By MARC LEVY

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel said Wednesday they have finalized their “historic partnership,” a year-and-a-half after the Japanese company first proposed its deal to buy the iconic American steelmaker for nearly $15 billion.

The pursuit by Nippon Steel for the Pittsburgh company was buffeted by national security concerns and presidential politics in a premier battleground state, delaying the transaction for more than a year after U.S. Steel shareholders approved it. It also forced Nippon Steel to expand the deal, including adding a so-called “golden share” provision that gives the federal government a say in some matters.

“Together, Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel will be a world-leading steelmaker, with best-in-class technologies and manufacturing capabilities,” the companies said.

The combined company will become the world’s fourth-largest steelmaker, and bring what analysts say is Nippon Steel’s top-notch technology to U.S. Steel’s antiquated steelmaking processes. In exchange, Nippon Steel gets access to a robust U.S. steel market, strengthened in recent years by tariffs under President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden, analysts say.

Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel did not list the full terms of the deal, and did not release a national security agreement struck with Trump’s administration.

But in a statement Wednesday, the companies said the federal government will have the right to appoint an independent director and “consent rights” on specific matters. Those include reductions in Nippon Steel’s capital commitments in the national security agreement, closing or idling of U.S. Steel’s existing domestic facilities and changing U. S. Steel’s name and headquarters.

Nippon Steel announced in December 2023 that it planned to buy the steel producer for $14.9 billion in cash and debt, and committed to keep the U.S. Steel name and Pittsburgh headquarters.

The United Steelworkers union, which represents some U.S. Steel employees, opposed the deal, and Biden and Trump both vowed from the campaign trail to block it.

Biden used his authority to block Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U.S. Steel on his way out of the White House after a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

After he was elected, Trump changed course and expressed openness to working out an arrangement and ordered another review by the committee. That’s when the idea of the “golden share” emerged as a way to resolve national security concerns and protect American interests in domestic steel production.

As it sought to win over American officials, Nippon Steel also made a series of bigger capital commitments in U.S. Steel facilities, tallying $11 billion through 2028, it said.

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By MARK SHERMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors, a stunning setback to transgender rights.

The justices’ 6-3 decision in a case from Tennessee effectively protects from legal challenges many efforts by President Donald Trump’s Republican administration and state governments to roll back protections for transgender people. Another 26 states have laws similar to the one in Tennessee.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a conservative majority that the law does not violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which requires the government to treat similarly situated people the same.

“This case carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field. The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound,” Roberts wrote. “The Equal Protection Clause does not resolve these disagreements. Nor does it afford us license to decide them as we see best.”

In a dissent joined by her liberal colleagues, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the majority “abandons transgender children and their families to political whims.”

The decision comes amid a range of other federal and state efforts to regulate the lives of transgender people, including which sports competitions they can join and which bathrooms they can use. In April, President Donald Trump’s administration sued Maine for not complying with the government’s push to ban transgender athletes in girls sports.

The Republican president also has sought to block federal spending on gender-affirming medical care for those under age 19 — instead promoting talk therapy only to treat young transgender people. In addition, the Supreme Court has allowed him to kick transgender service members out of the military, even as court battles continue. The president also signed another order to define the sexes as only male and female.

Trump’s administration has also called for using only therapy, not broader health measures, to treat transgender youths.

The justices acted a month after the United Kingdom’s top court delivered a setback to transgender rights, ruling unanimously that the U.K. Equality Act means trans women can be excluded from some groups and single-sex spaces, such as changing rooms, homeless shelters, swimming areas and medical or counseling services provided only to women.

Five years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that transgender people, as well as gay and lesbian people, are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace. That decision is not affected by Wednesday’s ruling.

But the justices on Wednesday declined to apply the same sort of analysis the court used in 2020 when it found that “sex plays an unmistakable role” in employers’ decisions to punish transgender people for traits and behavior they otherwise tolerate. Roberts joined that opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who also was part of Wednesday’s majority.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti on social media called the ruling a “Landmark VICTORY for Tennessee at SCOTUS in defense of America’s children!”

There are about 300,000 people between the ages of 13 and 17 and 1.3 million adults who identify as transgender in the United States, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. The Williams Institute is a think tank that researches sexual orientation and gender identity demographics to inform laws and public policy decisions.

When the case was argued in December, then-President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration and families of transgender adolescents had called on the high court to strike down the Tennessee ban as unlawful sex discrimination and protect the constitutional rights of vulnerable Americans.

They argued that the law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

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Tennessee’s law bans puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors, but it allows the same drugs to be used for other purposes.

Soon after Trump took office, the Justice Department told the court that its position had changed.

A major issue in the case was the appropriate level of scrutiny courts should apply to such laws.

The lowest level is known as rational basis review, and almost every law looked at that way is ultimately upheld. Indeed, the federal appeals court in Cincinnati that allowed the Tennessee law to be enforced held that lawmakers acted rationally to regulate medical procedures, well within their authority.

The appeals court reversed a trial court that employed a higher level of review, heightened scrutiny, which applies in cases of sex discrimination. Under this more searching examination, the state must identify an important objective and show that the law helps accomplish it.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

By JUSTIN SPIKE and ILLIA NOVIKOV

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Emergency workers pulled more bodies Wednesday from the rubble of a nine-story Kyiv apartment building demolished by a Russian missile, raising the death toll from the latest attack on the Ukrainian capital to 28.

The building in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district took a direct hit and collapsed during the deadliest Russian attack on Kyiv this year. Authorities said that 23 of those killed were inside the building. The remaining five died elsewhere in the city.

Workers used cranes, excavators and their hands to clear more debris from the site, while sniffer dogs searched for buried victims. The blast blew out windows and doors in neighboring buildings in a wide radius of damage.

The attack overnight on Monday into Tuesday was part of a sweeping barrage as Russia once again sought to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses. Russia fired more than 440 drones and 32 missiles in what Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said was one of the biggest bombardments of the war, now in its fourth year.

Russia has launched a summer offensive on parts of the roughly 620-mile front line and has intensified long-range attacks that have struck urban residential areas.

At the same time, U.S.-led peace efforts have failed to grain traction. Also, Middle East tensions and U.S. trade tariffs have drawn world attention away from Ukraine’s pleas for more diplomatic and economic pressure to be placed on Russia.

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv said the attack clashed with the attempts by the administration of President Donald Trump to reach a settlement that will stop the fighting.

“This senseless attack runs counter to President Trump’s call to stop the killing and end the war,” the embassy posted on social platform X.

Kyiv authorities declared Wednesday an official day of mourning. Mourners laid flowers on swings and slides at a playground across the street from the collapsed building. On Tuesday, a man had waited hours there for his 31-year-old son’s body to be pulled from the rubble.

Valentin Hrynkov, a 64-year-old handyman in a local school who lived on the seventh floor of a connected building that did not collapse, said he and his wife woke up to the sound of explosions followed by a pause, and then another blast that rattled their own building.

He said his wife had shrapnel injuries in her back and his legs and feet were cut by broken glass. The damage trapped them in their apartment for around 30 minutes before rescue workers could free them, he said.

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He felt an overwhelming sense of “helplessness and primal fear” during the attack, he told The Associated Press.

By dawn on Tuesday, residents of buildings in the densely populated neighborhood could be seen huddled in ground-floor entryways to seek shelter from the ongoing drone assault.

Drones were striking every few minutes within hundreds of meters of the building hit by the missile. The continuing attack forced firefighters and rescue teams to delay the rescue operation.

Relatives and friends of the destroyed building’s residents later gathered outside in shock, many crying and calling out names, hoping survivors might still be found beneath the rubble.

Vasilisa Stepanenko and Oleksandr Babenko contributed from Kyiv, Ukraine.

By STAN CHOE, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are holding nearly in place on Wednesday as Wall Street waits to hear where the Federal Reserve may be taking interest rates.

The S&P 500 was edging up by 0.1% in early trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 33 points, or 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% lower.

The quiet moves came as oil prices rose, but more modestly than the day before. They had been yo-yoing for days because of rising and ebbing fears that Israel’s fighting with Iran could disrupt the global flow of crude. A barrel of benchmark U.S. oil added 0.6% to $73.74.

The headline event for the day will likely arrive at 2 p.m. Eastern, when the Federal Reserve is set to announce its latest move on interest rates. The nearly unanimous expectation is that it will hold rates steady, as it’s been doing for all of this year after cutting through the end of 2024.

More important will be what the Fed says about the future. Officials will release projections for where they see the economy, inflation and interest rates heading in upcoming years. The widespread expectation on Wall Street is that the Fed will cut its main interest rate at least two times by the end of 2025, though that has been weakening a bit recently as oil prices have climbed and put upward pressure on inflation.

A cut in rates could make mortgages, credit-card payments and other loans cheaper for U.S. households and businesses, which in turn could give the overall economy a boost. But lower rates can also fan inflation higher.

Besides the threat of higher oil prices because of the fighting between Israel and Iran, the Fed has been concerned about the potential for President Donald Trump’s tariffs to both hurt the economy and to drive inflation higher. That’s been the main reason it’s been on hold with interest rates this year.

So far, inflation has remained relatively tame, and it’s near the Fed’s target of 2%. But economists have been saying it may take months more to feel the full effects of tariffs.

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A pair of reports on the U.S. economy came in mixed on Wednesday. One said fewer workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, which could be an indication of lightening layoffs. But a second report said that homebuilders broke ground on fewer homes last month than economists expected. That could be a sign that higher mortgage rates are chilling the industry.

In the bond market, Treasury yields edged a bit lower.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.36% from 4.39% late Tuesday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for what the Fed will do with its overnight interest rate, dipped to 3.93% from 3.94%.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across Europe and Asia.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.9%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.1% for two of the bigger moves.

AP Writer Jiang Junzhe contributed.