Russian troops shelling nuclear power station

ENERHODAR, Ukraine — Russian troops are shelling Europe's largest nuclear power station in Ukraine.

“We demand that they stop the heavy weapons fire,” Andriy Tuz, spokesperson for the plant in Enerhodar, said in a video posted on Telegram. “There is a real threat of nuclear danger in the biggest atomic energy station in Europe.”

The plant accounts for about one quarter of Ukraine’s power generation.

Tuz told Ukrainian television that shells were falling directly on the Zaporizhzhia plant and had set fire to one of the facility’s six reactors. That reactor is under renovation and not operating, but there is nuclear fuel inside, he said.

Firefighters cannot get near the fire because they are being shot at, Tuz said.

A live-streamed security camera linked from the homepage of the nuclear power plant showed what appeared to be armored vehicles rolling into the facility’s parking lot and shining spotlights on the building where the camera was mounted. There are then what appear to be bright muzzle flashes from vehicles and then nearly simultaneous explosions in the surrounding buildings. Smoke then rises and drifts across the frame.

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SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea says it won an exemption from recently expanded U.S. sanctions against Russia in exchange for strengthening its own export restrictions against the country over an escalating invasion of Ukraine.

South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy confirmed the agreement on Friday after Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo traveled to Washington this week for meetings with senior U.S. officials.

The Biden administration last week announced a series of sanctions aimed at cutting off Russia’s access to foreign technology products like semiconductors, lasers, aircraft and communications equipment in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

To enforce the measures, Washington has imposed a regulation called the foreign direct product rule, which allows American officials to restrict the sales of foreign-made products to Russia from any country if the items are produced with U.S. technology.

The South Koreans had sought an exemption from the regulation to minimize the impact of U.S. sanctions on major South Korean companies, whose technology exports drive the country’s trade-dependent economy.

South Korea had already banned the export of strategic materials to Russia and joined international efforts to cut off key Russian banks from global payment systems. U.S. officials also told their South Korean counterparts that consumer goods such as smartphones, passenger cars and washing machines aren’t subject to American sanctions as long as they are used by private Russian citizens or companies and not military users.

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WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security will grant temporary legal status to Ukrainians living in the U.S.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday that Temporary Protected Status would be extended for 18 months.

“Russia’s premeditated and unprovoked attack on Ukraine has resulted in an ongoing war, senseless violence, and Ukrainians forced to seek refuge in other countries,” Mayorkas said in a statement.

Temporary Protected Status is given to citizens of countries devastated by war or natural disasters.

It comes as pressure was mounting on the Biden administration from members of Congress, including the Senate’s top Democrat, to grant the status to Ukrainians following Russia’s invasion of their country.

In order to be eligible for the protection, individuals would have to have been in the U.S. since at least Tuesday.

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BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday asked former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to resign from his posts at Russian state-owned companies.

Schroeder, 77, is considered a longtime friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin — a relationship that has led to much criticism in Germany, especially since Russia invaded Ukraine last week.

Schroeder is chairman of the supervisory board of Russian state energy company Rosneft and also holds leading positions in the controversial Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipeline projects that aim to bring Russian gas directly to Germany, bypassing Ukraine. He is also slated to take on a supervisory board post for Gazprom, a Russian majority state-owned multinational energy corporation.

“My advice to Gerhard Schroeder is, after all, to withdraw from these posts,” Scholz said on the ZDF Television, according to the German news agency dpa.

Scholz stressed that Schroeder’s ties to Russian companies were not a private matter since he is a former chancellor.

“This obligation does not end when one no longer holds the office, but it also continues,” he said.

Schroeder, who served as the chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005, has long been criticized for his close ties to Russia.

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NEW YORK — The U.S. fossil fuel industry’s top lobbying group is calling on the Biden administration to create policies that would encourage oil and gas companies to ramp up production.

The American Petroleum Institute says the federal government should create a more favorable climate for drilling and should streamline the permitting process for liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals to expand so that the U.S. can rely less on oil imports and export more natural gas in liquid form to Europe, which relies heavily on Russia for fossil fuels.

“This shift away from Russia will not happen overnight, and we need to be clear about that,” said Dustin Meyer, vice president of natural gas markets at API. “But for it to happen at all, we need clear and consistent energy policy here in the US. Unfortunately, that’s not really what we have right now.”

A number of new LNG export terminals and several export terminal expansions have been proposed but are awaiting approval or permits from the Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, with no clear timeline for decisions, he said.

Biden has been under pressure to rein in rising energy costs even if those moves run counter to his agenda for addressing climate change. On Tuesday he announced he is releasing 30 million barrels of oil from U.S. strategic reserves as part of a 31-nation effort to help ensure that supplies will not fall short after Russia’s invasion of its European neighbor.