BANGKOK (AP) — Prosecutors in the trial of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi presented arguments on Tuesday that she incited public disorder and flouted coronavirus restrictions, part of a package of charges the ruling military junta is seen as using to discredit her and consolidate its control.

Suu Kyi and other members of her government and party were arrested by the military after its Feb. 1 coup, and criminal charges were brought against some of the top figures on a litany of charges that their supporters and independent observers say are bogus.

The coup reversed years of democratic reforms following decades of harsh military rule and sparked widespread protests and international condemnation. Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party had been due to start a second five-year term in office after winning a landslide victory in a general election last November.

Suu Kyi has not been seen in public since her arrest, and her lawyers say they don’t know exactly where she is currently being held. She has also had only limited time to consult with her legal team.

Her lawyers declined to tell journalists many details of the proceedings on the second day of the trial Tuesday in the courtroom in the capital, Naypyitaw, but said Suu Kyi was “very strong” and followed the process with close interest.

“She carefully listens to what the prosecutor says and she even discusses some points with us during the session,” said one of her lawyers, Min Min Soe.

Suu Kyi wore a dress in the traditional style of the Kachin ethnic minority and was in good health after having complained about a toothache a day earlier, the lawyer said.

Tuesday’s session covered a sedition charge brought against Suu Kyi, along with a second count of violating COVID-19 restrictions.

The sedition charge, which is sometimes described as incitement, provides for up to two years’ imprisonment for anyone found guilty of causing fear or alarm that could create an offense against the state or public tranquility. Ousted President Win Myint and the former mayor of Naypyitaw, Myo Aung, who are her close political allies and co-defendants, were also in court.

The plaintiff. a local Naypyitaw official, cited two statements posted on the Facebook page of Suu Kyi’s party as evidence supporting the sedition charge, said another defense lawyer, San Mar La Nyunt.

She said the defense raised an objection to the evidence, noting that all members of the party’s central executive committee, including Suu Kyi, had already been arrested before the statements were posted.

The prosecution and defense will both file arguments on the matter at the next court session, she said. The court is scheduled to meet every Monday and Tuesday.

The sedition charge has been law since Myanmar was a British colony, and has been criticized as a catch-all statute that infringes on freedom of speech and is used for political repression.

The trial, which is closed to the public and media, began Monday with police outlining several of the cases against her.

They covered charges she had illegally imported walkie-talkies that were for her bodyguards’ use; the unlicensed use of those radios; and violation of the Natural Disaster Management Law by allegedly breaking pandemic restrictions during last year’s election campaign, her lawyers said.

Suu Kyi faces additional charges that have yet to be tried, among them accepting bribes, which carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison, and violating the Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison term of 14 years. But a conviction on virtually charge any could result in Suu Kyi being banned from running in any future election, which many believe is the military’s goal.

One of the reasons the military gave for conducting the coup was that last year’s election was marred by fraud, an assertion rejected by independent poll watchers.

Suu Kyi’s trial has renewed calls for her release and return to civilian rule.

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq, responding to a question on Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ reaction to the trial, said Monday the U.N. position is clear: “We want her and all of the senior members of her administration to be freed.”

“The secretary-general has called for and continues to call for a reversal of the Feb. 1 coup and the restoration of the legitimate government of Myanmar, of whom Aung San Suu Kyi is a member,” Haq said.

Rights groups have said there is little chance that Suu Kyi will receive a fair trial.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said the pandemic charges are related to instances during the campaign in which crowds came to see Suu Kyi or she greeted them, and noted that the military had not enforced such regulations for its own gatherings.

“Public health measures should not be applied in an arbitrary fashion,” he said. “Clearly there are double standards being applied in the prosecution of Aung San Suu Kyi.”

Story: Grant Peck

GENEVA (AP) — President Joe Biden and Russia’s Vladimir Putin sit down Wednesday for their highly anticipated summit in the Swiss capital, a moment of high-stakes diplomacy at a time when both leaders agree that U.S.-Russian relations are at an all-time low.

For four months, the two leaders have traded sharp rhetoric. Biden repeatedly called out Putin for malicious cyberattacks by Russian-based hackers on U.S. interests, a disregard for democracy with the jailing of Russia’s foremost opposition leader and interference in American elections.

Putin, for his part, has reacted with whatabout-isms and obfuscations — pointing to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol to argue that the U.S. has no business lecturing on democratic norms and insisting that the Russian government hasn’t been involved in any election interference or cyberattacks despite U.S. intelligence showing otherwise.

Now, they will meet for their first face-to-face as leaders — a conversation that is expected to last four to five hours. In advance, both sides set out to lower expectations.

Even so, Biden has called it an important step if the two nations are able to ultimately find “stability and predictability” in their relationship, a seemingly modest goal from the president for dealing with the person he sees as one of America’s fiercest adversaries.

“We should decide where it’s in our mutual interest, in the interest of the world, to cooperate, and see if we can do that,” Biden told reporters earlier this week. “And the areas where we don’t agree, make it clear what the red lines are.”

Arrangements for the meeting have been carefully choreographed and vigorously negotiated by both sides.

Biden first floated the meeting in an April phone call in which he informed Putin that he would be expelling several Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions against dozens of people and companies, part of an effort to hold the Kremlin accountable for interference in last year’s presidential election and the hacking of federal agencies.

Putin and his entourage will arrive first at the summit site: Villa La Grange, a grand lakeside mansion set in Geneva’s biggest park. Next come Biden and his team. Swiss President Guy Parmelin will greet the two leaders.

The three will spend a moment together in front of the cameras, but only Parmelin is expected to make remarks, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity.

Biden and Putin will first hold a relatively intimate meeting joined by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Each side will have a translator.

The meeting will then expand to include five senior aides on each side.

After the meeting concludes, Putin will hold a solo news conference and then Biden will follow suit. The White House opted against a joint news conference, deciding it did not want to appear to elevate Putin at a moment when the president is urging European allies to pressure Putin to cut out myriad provocations.

Biden sees himself with few peers on foreign policy. He traveled the globe as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was given difficult foreign policy assignments by President Barack Obama when Biden was vice president. His portfolio included messy spots like Iraq and Ukraine and weighing the mettle of China’s Xi Jinping during his rise to power.

He has repeatedly said that he believes executing effective foreign policy comes from forming strong personal relations, and he has managed to find rapport with both the likes of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom Biden has labeled an “autocrat,” and conventional politicians like Canada’s Justin Trudeau.

But with Putin, whom the president has said is a “killer” and has “no soul,” Biden has long been wary. At the same time, he acknowledges that Putin — he has remained the most powerful figure in Russian politics over the span of five U.S. presidents — is not without talent. Biden this week suggested that he is approaching his meeting with Putin carefully.

“He’s bright. He’s tough,” Biden told reporters. “And I have found that he is a — as they say … a worthy adversary.”

There are hopes of finding small areas of agreement.

No commitments have been made, but according to the senior administration official, there are hopes that both sides will return their ambassadors to their respective postings following the meeting. Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, was recalled from Washington about three months ago after Biden called Putin a killer, and U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan left Moscow almost two months ago, after Russia suggested he return to Washington for consultations.

Both ambassadors will be in Geneva during Wednesday’s meeting.

Biden administration officials say they think common ground can be found on arms control. International arms control groups are pressing the Russian and American leaders to start a push for new arms control by holding “strategic stability” talks — a series of government-to-government discussions meant to sort through the many areas of disagreement and tension on the national security front.

The Biden team will press its concerns on cybersecurity. In recent months, Russia-based hackers have launched crippling attacks on a major U.S. oil pipeline and a Brazil-headquartered meat supplier that operates in the U.S.

The Russian side has said that the imprisonment of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is an internal political matter and one area where Putin won’t engage Biden. But the senior Biden administration official said there “is no issue that is off the table for the president,” suggesting Navalny will come up.

The meeting is sure to invite comparisons with President Donald Trump’s 2018 meeting with Putin in Helsinki, where the two leaders held a joint news conference and Trump sided with Russian denials when asked whether Moscow had meddled in the 2016 presidential election.

Biden has prepared for his one-on-one by reviewing materials and consulting with officials across government and with outside advisers. Aides said the level of preparation wasn’t unusual. Biden, in a brief exchange with reporters upon arriving in Geneva on Tuesday night, sought to offer the impression that he wasn’t sweating his big meeting.

“I am always ready,” Biden said.

Story: Aamer Madhani and Jonathan Lemire

BRUSSELS (AP) — President Joe Biden used his first appearance at a NATO summit since taking office to call on Russian President Vladimir Putin to step back from provocative actions targeting the U.S. and its allies on Monday. NATO leaders joined the United States in formally accusing Moscow and Beijing of malign actions.

Biden’s sharp words for Russia and his friendly interactions with NATO allies marked a sharp shift in tone from the past four years and highlighted the renewed U.S. commitment to the 30-country alliance that was frequently maligned by predecessor Donald Trump.

Biden, wearing a NATO lapel pin, said that in his extensive talks with NATO leaders about his planned meeting with Putin on Wednesday, all were supportive of his plans to press the Russian leader to halt Russian-originated cyber attacks against the West, end the violent stifling of political dissidents and stop interfering in elections outside its borders.

“I’m going to make clear to President Putin that there are areas where we can cooperate, if he chooses,” Biden told reporters as he ended his day at NATO headquarters. “And if he chooses not to cooperate and acts in a way that he has in the past relative to cybersecurity and other activities, then we will respond, we will respond in kind.”

Biden is on an eight-day visit to Europe in which he is seeking to rally allies to speak with a single voice on countering Russia and China.

To that end, NATO leaders on Monday declared China a constant security challenge and said the Chinese are working to undermine global order, a message in sync with Biden’s pleas to confront Beijing on China’s trade, military and human rights practices.

In a summit statement, the leaders said that China’s goals and “assertive behavior present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to alliance security.”

The heads of state and government expressed concern about what they said were China’s “coercive policies,” the opaque ways it is modernizing its armed forces and its use of disinformation.

The NATO leaders also took a big swipe at Russia in their communique, deploring what they consider its aggressive military activities and its snap wargames near the borders of NATO countries as well as repeated violations of their airspace by Russian planes.

They said that Russia had ramped up “hybrid” actions against member countries by attempts to interfere in elections, by political and economic intimidation, by disinformation campaigns and “malicious cyber activities.”

“Until Russia demonstrates compliance with international law and its international obligations and responsibilities, there can be no return to ’business as usual,’” they said.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an alliance of European and North American countries formed after World War II as a bulwark against Russian aggression. The new Brussels communique states plainly that the NATO nations “will engage China with a view to defending the security interests of the alliance.”

Biden arrived at the NATO summit after three days of consulting with Group of Seven allies in England, where he successfully pushed for a G-7 communique that called out forced labor practices and other human rights violations impacting Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in China’s western Xinjiang province.

However, differences remain among the allies about how forcefully to criticize Beijing.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said NATO’s decision to name China as a threat “shouldn’t be overstated” because Beijing, like Russia, is also a partner in some areas. China is Germany’s top trading partner, and she said it is important to “find the right balance.”

France’s President Emmanuel Macron urged the alliance not to let China distract it from what he saw as more pressing issues facing NATO, including the fight against terrorism and security issues related to Russia.

“I think it is very important not to scatter our efforts and not to have biases in our relation to China,” Macron said.

The Chinese Embassy to the United Kingdom on Monday issued a statement saying the G-7 communique “deliberately slandered China and arbitrarily interfered in China’s internal affairs.” There was no immediate reaction from the Chinese government to the new NATO statement.

Biden arrived at his first NATO summit as president as leading members declared it a pivotal moment for an alliance beleaguered during the presidency of Trump, who questioned the relevance of the multilateral organization.

Biden sat down with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and underscored the U.S. commitment to Article 5 of the alliance charter, which spells out that an attack on any member is an attack on all and is to be met with a collective response.

“Article 5 we take as a sacred obligation,” said Biden. “I want NATO to know America is there.”

It was a marked contrast to the days when Trump called the alliance “obsolete” and complained that it allowed for “global freeloading” countries to spend less on military defense at the expense of the U.S.

Biden was greeted by fellow leaders with warmth and even a bit of relief.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo said Biden’s presence “emphasizes the renewal of the transatlantic partnership.” De Croo said NATO allies were looking to get beyond four stormy years with Trump and infighting among member countries.

“I think now we are ready to turn the page,” de Croo said.

The alliance also updated Article 5 to offer greater clarity on how the alliance should react to major cyber attacks — a matter of growing concern amid hacks targeting the U.S. government and businesses around the globe by Russia-based hackers.

Beyond extending potential use of the mutual defense clause to apply to space, the leaders also broadened the definition of what might constitute such an attack in cyberspace, in a warning to any adversary that might use constant low-level attacks as a tactic.

The organization declared in 2014 that a cyber attack could be met by a collective response by all 30 member countries, and on Monday they said that “the impact of significant malicious cumulative cyber activities might, in certain circumstances, be considered as amounting to an armed attack.”

The president started his day meeting with leaders of the Baltic states on NATO’s eastern flank as well as separate meetings with leaders of Poland and Romania to discuss any threat posed by Russia and the recent air piracy in Belarus.

Biden also met with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on the summit sidelines.

Biden has known Erdogan for years, but their relationship has frequently been contentious. Biden, during his campaign, drew ire from Turkish officials when he described Erdogan as an “autocrat.” In April, Biden infuriated Ankara by declaring that the Ottoman-era mass killing and deportations of Armenians was “genocide” — a term that U.S. presidents have avoided using.

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Story: Aamer Madhani, Jonathan Lemire and Lorne Cook. Associated Press writers Frank Jordans, Sylvie Corbet, Zeke Miller and Alexandra Jaffe contributed reporting.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — While Jane Austen admirers savor the wit and romance of “Pride and Prejudice” and her other enduring novels, scholars ferret out details of Austen’s life and times, including a family link to slavery that surfaced 50 years ago.

The effort to place the writer in the social and political context of her day has yielded a new and contrasting discovery: A favorite brother was part of the 19th-century abolition movement.

Devoney Looser, an Arizona State University professor and author of “The Making of Jane Austen,” unearthed the Rev. Henry Thomas Austen’s attendance at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, which drew some 500 delegates.

“I was stunned to find that fact,” Looser said in an interview. She first detailed her research in an essay for The Times Literary Supplement.

“The family’s commitments and actions changed profoundly, from known complicity in colonial slavery to previously unnoticed anti-slavery activism,” Looser wrote. “Henry became a next-generation Austen publicly supporting a political commitment to abolish slavery across the globe.”

Looser’s essay also addresses patriarch George Austen’s previously revealed ties to another family’s West Indian sugar plantation, calling them “very real” but “both under-described and overstated.”

The latest research was welcomed by Patricia A. Matthew, an associate professor of English at Montclair State University who focuses on literature of the period that encompasses Austen. Her courses include British abolitionist literature.

“I’m always excited about new information about the authors I teach,” Matthew said. While it doesn’t change her view of Austen’s work — “I don’t believe that I’m reading someone who’s actively engaged in debates about the slave trade” — it could resound with Austen’s most devoted admirers, sometimes called “Janeites.”

“I think they are having a kind of reckoning in how they think about not just Austen, but the Regency period,” said Matthew, referring to the British era of the early 1800s. “It raises all manner of interesting questions about how they understand this author.”

The six major novels that Jane Austen wrote before her death at 41 in July 1817 are sharply observed works about human nature and relationships, not anchored in current events. There is a reference to slavery in “Mansfield Park,” and a conversation between two characters in “Emma” includes mentions of abolition and the sale of “human flesh.”

As for Austen’s own beliefs, Looser said, “we know from her letters that she refers to having loved the writings of a prominent white abolitionist, Thomas Clarkson. So we know that she read and cared about issues of race and racial injustice.”

A diary entry from another Austen brother, Francis, called it regrettable that any trace of slavery “should be found to exist in countries dependent on England, or colonised by her subjects.” His opinion was not made public until the early 1900s.

Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and made slavery illegal in 1833 with the exception of some territories. Subsequent legislation outlawed it entirely.

How Looser discovered Henry’s abolition activism is a scholarly detective story. In the course of her ongoing research, she found that he had billed himself as the Rev. H.T. Austen for his writing and public work. That pulled her down new paths, including his convention participation.

It was not to be found elsewhere, even in the Austen scholars’ bible, “A Chronology of Jane Austen and her Family: 1600 to 2000” by Deirdre Le Faye, which Looser describes as nearly 800 pages filled with “thousands and thousands of facts” about the Austens.

Looser’s find coincides with a racial reappraisal that is taking place widely, including in the United Kingdom.

In April, a British media squall greeted plans to update the museum at Jane Austen’s House in the town of Chawton, where she lived and wrote for about eight years and which is a magnet for Austen fans. A revamped display that will include research on her connections to slavery was denounced as a “revisionist attack” by one newspaper.

“We would like to offer reassurance that we will not, and have never had any intention to, interrogate Jane Austen, her characters or her readers for drinking tea,” said a tart statement issued by Jane Austen’s House — tea being a vital part of the British colonial empire.

For readers who might balk at bringing what might seem like modern issues and perspectives into consideration of Austen and her work, Looser has a ready answer.

“Issues of race, racism and racial justice are central to Jane Austen’s day,” she said. “So we’re not bringing questions and concerns that weren’t there in her time. They were absolutely there.”

Story: Lynn Elber