Gunman Storms New York Skyscraper, and Harvard Weighs $500 Million Deal

0:28Are you getting rewarded for paying your rent or mortgage? slash NY Times. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash NY Times. From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, July 29th. Here's what we're covering.

0:48This is a devastating night for our city, for our police department. Pure evil came to the heart of our city and struck innocent people. In New York City, a gunman walked into a Park Avenue skyscraper on Monday and opened fire, killing four people. Surveillance video shows a male exit a double-parked black BMW on Park Avenue between 51st and 52nd Streets. Officials say he entered the lobby around 6.30 p.m. carrying an assault-style rifle. He began shooting, killing a New York City police officer working security and two others. The gunman then walked to an elevator, let a woman step off of it unharmed, and took it up to the offices of the real estate firm that owns the building.

1:38There, he shot and killed one more person and then himself. The shooter is believed to be Shane Tamora, a 27-year-old male with a Las Vegas address. Police say the man, who they believe acted alone, drove from Las Vegas to New York over the weekend and arrived in the city just hours before the shooting. Officials say he had a gun license in Nevada and that law enforcement there said he had a, quote, documented mental health history. It's unclear what his motive was, but New York Mayor Eric Adams said this morning that authorities have reason to believe he was focused on the NFL, which has offices in the building.

2:14The mayor said they found a note on the gunman that mentioned the league. One NFL employee was seriously injured in the shooting and is in stable condition, according to the league's commissioner. Chaos also broke out at the site of another mass shooting yesterday in Reno, Nevada. Yesterday morning, a gunman opened fire outside a casino there, wounding six people and killing at least three. Police exchanged fire with the gunman, who officials have yet to identify. They said he was taken to the hospital in critical condition. His motive is not clear.

2:54Now, three quick updates on the Trump administration. Mr. President, Prime Minister Netanyahu said there's no starvation in Gaza. Do you agree with that assessment? I don't know. I mean, based on television, I would say not particularly because those children look very hungry. Yesterday, after largely deflecting on the issue, President Trump acknowledged that people in Gaza are facing starvation. I mean, some of those kids are, that's real starvation stuff. I see it. And you can't fake that. It was a notable shift from Trump's earlier comments on the war, in which he's complained that he hasn't been thanked enough about aid the U.S.

3:30has sent. And he's mostly avoided talking about humanitarian issues, even as global outrage over the hunger crisis has grown. In his remarks on Monday, Trump made a vague promise about opening new food distribution sites in Gaza, but the administration hasn't put forward any specifics. Next, on the economic front, the impact of the administration's recent trade deal with Europe is coming into focus. The 15 percent tariff on most goods from the EU kicks in next month, including on pharmaceuticals, which are Europe's number one export to the U.S. Nearly all major drug makers have EU factories, and they make more than 40 percent of brand name drugs Americans use, like Ozempic, Botox and the cancer drug Keytruda.

4:16President Trump has said he wants to boost domestic drug production. In the meantime, the new tariffs will add billions of dollars in expenses for pharmaceutical companies. Many of those companies are expected to try and pass on some of those costs to employers and government programs like Medicare. And some insurance companies are already planning to raise premiums because of the tariffs. And the Times has learned that Harvard has signaled that it's willing to spend as much as$500 million to end its ongoing standoff with the White House. The school has been under increasing pressure from the government amid the administration's claims of anti-Semitism on campus and its broader assault on higher education.

4:58Last week, Columbia agreed to pay a$200 million fine to defuse its own clash with the administration. President Trump has demanded privately that Harvard pay far more.

5:14The country of Iran is in the grips of a water crisis, and officials in Tehran are predicting that the capital city's water supply will run completely dry within weeks. The deepest reservoirs have shrunk to shallow ponds, and residents are scrambling to fill up any containers they can find, all while the temperatures hit 120 degrees or more. One utility company announced that in Tehran, where millions of residents live or work in high-rise buildings, there's not enough water pressure for water to get above the second floor. Environmental experts say the crisis stems from an ongoing drought, the worst in decades, but also from overdevelopment, construction of too many dams, and draining groundwater for farming.

6:00Parts of Iran are actually sinking at alarming rates as water aquifers have been sucked up. In Tehran, some areas of the city are sinking 12 inches a year. For Iranians, who've also faced a months-long energy shortage with daily power cuts and a 12-day war with Israel this summer, the water shortage is the latest blow. In interviews with The Times, some Iranians said they were questioning whether the government is capable of handling the overlapping crises, And they said it feels like their country is in free fall.

6:38And finally. Wait, there's a peanut inside me? Nice. About 20 years ago in the early 2000s, the peanut M &M was in trouble. There was a flood of complaints that the peanuts inside the chocolate candy coating were going rancid. And Mars, the company behind the candy, knew it needed to do something. So it went looking for a new kind of peanut. It backed research at the University of Georgia and gave scientists there a wish list. Mars wanted a peanut that stayed fresh longer. It also wanted the peanut to be perfectly symmetrical. And flavor-wise, the company wanted just a hint of bitterness to bounce the sweet of the chocolate.

7:21Researchers pulled it off, producing the Georgia 09B, which became the go-to peanut in peanut M &Ms. Now, though, Mars has gone back to the university because it has a new problem. The company wants a more resilient plant to deal with the effects of climate change, which has brought waves of disease and pests that are threatening the world's peanut supply. Notably, unlike other food giants whose research into modifying crops stays private and proprietary, Mars takes a different approach. The company doesn't lock down its discoveries with things like patents. It basically makes them open source.

7:59That dates back to the 1940s when its founder, Forrest Mars Sr., said the company's success should benefit everyone. So if the new effort works, it could help farmers in the U.S. and around the world by saving them millions in lost harvests, in addition to saving the peanut M &M.

8:21Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, more on President Trump's trade deal with the EU, including the blowback that it's caused in Europe. That's up next if you're listening in The New York Times app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.