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Ousted South Korean leader Park Geun-hye was behind bars in the Seoul Detention Centre on Friday after her arrest, on charges including bribery, in a corruption scandal that has brought low some of the country's business and political elite.In a dramatic fall from power, Park, 65, became South Korea's first democratically elected leader to be thrown out of office. She is accused of colluding with a friend, Choi Soon-sil, to pressure big businesses to contribute funds to foundations that backed her policy initiatives.She and Choi, who is already in custody and on trial, deny any wrongdoing. In the early hours of Friday, the Seoul Central District Court approved prosecutors' request for an arrest warrant for Park after she gave about eight hours of testimony.Park and her lawyers had argued that she should not be arrested because she did not pose a flight risk and would not try to tamper with evidence. But the court disagreed, and said she might try to manipulate evidence.

Prosecutors now have 20 days to build their case while Park remains in detention.Park's removal from office capped months of paralysis and turmoil over the corruption scandal that also landed the head of the Samsung Group, South Korea's largest "chaebol", or family-run conglomerate, in detention and on trial.

Park's impeachment on March 10, which upheld a parliamentary vote in December, effectively left a political vacuum with only an interim president in place before a snap May 9 election.Liberal opposition politician Moon Jae-in is leading in opinion polls and is expected to win that election."The arrest of the former president Park amounts to upholding the people's stern order to build a country where justice and common sense stand firm," Moon's spokesman, Park Kwang-on, said in a statement.

There was some good news and some not so good news in the Fed's latest annual Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households. First the good news. The report, based on the Board's fourth annual Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking conducted in October 2016, presents a "picture of improving financial well-being among Americans", at least according to the report (read on to see if this is merited). Overall, 70% of the more than 6,600 respondents said they were either "living comfortably" or "doing okay," up 1% from 2015 and up 8% from the first survey results in 2013.

Now, the not so good news. Nearly eight years into an economic recovery, nearly half of Americans didn’t have enough cash available to cover a $400 emergency. Specifically, the survey found that, in line with what the Fed had disclosed in previous years, 44% of respondents said they wouldn’t be able to cover an unexpected $400 expense like a car repair or medical bill, or would have to borrow money or sell something to meet it. Troubling as this statistic remains, the overall share of adults who would struggle to come up with $400 in a pinch has declined by 2% from the last survey conducted in 2015, and down 6% since 2013. Of the group that could not pay in cash, 45% said they would go further in debt and use a credit card to pay off the expense over time. while a quarter would borrow from friends of family, and another 27% just couldn’t pay the expense. Others would turn to selling items or using a payday loan.

The breakdown was largely by education attainment: 79% of those with at least a bachelor’s degree said they would still be able to pay all of their other bills in full if hit with a $400 charge. Just 52% of those with no more than a high school diploma said the same. Just as concerning were other findings from the study: just under one-fourth of adults, or 23%, are not able to pay all of their current month’s bills in full while 25% reported skipping medical treatments due to cost in the prior year. Additionally, 28% of adults who haven’t retired yet reported to being grossly unprepared, indicating they had no retirement savings or pension whatsoever.

The post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere have been fought with borrowed money, enough to require up to $8 trillion in interest payments in coming decades, a new report says. Unlike America’s previous wars, its 21st-century conflicts have been paired not with a tax hike or massive sale of U.S. bonds, but a tax cut. The federal government has been operating at a deficit since 2002, accruing a national debt that now totals $20 trillion and counting. “We have to recognize that we have been borrowing for 16 years to pay for military operations,” said Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It’s the “first time really in history with any major conflict that we have borrowed rather than ask people to contribute to the national defense directly, and the result is we’ve got this huge fiscal drag…that we’re not really accounting for or factoring into deliberations about fiscal policy as well as military policy.” The 2017 report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project arrives as U.S. lawmakers and President Donald Trump strive to enact tax changes that will add at least $1.5 trillion to the national debt.

Senate Republicans are reportedly banking on the testimony of a "secret informant" to deepen their investigation into Hillary Clinton's role in the 2010 sale of uranium assets to Russia, Reuters reported Thursday. The GOP's source — a former FBI informant and lobbyist for the U.S.-based unit of Rosatom, a Russian-owned nuclear power company — will appear before the upper chamber as part of the probe into the so-called Uranium One deal. Although the Senate committee did not reveal the witness' name, former lobbyist William D. Campbell identified himself to Reuters. "I have worked with the Justice Department undercover for several years, and documentation relating to Uranium One and political influence does exist and I have it," Campbell said. Campbell was once a "star witness" in an FBI case against a Rosatom, until his credibility and motivations as an informant were called into question by defense attorneys. President Trump has repeatedly claimed that Uranium One's sale was approved by Clinton's State Department in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation, and deal skeptics point to the fact that the Clinton Foundation received $145 million in donations from owners of Uranium One. In a statement to Reuters, Rosatom noted that the State Department is only one of nine government agencies that had to approve the sale.

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday that he expected to see a larger US civilian presence in Syria, including contractors and diplomats, as the fight against Islamic State militants nears its end and the focus turns toward rebuilding and ensuring the militants do not return. The United States has about 2,000 troops in Syria fighting Islamic State. Mattis’ comments are likely to anger Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has previously called US troops “illegal invader” forces. “What we will be doing is shifting from what I would call an offensive, shifting from an offensive terrain-seizing approach to a stabilizing… you’ll see more US diplomats on the ground,” Mattis said. He has previously stated that US forces will stay in Syria as long as Islamic State fighters want to fight and prevent the return of an “ISIS 2.0.” This is the first time he has said that there would be an increase of diplomats in the parts of the country retaken from Islamic State militants. “Well when you bring in more diplomats, they are working that initial restoration of services, they bring in the contractors, that sort of thing,” Mattis said. “There is international money that has got to be administered, so it actually does something, it doesn’t go into the wrong people’s pockets,” he added. The contractors and diplomats would also be looking at training local forces to clear improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and holding territory to help ensure that Islamic State does not retake territory. “It is an attempt to move towards the normalcy and that takes a lot of support,” said Mattis. It was not clear how many US diplomats would serve in Syria and when. The United States has suspended diplomatic relations with Syria due to the civil war.

After President Trump signed two sweeping executive orders on immigration on Wednesday, most of the attention was on his plans to build a wall along the border with Mexico and to hold back money from “sanctuary cities.” But the most immediate effect may come from language about deportation priorities that is tucked into the border wall order. It offers an expansive definition of who is considered a criminal — a category of people Mr. Trump has said he would target for deportation. Immigration agents will now have wider latitude to enforce federal laws and are being encouraged to deport broad swaths of unauthorized immigrants.

Each presidential administration must decide who it considers a priority for deportation. Mr. Trump’s order focuses on anyone who has been charged with a criminal offense, even if it has not led to a conviction. He also includes, according to language in the order, anyone who has “committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense,” meaning anyone the authorities believe has broken any type of law — regardless of whether that person has been charged with a crime.Mr. Trump’s order also includes anyone who has engaged in “fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or application before a governmental agency,” a category that includes anyone who has used a false Social Security number to obtain a job, as many unauthorized immigrants do. Anyone who has received a final order to leave the country, but has not left, is also considered a priority.Finally, he allows the targeting of anyone who “in the judgment of an immigration officer” poses a risk to either public safety or national security. That gives immigration officers the broad authority they have been pressing for, and no longer requires them to receive a review from a supervisor before targeting individuals.

The order defines criminal loosely, and includes anyone who has crossed the border illegally — which is a criminal misdemeanor. Anyone who has abused any public benefits program is also considered a criminal under the order.The Obama administration, which deported nearly 400,000 people per year during its first five years, initially included those convicted of minor offenses such as shoplifting. But it later changed its policy to target primarily those who had been convicted of serious crimes, were considered national security threats or were recent arrivals. By the end of President Barack Obama’s time in office, around 90 percent of the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants were not considered a priority for deportation. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, roughly 820,000 undocumented immigrants currently have a criminal record.

Russian financial institutions and firms are ready to work without SWIFT's interbank cash transfer services, according to Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. “Certainly, it is unpleasant, as it will prove a stumbling block for companies and banks, and will slow down work. It will be inevitable to deploy some aged technologies for information transfer and calculations. However, the companies are technically and psychologically ready for the shutdown as this threat was repeatedly voiced,” Dvorkovich said, as quoted by TASS.He added that the measure may have a negative impact on corporations working in the US and Europe.

The potential disconnection of Russia from SWIFT has been under discussion since 2014, when the EU and the US introduced the first round of international penalties against Moscow over alleged involvement in the Ukraine crisis and the reunification with Crimea.At the time, the European Parliament called for strong actions against Russia, including expelling the country from money transfer services. However, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication regarded the recommendations as violating rights and damaging for businesses.

In 2017, Russia’s Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina told President Vladimir Putin that the banking sector had been provided with all the necessary conditions for operating lenders and payment systems in case of disconnection from SWIFT. According to the regulator, 90 percent of ATMs in Russia were ready to accept the Mir payment system, a domestic version of Visa and MasterCard.The Mir payment system was introduced in 2015 after clients of several Russian banks (SMP Bank, InvestCapitalBank, Russia Bank and Sobinbank) were unable to use Visa and MasterCard due to the sanctions.