Sen. Warren fears Fed rate hikes, plan could tip US into recession

WASHINGTON - Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., took aim at the Federal Reserve's inflation-fighting game plan Sunday, saying she was worried the central bank will tip the U.S. economy into a recession.

"Do you know what's worse than high prices and a strong economy?" she asked on CNN's "State of the Union." "It's high prices and millions of people out of work. I'm very worried that the Fed is going to tip the economy into recession."

Warren renewed her criticism of Fed Chair Jerome Powell's monetary tightening policies, saying she doesn't believe increasing interest rates can contain current inflationary pressures.

"Things like the fact that COVID is still shutting down parts of the economy around the world, that we still have supply chain kinks, that we still have a war going on in Ukraine that drives up the cost of energy," Warren said. "There is nothing in raising interest rates, nothing in Jerome Powell's toolbag, that deals directly with those."

Powell, in a highly anticipated speech Friday from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, signaled that the Fed was going to continue its aggressive series of interest rate hikes, and keep rates elevated for a time, to try to tamp down demand and get inflation under control. He warned of slowing growth and "some pain" to households and businesses to get there.

Warren said his comments indicate that jobs will be lost and small businesses hurt.

Houston killings: A man evicted from a Houston apartment building shot five other tenants - killing three of them - Sunday after setting fire to the house to lure them out, police said. Officers fatally shot the gunman.

The incident happened about 1 a.m. Sunday in a mixed industrial-residential neighborhood in southwest Houston. Police and fire crews responded to the apartment house after reports of the fire, police Chief Troy Finner said.

The gunman opened fire, possibly with a shotgun, on the other tenants as they emerged from the house, Finner said. Two were dead at the scene, and one died at a hospital. Fire teams rescued two other wounded men, who were hospitalized with non-life-threatening wounds, he said.

The man then opened fire as the firefighters battled the fire, forcing them to take cover until police officers spotted the prone gunman and shot him, Finner said.

Finner said no firefighters or officers were wounded.

"I've seen things I have not seen before in 32 years, and it has happened time and time again," Finner said. "We just ask that the community come together."

US Navy in Taiwan Strait: The U.S. Navy sailed a pair of warships through the Taiwan Strait for the first time since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to the self-ruled island tested ties between Washington and Beijing.

The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers USS Antietam and USS Chancellorsville conducted a routine transit through a corridor of the strait beyond the territorial sea of any state, the 7th Fleet said in a statement Sunday.

"The ship's transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States' commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific," the Fleet's commander said.

The Chinese military followed the cruisers, the People's Liberation Army said in a separate statement, adding that it was on high alert to defeat any provocations.

The Biden administration vowed to continue such routine transits after China responded to Pelosi's landmark trip to Taipei earlier this month by firing ballistic missiles over Taiwan. China considers the self-ruled island its territory and protests diplomatic exchanges with Taipei.

The U.S. has conducted an average of nine annual trips through the strait over the past decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News, as part of freedom of navigation exercises. The last known U.S. transit of the strait before Sunday was July 19, when the destroyer the USS Benfold sailed through the waterway.

Migration in Italy: Italian authorities scrambled on Sunday to relieve overcrowding in shelters after scores of boats carrying a total of about 1,000 migrants reached Italy's southern shores and two of its tiny islands over the weekend.

Nearly 50 boats arrived between Friday night and Saturday on Lampedusa island off Sicily, according to state radio and other Italian media. Other boats carrying migrants reached Pantelleria, another tiny island favored by vacationers.

Hundreds of migrants stepped ashore from the virtual flotilla of smugglers' vessels on those islands. Several of the vessels launched by migrant smugglers held as few as eight passengers. But others had around 100 passengers aboard, many of them from Tunisia, according to the reports.

Other boats reached the shores of the Italian mainland on Saturday, either unaided or assisted by Italian coast guard vessels.

The Italian news agency ANSA said that 92 migrants, most of them from Afghanistan, reached Puglia - the "heel" of the boot-shaped peninsula - in a sailboat on Saturday. Still other migrants sailed to Calabria in the "toe" of the peninsula, while other boats reached Sicily and Sardinia, Italy's two biggest islands, in the last two days

Vacation tragedy: A 7-year-old Italian girl who was on vacation with her parents died after a stone statue fell on her at a hotel in Munich, German police said Sunday.

The girl was hit by the 440-pound statue in the courtyard of the hotel Friday night, police said. People at the scene were able to free the child and call emergency services, but she died later at a Munich hospital.

It wasn't clear why the statue toppled over.

Deadly Dutch crash: The death toll from an accident when a truck drove off a dike and slammed into a community barbecue in a village south of Rotterdam rose to six Sunday, and police said seven people are in hospital.

Three men and three women were killed, ranging in age from 28 to 75, police said.

Police spokeswoman Mirjam Boers said the truck driver, a 46-year-old Spanish man, is suspected of causing the accident that happened early Saturday night in the village of Nieuw-Beijerland. His identity was not released, in line with Dutch privacy laws.

The large truck the man was driving left a small rural road and careered down the bank of the dike and plowed into the village gathering. Boers said the driver was not under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crash.

Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima said in a tweet that they were shocked by the accident that they said caused "an unimaginable sadness in this close-knit community. The affected families are in our thoughts and we wish the injured strength on their way to as good a recovery as possible."