The Myanmar military’s latest accusations against the ousted civilian leader suggest a monthslong campaign to neutralize the country’s most popular politician.The Myanmar construction tycoon spoke in a faltering monotone, blinking fast and gulping occasionally for air. He said that over the past several years he had handed a total of $550,000 to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the civilian leader of Myanmar who was ousted in a military coup last month.On two occasions, he had provided $100,000 and $150,000, the businessman said in a confessional statement broadcast on a military television network Wednesday night. In the English subtitles, the money had been handed over in a “black envelope.” In Burmese, the description had him presenting the money, meant to enhance his business ties, in a paper gift bag.Either way, the envelope or gift bag would have been very large to hold that much cash.The televised statement by U Maung Weik, a military crony who was once imprisoned for drug trafficking, appears to be the latest act in an intricately planned effort to impugn Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi.Before elections in November, an online campaign amplified by pro-military groups raised a litany of unproven allegations against the civilian leader, who had shared power with the military for five years. Once her party won a landslide victory, military-linked forces stepped up their attacks on her, calling her corrupt and under the influence of foreigners.Then, after the military staged its Feb. 1 coup, security forces detained individuals who had been named months earlier as key members of a foreign plot, blessed by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, to destabilize Myanmar. The chronology suggests a well-planned effort to rid the country of its most beloved leader.Protesters clashing with security forces in Yangon, Myanmar, on Tuesday.The New York Times“We have seen their attempt to arrest Daw Aung San Suu Kyi since before the election,” said U Khin Maung Zaw, her lawyer. He has not been able to see his client nor has he been given power of attorney so he can formally handle her legal affairs.Days before the November polls, the coordinated attacks on social media accused Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and her governing National League for Democracy of illegally profiting from foreign funding. If the National League for Democracy is found guilty of having been tainted by foreign influence, the party could be disbanded, neutralizing the most popular political force in Myanmar’s history.The targeted campaign — disseminated on Facebook, YouTube, a custom-built website and spoofed emails that shared similar branding and cross-posting — implied that a cabal of Western interests was working with the National League for Democracy to steal the elections and upend Myanmar governance. The custom-built website was developed from a folder named after the military’s proxy party, a digital forensics investigation found.Chief among the supposed plotters was George Soros, the American philanthropist whose Open Society Foundation promotes democracy worldwide.One of the pre-election posts claimed that the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation, a charity group set up in the name of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s mother, was secretly working with the Open Society Foundation to destabilize Myanmar.The implications of the social media attack became clearer this month. Mr. Maung Weik, the construction tycoon, claimed in the television broadcast on Wednesday that he had donated money to the charity. Last week, the military accused Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi of having siphoned off some money from the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation. At least two of the charity’s employees have been detained in recent weeks.On Monday, the same military-controlled television network that broadcast Mr. Maung Weik’s statement announced that arrest warrants had been issued for 11 employees of Open Society Myanmar for aiding the anti-coup protest movement with, among other things, illegal bank transactions. The group’s finance manager has been detained.Volunteer medical doctors operate on an 18-year-old protestor wounded during a crackdown in Yangon, Wednesday.The New York TimesOpen Society Myanmar has denied that it acted illegally by withdrawing funds from its own local bank account.Another pre-election social media attack pointed fingers at a deputy industry minister, a deputy finance minister and an Australian economic adviser to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, reproaching them for machinations to control the country. After the military ousted the civilian government last month, all three were detained.The military’s takeover of power has galvanized tremendous pushback from the people of Myanmar. Since the coup, millions of people have demonstrated and participated in labor strikes against the regime.The military has responded with the kind of violence normally reserved for the battlefield. In attacks on protesters, security forces have killed at least 215 people, mostly by gunshot, according to a local group that tallies political imprisonments and deaths; more than 2,000 people have been detained for political reasons since the coup.This week, members of a group representing the disbanded Parliament were charged with high treason. So was Myanmar’s envoy to the United Nations, who gave an impassioned speech last month decrying the military’s seizure of power.On Wednesday, the last of Myanmar’s major independent newspapers ceased publication. More than 30 journalists have been detained or pursued by authorities since the coup. The country, for decades under the military’s fist, is rapidly losing whatever democratic reforms had been introduced over the past few years.Protesters building a roadblock on a bridge, Yangon, on Tuesday.The New York TimesSince Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was locked up in a pre-dawn raid on the day of the coup, she has been formally charged with various crimes that could see her imprisoned for years. The charges include esoteric crimes such as illegally importing foreign walkie-talkies and contravening coronavirus regulations.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has not yet been charged in relation to Mr. Maung Weik’s accusations that he gave her money to better his business relationship with the civilian government. The military television network said that investigators were currently looking into the case.Last week, the military also accused her of illegally accepting 25 pounds of gold and about $600,000. Mr. Maung Weik’s accusations of money transfers are separate from this figure.If charges are brought in any such cases, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, 75, could face life imprisonment.“I 100 percent believe that their accusations against Daw Aung San Suu Kyi are groundless,” said U Aung Kyi Nyunt, a spokesman for the National League for Democracy.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s popularity in Myanmar far outstrips that of the generals who have controlled the country for most of the past 60 years. She spent 15 years under house arrest and won the Nobel Peace Prize for her commitment to nonviolent resistance.While her international reputation faded after she defended the military’s ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims, her star appeal endured at home. The National League for Democracy’s electoral performance last year bested its 2015 landslide. The military has called fraud on the polls.Mr. Khin Maung Zaw, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyer, said that by silencing and imprisoning her the military regime risked burnishing her popularity further.“They should not let Daw Aung San Suu Kyi change from a hero to a martyr,” he said. “If Daw Aung San Suu Kyi becomes a martyr, then the strength of the people will never be destroyed, and her martyrdom will become the people’s greatest strength.”A Yangon neighborhood after clashes on Tuesday.The New York Times More

A mash-up of years-old comments by the Ohio senator with a hip-hop track is finding a broad audience. It’s part of a new genre of videos on the app.One of the hottest tracks on TikTok this summer is, unexpectedly, a 22-second Petey Pablo hip-hop beat remixed with a years-old audio clip of JD Vance — now former President Donald J. Trump’s vice-presidential pick — declaring, before his loyalties changed, that he was “a never Trump guy.”The song has been used in more than 8,500 TikTok videos since two independent music producers created it in July. Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris have seized on it, wagging their fingers and swinging their arms to it, some hoping to create its official dance. It was also reposted by @KamalaHQ, the campaign’s official TikTok account. Videos with the sound have racked up more than 40 million views overall, according to Zelf, a social video analytics company focused on TikTok.It’s a marquee example of a new genre of political memes finding an audience on the short-form video app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.Politically minded Americans are increasingly embracing TikTok to make videos and trends out of snippets of songs and speeches in this election cycle. The app — a pandemic-fueled curiosity during the last presidential election — has since exploded its user base to 170 million Americans. About half of users under 30 say they use TikTok to help them keep up with politics and political issues, according to new data from the Pew Research Center.“People are still doing dances to random songs, but now people are doing dances to remixes of rap with Kamala Harris speeches over it,” said Emma Mont, a digital creator and administrator of @OrganizerMemes, a liberal meme account.

@casadimusic Replying to @casadimusic JD Vance is a Never Trump Guy. Kamala Harris for President #nevertrumpguy #kamalaharris #Democrat #kamalahq ♬ Never Trump Guy JD Vance House of Evo Remix – CasaDi We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The South Carolina Republican used her floor privileges to lodge shocking accusations against her former fiancé and three other men.Representative Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican who in recent weeks has floated a run for governor, on Monday night accused her former fiancé and three other men of having drugged and raped her and other women, and of filming and taking lewd photographs of women and underage girls without their consent.In a stunningly graphic speech on the House floor that had little precedent, Ms. Mace said the men, whom she named and displayed photographs of on a placard where lawmakers more typically display charts and graphs on policy issues, were involved in the “premeditated, calculated exploitation of innocent women and girls in my district.”“You’ve booked yourself a one-way ticket to hell,” she said, referring to the men directly at one point in a speech that lasted close to an hour. “It is nonstop. There are no connections. So I and all of your victims can watch you rot into eternity.”On the floor of the House, Ms. Mace was protected by the speech and debate clause, even as she accused the men of repeatedly assaulting incapacitated women and filming it. The clause provides lawmakers immunity from criminal prosecutions or civil suits, such as for slander, when they are acting “within the legislative sphere.” Ms. Mace offered no evidence to support the accusations, although she said she had plenty of such material.She refused to answer any follow-up questions from reporters outside the Capitol on Monday night and did not respond to a separate request to provide corroboration. The New York Times has not independently verified any of the allegations.In a statement not long after Ms. Mace finished speaking, Patrick Bryant, the former fiancé whom she accused by name, denied her account.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Send us your questions about student loans. We’ll answer some in an upcoming newsletter.Next week, the federal government will resume collecting payments from the millions of Americans who have defaulted on their student loan debts. (The Biden administration had paused enforcement in 2020, during the pandemic.)For a future edition of The Morning newsletter, we want to know: What questions do you have about student loans?We won’t publish any part of your response without following up with you first. And we won’t use your contact information for any reason other than to get in touch with you. More

Several communities in the Valparaíso region were being evacuated on Wednesday night. Fires along the coast killed more than 100 people last month.The authorities were battling another round of dangerous wildfires along Chile’s Pacific coast on Wednesday night, several weeks after blazes there killed more than 100 people.Chile’s national disaster agency said on Wednesday night that several communities in the Valparaíso region were being evacuated as emergency crews battled the Cerro Cordillera fire. That part of the coast is dotted with towns that rise steeply from the ocean.Devastating wildfires swept through the region last month after erupting in Viña del Mar, a coastal resort city about 80 miles by road northwest of Santiago, the capital. They ravaged entire neighborhoods, trapped people fleeing in cars and destroyed thousands of homes. President Gabriel Boric called it Chile’s worst disaster since a cataclysmic 2010 earthquake killed more than 400 people and displaced about 1.5 million more.This is a developing story. More