A look at vehicle ramming incidents across the globe

A minivan that crashed into a crowd of Liverpool soccer fans celebrating the city team's Premier League soccer championship is the latest in a series of car-ramming tragedies across the globe.

British police say Monday's incident is not being treated as terrorism. Authorities say 27 people were taken to the hospital and another 20 people were treated at the scene for minor injuries.

Other vehicle ramming incidents have claimed lives. This year, 11 people were killed in Vancouver, British Columbia, when an SUV sped down a closed street, hitting people attending a festival. Fifteen people died in an attack along Bourbon Street that took place just before New Orleans hosted the Super Bowl.

Here are some major vehicle ramming incidents:

LONDON, May 26, 2025 — A 53-year-old British man plowed his minivan into a crowd of Liverpool soccer fans who had been celebrating the city team’s Premier League soccer championship, as shouts of joy turned into shrieks of terror, injuring more than 45 people.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 26, 2025 — A suspect was charged with multiple counts of murder after an Audi SUV sped down a closed, food-truck-lined street and hit people attending a festival, killing 11. Officials say 32 people were hurt. Authorities say the suspect, a 30-year-old man, had a history of mental health issues.

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 1, 2025 — At least 15 people are killed and dozens are injured after a U.S. citizen from Texas rams a vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians in New Orleans’ bustling French Quarter district at 3:15 a.m. on New Year’s Day. The FBI identifies the suspect as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar. He is killed in a firefight with police.

MAGDEBURG, Germany, Dec. 20, 2024 — At least five people are killed and more than 200 are injured when a car slams into a Christmas market in eastern Germany. Police arrest a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia who supports Germany's far-right AfD party.

ZHUHAI, China, Nov. 11, 2024 — A 62-year-old driver rams his car into people exercising at a sports complex in southern China, killing 35. Authorities say the suspect is upset about his divorce. He pleads guilty to endangering public safety by dangerous means and is sentenced to death.

WAUKESHA, Wisconsin, Nov. 21, 2021 — Six people are killed and dozens injured when a man drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in suburban Milwaukee. Darrell Brooks Jr., who drove into the crowd after getting into a fight with his ex-girlfriend, was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of release.

LONDON, Ontario, June 6, 2021 — Four members of a Muslim family are killed when an attacker hits them with a pickup truck. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calls it “a terrorist attack, motivated by hatred.” White nationalist Nathaniel Veltman is sentenced to life in prison.

TORONTO, April 23, 2018 — Alek Minassian, 25, drives a rental van into mostly female pedestrians on Yonge Street, the main thoroughfare in Toronto, killing 10 people and injuring 16. Minassian tells police he belongs to an online “incel” community of sexually frustrated men. He is sentenced to life in prison.

NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2017 — Sayfullo Saipov, an Islamic extremist from Uzbekistan, drives a pickup truck onto a popular New York City bike path, killing eight people. He is convicted of terrorism and sentenced to 10 life sentences plus 260 years in prison.

BARCELONA, Spain, Aug. 17, 2017 — A man rams a van into people on the Spanish city’s crowded Las Ramblas boulevard, killing 14 and injuring others. The Islamic State group claims responsibility. Several members of the same extremist cell carry out a similar attack in the nearby resort town of Cambrils, killing one person.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia, Aug. 12, 2017 — During a “Unite the Right” rally, white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. drives his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one woman and injuring dozens of people. Fields is serving a life sentence for murder and hate crimes.

LONDON, June 19, 2017 — Darren Osborne, a man radicalized by far-right ideas, drives a van into worshippers outside a mosque in Finsbury Park, killing one man and injuring 15 people. Osborne is sentenced to life in prison.

LONDON, June 3, 2017 — Three attackers drive a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before stabbing people in nearby Borough Market. Eight people are killed and the attackers are shot dead by police.

LONDON, March 22, 2017 — Khalid Masood rams an SUV into people on Westminster Bridge, killing four, then fatally stabs a policeman guarding the Houses of Parliament. Masood is shot dead.

MELBOURNE, Australia, Jan. 20, 2017 – Six people are killed and more than 30 injured when a car hits lunchtime crowds at a pedestrian mall. James Gargasoulas is found to have been in a state of drug-induced psychosis and is sentenced to life in prison.

BERLIN, Dec. 19, 2016 — Anis Amri, a rejected asylum-seeker from Tunisia, plows a hijacked truck into a Christmas market in the German capital, killing 13 people and injuring dozens. The attacker is killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

NICE, France, July 14, 2016 — Tunisian-born French resident Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drives a rented truck along a packed seaside promenade in the French Riviera resort on the Bastille Day holiday, killing 86 people in the deadliest attack of its kind. He is killed by police, but eight other people are sentenced to prison for helping orchestrate the attack.

STILLWATER, Oklahoma, Oct. 24, 2015 — A woman plows a car into a crowd at an Oklahoma State University homecoming parade, killing four people, including a toddler, and injuring many others. Adacia Chambers, who pleaded no contest to more than 40 felony charges, is serving four concurrent life sentences for the deaths.

APELDOORN, Netherlands, April 28, 2009 – Former security guard Karst Tates drives a car into parade spectators in an attempt to hit an open-topped bus carrying members of the Dutch royal family. Six people are killed and Tates dies of injuries the next day, leaving his full motive a mystery.

CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina, March 3, 2006 — University of North Carolina graduate Mohammed Taheri-Azar drives an SUV into a crowd at the university, slightly injuring nine people, in a self-professed bid to avenge Muslim deaths overseas. He is sentenced to up to 33 years in prison.

SANTA MONICA, California, July 16, 2003 — An 86-year-old man crashes into a farmers’ market, killing 10 people and injuring dozens of others. He was sentenced to probation after being convicted of 10 counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence.

A police officer speaks with a man at the site of an incident on Water Street near the Liver Building in Liverpool after a car collided with pedestrians during the Premier League winners parade, in Liverpool, England, Monday May 26, 2025. (Owen Humphreys/PA via AP)

A tent is erected by police at the site of an incident on Water Street near the Liver Building in Liverpool after a car collided with pedestrians during the Premier League winners parade, in Liverpool, England, Monday May 26, 2025. (Danny Lawson/PA via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sluggish December hiring concluded a year of weak employment gains that have frustrated job seekers even though layoffs and unemployment have remained low.

Employers added just 50,000 jobs last month, nearly unchanged from a downwardly revised figure of 56,000 in November, the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.4%, its first decline since June, from 4.5% in November, a figure also revised lower.

The data suggests that businesses are reluctant to add workers even as economic growth has picked up. Many companies hired aggressively after the pandemic and no longer need to fill more jobs. Others have held back due to widespread uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s shifting tariff policies, elevated inflation, and the spread of artificial intelligence, which could alter or even replace some jobs.

Still, economists were encouraged by the drop in the unemployment rate, which had risen in the previous four straight reports. It had also alarmed officials at the Federal Reserve, prompting three cuts to the central bank's key interest rate last year. The decline lowered the odds of another rate reduction in January, economists said.

“The labor market looks to have stabilized, but at a slower pace of employment growth,” Blerina Uruci, chief economist at T. Rowe Price, said. There is no urgency for the Fed to cut rates further, for now."

Some Federal Reserve officials are concerned that inflation remains above their target of 2% annual growth, and hasn't improved since 2024. They support keeping rates where they are to combat inflation. Others, however, are more worried that hiring has nearly ground to a halt and have supported lowering borrowing costs to spur spending and growth.

November's job gain was revised slightly lower, from 64,000 to 56,000, while October's now shows a much steeper drop, with a loss of 173,000 positions, down from previous estimates of a 105,000 decline. The government revises the jobs figures as it receives more survey responses from businesses.

The economy has now lost an average of 22,000 jobs a month in the past three months, the government said. A year ago, in December 2024, it had gained 209,000 a month. Most of those losses reflect the purge of government workers by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

Nearly all the jobs added in December were in the health care and restaurant and hotel industries. Health care added 38,500 jobs, while restaurants and hotels gained 47,000. Governments — mostly at the state and local level — added 13,000.

Manufacturing, construction and retail companies all shed jobs. Retailers cut 25,000 positions, a sign that holiday hiring has been weaker than previous years. Manufacturers have shed jobs every month since April, when Trump announced sweeping tariffs intended to boost manufacturing.

Wall Street and Washington are looking closely at Friday's report as it's the first clean reading on the labor market in three months. The government didn’t issue a report in October because of the six-week government shutdown, and November’s data was distorted by the closure, which lasted until Nov. 12.

The hiring slowdown reflects more than just a reluctance by companies to add jobs. With an aging population and a sharp drop in immigration, the economy doesn't need to create as many jobs as it has in the past to keep the unemployment rate steady. As a result, a gain of 50,000 jobs is not as clear a sign of weakness as it would have been in previous years.

And layoffs are still low, a sign firms aren't rapidly cutting jobs, as typically happens in a recession. The “low-hire, low-fire” job market does mean current workers have some job security, though those without jobs can have a tougher time.

Ernesto Castro, 44, has applied for hundreds of jobs since leaving his last in May. Yet the Los Angeles resident has gotten just three initial interviews, and only one follow-up, after which he heard nothing.

With nearly a decade of experience providing customer support for software companies, Castro expected to find a new job pretty quickly as he did in 2024.

“I should be in a good position,” Castro said. “It’s been awful.”

He worries that more companies are turning to artificial intelligence to help clients learn to use new software. He hears ads from tech companies that urge companies to slash workers that provide the kind of services he has in his previous jobs. His contacts in the industry say that employees are increasingly reluctant to switch jobs amid all the uncertainty, which leaves fewer open jobs for others.

He is now looking into starting his own software company, and is also exploring project management roles.

December’s report caps a year of sluggish hiring, particularly after April's “liberation day” tariff announcement by Trump. The economy generated an average of 111,000 jobs a month in the first three months of 2025. But that pace dropped to just 11,000 in the three months ended in August, before rebounding slightly to 22,000 in November.

Last year, the economy gained just 584,000 jobs, sharply lower than that more than 2 million added in 2024. It's the smallest annual gain since the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the job market in 2020.

Subdued hiring underscores a key conundrum surrounding the economy as it enters 2026: Growth has picked up to healthy levels, yet hiring has weakened noticeably and the unemployment rate has increased in the last four jobs reports.

Most economists expect hiring will accelerate this year as growth remains solid, and Trump's tax cut legislation is expected to produce large tax refunds this spring. Yet economists acknowledge there are other possibilities: Weak job gains could drag down future growth. Or the economy could keep expanding at a healthy clip, while automation and the spread of artificial intelligence reduces the need for more jobs.

Productivity, or output per hour worked, a measure of worker efficiency, has improved in the past three years and jumped nearly 5% in the July-September quarter. That means companies can produce more without adding jobs. Over time, it should also boost worker pay.

Even with such sluggish job gains, the economy has continued to expand, with growth reaching a 4.3% annual rate in last year's July-September quarter, the best in two years. Strong consumer spending helped drive the gain. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta forecasts that growth could slow to a still-solid 2.7% in the final three months of last year.

FILE - A hiring sign is displayed at a grocery store in Northbrook, Ill., Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)