“He’s desperate to meet you,” she recalled the organizer saying.

The fan, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., introduced himself.

“He said, ‘We admire you greatly, you know,’ ” Ms. Nichols said, and she thanked him and told him that she was about to leave the show. “He said, ‘You cannot. You cannot.’”

Dr. King told her that her role as a dignified, authoritative figure in a popular show was too important to the cause of civil rights for her to forgo. As Ms. Nichols recalled it, he said, “For the first time, we will be seen on television the way we should be seen every day.”

On Monday morning, she returned to Mr. Roddenberry’s office and told him what had happened.

“And I said, ‘If you still want me to stay, I’ll stay. I have to.’”

Bill Russell, whose defensive athleticism at center changed the face of pro basketball and propelled the Boston Celtics to 11 N.B.A. championships, the final two when he became the first Black head coach in a major American sports league, died on Sunday. He was 88.

His death was announced by his family, who did not say where he died.

When Russell was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1975, Red Auerbach, who orchestrated his arrival as a Celtic and coached him on nine championship teams, called him “the single most devastating force in the history of the game.”

He was not alone in that view: In a 1980 poll of basketball writers (long before Michael Jordan and LeBron James entered the scene), Russell was voted nothing less than the greatest player in N.B.A. history.

Russell’s quickness and his uncanny ability to block shots transformed the center position, once a spot for slow and hulking types. His awesome rebounding triggered a Celtic fast break that overwhelmed the rest of the N.B.A.

Former Senator Bill Bradley, who faced Russell with the Knicks in the 1960s, viewed him as “the smartest player ever to play the game and the epitome of a team leader.”

“At his core, Russell knew that he was different from other players — that he was an innovator and that his very identity depended on dominating the game,” Bradley wrote in reviewing Russell’s remembrances of Auerbach in “Red and Me: My Coach, My Lifelong Friend” (2009) for The New York Times.

In the decades that followed Russell’s retirement in 1969, when flashy moves delighted fans and team play was often an afterthought, his stature was burnished even more, remembered for his ability to enhance the talents of his teammates even as he dominated the action, and to do it without bravado: He disdained dunking or gesturing to celebrate his feats.

In those later years, his signature goatee now turned white, Russell reappeared on the court at springtime, presenting the most valuable player of the N.B.A. championship series with the trophy named for him in 2009.

Russell was remembered as well for his visibility on civil rights issues.

He took part in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and was seated in the front row of the crowd to hear the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. He went to Mississippi after the civil rights activist Medgar Evers was murdered and worked with Evers’s brother, Charles, to open an integrated basketball camp in Jackson. He was among a group of prominent Black athletes who supported Muhammad Ali when Ali refused induction into the armed forces during the Vietnam War.

President Barack Obama awarded Russell the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, at the White House in 2011, honoring him as “someone who stood up for the rights and dignity of all men.”

In September 2017, following President Donald J. Trump’s calling for N.F.L. owners to fire players who were taking a knee during the national anthem to protest racial injustice, Russell posted a photo on Twitter in which he posed taking a knee while holding the medal.

“What I wanted was to let those guys know I support them,” he told ESPN.

A complete obituary will appear shortly.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi was expected to appear in Singapore on Monday as part of a closely watched tour of Asia that has stoked fears, including at the highest levels of the American government, of dangerously heightened tensions with China over the possibility that she would make a stop in Taiwan.

Ms. Pelosi has not confirmed whether she will visit Taiwan, a self-governing democracy of 23 million people that China claims as its own territory. But she had proposed a trip to the island this year, which was postponed because she contracted the coronavirus, and when asked recently about her travels plans, she said that it was “important for us to show support for Taiwan.”

On Sunday, Ms. Pelosi revealed some more details about her itinerary, which she had previously declined to disclose, citing security concerns. Her office said in a statement that her trip, on which she would be accompanied by a small congressional delegation, would include visits to Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan, to “focus on mutual security, economic partnership and democratic governance in the Indo-Pacific region.” A posting on the website of the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore said that Ms. Pelosi would be attending a cocktail reception hosted by the group on Monday afternoon.

The possibility of a trip to Taiwan by Ms. Pelosi — who would be the highest-ranking American official to go there since 1997, when a previous House speaker, Newt Gingrich, visited — comes at a particularly delicate time in U.S.-China relations. The Biden administration has grown increasingly worried that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, might try to move, perhaps with force, against Taiwan within the next year and a half.

Mr. Xi, China’s most authoritarian leader in decades, has pledged to pursue reunification with Taiwan, though he has not specified a timeline. Some analysts fear that he may feel pressure to show a tough stance — possibly including military action — against any perceived challenges to that pledge ahead of an important Chinese Communist Party Congress this fall, when he is expected to claim a third term as leader.

Mr. Biden himself has seemingly alluded to the risk of a clash with China if Ms. Pelosi visits. Asked recently by reporters about the proposed trip, he said that “the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now.” The president has also been shoring up U.S. relations with Asian allies as a potential counterweight to China’s rise.

China has not specified how it would react if Ms. Pelosi’s visit went ahead. During a two-hour phone call between Mr. Xi and Mr. Biden on Thursday, their first direct conversation in four months, Mr. Xi warned Mr. Biden against “playing with fire” on the Taiwan issue, according to a Chinese government statement that did not explicitly mention the House speaker.

Others have been more direct in denouncing the potential visit. A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, Zhao Lijian, told reporters last week that China would take “firm and resolute measures” if Ms. Pelosi visited Taiwan and that the United States would be “responsible for all of the serious consequences.” Some political analysts and state media commentators have suggested that China would activate its air force to prevent the visit — raising the specter of armed conflict.

The Chinese military announced it would conduct drills on Saturday with live ammunition in the waters off southeastern Fujian Province, about 80 miles from Taiwan. On Sunday, a spokesman for the Chinese air force said that the country’s fighter jets flew around Taiwan to enhance the ability to defend territorial integrity, without specifying dates.

The Biden administration insists that its stance on Taiwan has not changed, a message that Mr. Biden relayed to Mr. Xi during their phone call, according to the White House. Longstanding American policy acknowledges, without endorsing, China’s position that Taiwan is part of its territory, and holds that the United States would protect the island without saying exactly how.

But the president has little official authority over Ms. Pelosi and her travel plans. And rising anti-China sentiment in both the Democratic and Republican parties makes it awkward politically for Mr. Biden to openly discourage her trip.

Some Chinese and American analysts have played down the risks of military escalation, noting that Mr. Xi would probably want to avoid unpredictability ahead of the Party Congress this year.

The Chinese government perhaps gave a foretaste of how it will respond to Ms. Pelosi’s visit when the military announced live-fire exercises in waters 80 miles from neighboring Taiwan’s coast. A spokesman for China’s air force also declared that the force has the “firm will, full confidence and sufficient capability to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

At the same time, domestic politics, in both China and the United States, has left little room for graceful de-escalation, said Chen Qi, a professor of international relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. It could cost the Democrats politically if Ms. Pelosi decides not to visit Taiwan, Professor Chen said in an interview with a journalist for Xinhua, China’s state news agency. And China cannot afford to be seen as weak in the face of a perceived provocation.

“Now it’s up to who blinks first,” Professor Chen said.

John Liu and Claire Fu contributed research.