Vox Sentences: Killed in his own backyard

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Another unarmed black man is killed by police; Trump imposes $60 billion in trade tariffs against China.

20 rounds fired at an unarmed man

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• 22-year-old Stephon Clark was fatally shot by police Sunday while standing unarmed in his own backyard. [CBS]
• According to a press release issued by the Sacramento Police Department, police officers were responding to reports of a man breaking car windows. A helicopter tracking a suspect directed the officers to a man they say was Clark, who ran toward the house after being confronted by officers. The police department said Clark turned and began to “advance forward with his arms extended, and holding an object in his hands.” [SACPD]
• The officers, who are said to have thought the object was a gun, then fired 20 rounds at Clark. After the shooting, they waited several minutes for backup before moving to handcuff Clark and beginning medical treatment. [USA Today / Daniela Pardo and Frances Wang]
• As for the object in question? It was a cellphone. [Washington Post / Alex Horton and Wesley Lowery]
• The disturbing moment was made public through body camera footage released Wednesday night. [NPR / Laurel Wamsley]
• “He was at the wrong place at the wrong time in his own backyard?” said Clark’s grandmother, Sequita Thompson, speaking with the Sacramento Bee. “C’mon now, they didn’t have to do that.” [Sacramento Bee / Benjy Egel, Nashelly Chavez, and Anita Chabria]
• As Vox’s P.R. Lockhart writes, “Nearly four years after the death of Michael Brown sparked the rise of Black Lives Matter and brought more attention to racial disparities in police shootings, the Clark case serves as a stark reminder that even as national attention has waned, unarmed black men and women continue to experience deadly encounters with police.” [Vox / P.R. Lockhart]

Trump slaps China with trade tariffs

• President Trump unveiled a plan Thursday to impose tariffs on $60 billion worth of Chinese exports to the US. [White House]
• The move is an audacious strike at Beijing that runs the risk of sparking an expensive trade war with the world’s second-largest economy. [Vox / Zeeshan Aleem]
• And there’s already reason to be concerned: In a statement Thursday before Trump announced the tariffs, China’s Ministry of Commerce said that “China will certainly take all necessary measures to resolutely defend its legitimate rights and interests.” [CNN / Steven Jiang and Josh Berlinger]
• The new measures come in the wake of a so-called “301 investigation” led by US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer into China’s potentially unfair trade practices with the US — specifically, the intellectual property theft that’s been a longstanding point of contention in US-China trade relations. [CNBC / Kevin Breuninger and Kayla Tausche]
• The tariffs are Trump’s strongest trade action yet against a country he has called an “economic enemy.” They also come the day before a long list of exceptions to steel and aluminum tariffs go into effect (including an exception for the European Union). [NYT / Mark Landler and Jim Tankersley]
• By Thursday night, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen 724 points in response to the announcement. [NPR / Jim Zarroli]

Miscellaneous

• Nearly three-quarters of US teachers don’t want to carry guns in school, and they overwhelmingly favor gun control measures, a new poll finds. [NPR / Anya Kamenetz]
• McDonald’s, KFC, and Starbucks are growing faster in China than they are in the US. Here’s why. [Eater / Clarissa Wei]
• You probably shouldn’t clone your dog. (Even if it is ... possible.) [Smithsonian / Jacob Brogan]
• If you’ve ever walked into a store and brushed off a salesperson asking if you needed any help, you’re not alone: 95 percent of people in North America say they just want to shop in peace. [Racked / Eliza Brooke]

Verbatim

“With so many fights on Capitol Hill, @CoryBooker and I are going literal: Snowball duel. East lawn Capitol Hill. In 5 minutes Loser buys other staff pizza.” [Sens. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) turn partisan fighting into performance art / Twitter]

Watch this: Why eating healthy is so expensive in America

Produce helps your health and hurts your wallet, but some strategies may change that. [YouTube / Elizabeth Philip and Dorotea Sotirovska]

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