Missing Hawaiian woman crossed freely into Mexico, Los Angeles police say
Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
(LOS ANGELES) — Hannah Kobayashi, a Hawaiian woman who has been missing for weeks, walked freely into Mexico just after noon on Nov. 12, the Los Angeles Police Department said on Monday.
The department said the case has been recategorized as a “voluntary missing persons” one and has been closed. Detectives said they believe she wanted to disappear.
The update comes after weeks of claims from family and friends that Kobayashi had been kidnapped and was in danger after she disappeared before boarding her connecting at Los Angeles International Airport in early November. She was heading from Hawaii to New York.
Kobayashi, 30, used her passport to buy a train ticket from L.A.’s Union Station to the San Ysidro point of entry, and from there walked into Mexico alone and with her luggage, police said.
Despite claims to the contrary from family, the LAPD said their evidence appeared to show that Kobayashi voluntarily did not board her flight to New York, that she had her airline give her bags to her in L.A. and that she roamed around L.A. before voluntarily heading to Mexico.
She also expressed a desire to disconnect from modern technology before she went off grid, police said on Monday. Detectives traveled to the border to look at surveillance video, which they said showed the woman crossing the border.
Kobayashi’s father, Ryan Kobayashi, died last month at a parking garage near LAX, after traveling to California from Hawaii to search for his daughter, according to the L.A. County Medical Examiner’s office.
LAPD authorities asked that Kobayashi contact her family from Mexico to let them she is OK. The department said it would try to contact Kobayashi if Customs and Border Protection alert the force that the Hawaiian native has reentered the United States.
(WASHINGTON) — The number of abortions performed in the U.S. fell slightly in 2022, the year the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, a new federal report found.
In 2022, a total of 613,383 legal abortions were reported by 48 areas. Among the 47 areas that consistently reported data from 2021 to 2022, there was a decrease of 2% from the 622,108 abortions performed in 2021 to 609,360, according to the annual abortion surveillance report, published Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The 48 areas included 46 states, the District of Columbia and New York City, excluding California, Maryland, New Hampshire and New Jersey.
The abortion rate was 11.2 abortions per 1,000 women between ages 15 and 44 in 2022, a decrease of 3% from 11.6 abortions per 1,000 women the prior year, according to data from 46 states and New York City.
Rates were lowest in Missouri and highest New Mexico, respectively, in 2022. After Roe v. Wade was overruled, Missouri passed a near-total abortion ban with limited exceptions while abortions remained unrestricted based on gestational duration in New Mexico. However, in 2024, Missouri voters approved an amendment enshrining the right to reproductive freedom in the state constitution, including abortion care.
Dr. Adam Jacobs, medical director of the division of complex family planning at the Mount Sinai Heath System in New York, said he does not believe Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health — the Supreme Court decision that led to Roe v. Wade’s overruling — is a major reason why abortion rates dropped between 2021 and 2022.
“Many of the bans did not go into place or a lot of the structural changes did not go into place in the calendar year of 2022, so I don’t think you would see that impact in this report,” he told ABC News.
Jacobs said abortion numbers and rates have been decreasing for years, and key reasons include the Affordable Care Act. The law gives women more access to preventive services, including long-lasting reversible contraception.
The report found that women in their 20s accounted for more than half of abortions in 2022 and had the highest abortion rates. Comparatively, adolescents under age 15 and women aged 40 or older accounted for the lowest percentages of abortions and had the lowest abortion rates.
Between 2013 and 2022, abortion rates decreased among all age groups except for women between ages 30 and 34, for whom rates increased.
When it came to breaking down the share of abortions based on gestational age, the report found that most abortions, or 78.6%, were performed at 9 weeks gestation and nearly all abortions were performed under 13 weeks gestation.
More than half of abortions were early medication ones performed at or under 9 weeks gestation followed by surgical abortions at or under 13 weeks gestation.
Surgical abortions performed past 13 weeks gestation accounted for just 6.9% of all abortions in 2022 and medication abortion past 9 weeks gestation accounted for 4.3%.
Black women accounted for the highest percentage of abortions at 39.5% followed by white women at 31.9% and Hispanic women at 21.2%, according to the report.
Black women had the highest rate at 24.4 abortions per 1,000 women between ages 15 and 44 and white women had the lowest rate at 5.7 abortions per 1,000 women.
Jacobs said that gains have been made in providing care to marginalized groups, but factors including unequal access to quality family planning services may be why abortion rates are higher for Black women compared to white women.
“If you have access to highly effective contraception, you end up having [fewer] unintended pregnancies,” he said.
For 2022, 87.7% of abortions were among unmarried women compared to 12.3% among married women, the report found.
Additionally, a plurality of abortions, or 40.6%, were among women who had never had a previous live birth, and a majority, or 56.1%, were among those who had never received an abortion before.
In 2021, the most recent year for which data from the CDC’s Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System were reviewed, five women died because of complications from legally induced abortions.
As of Wednesday, 13 states have ceased nearly all abortion services and four states have enacted six-week bans, according to an ABC News tally. Meanwhile, nine states and the District of Columbia have no restrictions based on gestational duration.
(NEW YORK CITY) — A wildfire raging on the border of New York and New Jersey exploded overnight to 5,000 acres, prompting officials on Monday to postpone one of the oldest Veterans Day Parades in the nation.
As firefighters battled the Jennings Creek Fire straddling the border between Orange County, New York, and Passaic County, New Jersey, organizers of the 80th annual West Milford, New York, Veterans Day Parade, announced the event will be delayed until Nov. 24, due to the ongoing emergency.
“I cannot in good conscience detract from all the hard work our firefighters, police officers, first responders, DPW personnel and our community leaders are currently facing in dealing with wildfires along the East Shore area,” Rudy Hass, commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 7198 in West Milford, said in a statement.
Hass said many firefighters battling the Jennings Creek Fire are military veterans.
“Right now we need to keep them in our thoughts as they spend many hours, day and night, doing all they can in order to protect our great communities in that area,” Hass said.
The blaze broke out Saturday and burned drought-parched wildland stretching from the West Milford in Passaic County, New Jersey, to the Sterling Forest State Park in New York’s Orange County, and on both the New York and New Jersey sides of Greenwood Lake, officials said.
Despite the first measurable rain in the area in more than a month, the fire grew from about 2,500 acres on Sunday to over 5,000 acres, or about 4.7 square miles, by Monday morning, according to the New York Forest Fire Service.
The fire has burned about 2,500 acres on the New York and New Jersey sides of the fire, a forest ranger for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said at a news conference Monday.
Firefighters made progress battling the fire Sunday night, increasing containment from 0% to 20%, officials said.
At least 25 structures remain threatened by the conflagration, including eight historic structures in New Jersey’s Long Pond Ironworks State Park, a historic 175-acre village where iron was produced during the Revolutionary War, officials said.
A New York State Parks and Recreation aid was killed on Saturday helping the battle the Jennings Creek Fire, officials said. The deceased parks employee was identified Sunday by the New York State Police as 18-year-old Dariel Vasquez.
The New York and New Jersey forest services have teamed up to fight the fire on both sides of the state line.
Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus said numerous residents living near the fire have complied with voluntary evacuations.
“We had about 40 homes and residents that move out voluntarily, we really didn’t have to encourage them too much because they saw out their windows a major firestorm coming their way,” Neuhaus told ABC New York station WABC.
While Sunday’s light rainstorm was welcomed on the fire line, the precipitation did little to extinguish the fire, officials said. Overnight, about 0.25 inches of rain fell across the fire area.
“This provided an opportunity to rest several of the crews who have been working non-stop to contain this fire,” the New Jersey Forest Fire Service said in a social media post on Monday morning. “Today, crews are back on scene and will continue to improve containment lines and address area of concern.”
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Chief Bill Donnelly of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service said at a news conference Sunday that it could take crews until the end of this week to extinguish the blaze.
The fire came amid blustery winds and drought conditions in New York and New Jersey, which before Sunday hadn’t seen any rain in more than a month, officials said.
Since Oct. 1, New Jersey firefighters have responded to 537 wildfires that have consumed 4,500 acres, including about 40 fires that ignited between Friday and Saturday, according to Donnelly. Forest Ranger Jeremy Oldroyd, of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, said New York fire crews have battled 60 wildfires since Oct. 1, and they have burned 2,100 acres.
At one point over the weekend, New Jersey firefighters were simultaneously battling at least six significant brush fires that ignited across the state, including a second large wildfire in Passaic County.
The “Cannonball 3” fire began on Friday afternoon near Passaic County’s Pompton Lake and grew to 181 acres. The New Jersey Forest Fire Service announced Sunday afternoon that firefighters had achieved 100% containment on the fire.
Another wildfire in New Jersey — the Shotgun Fire — started Wednesday and burned 350 acres of the Colliers Mills Wildlife Management Area in Jackson Township before firefighters gained control of the blaze, officials said. Officials said the cause of the fire was arson.
Investigators concluded the fire began behind a berm at the Central Jersey Rifle & Pistol Club in Jackson, New Jersey, and was caused by magnesium shards of a “Dragon’s Breath” 12-gauge shotgun round, which ignited materials on the berm. Firing incendiary or tracer ammunition is illegal in New Jersey, authorities said.
Richard Shashaty, 37, of Brick Township, surrendered to the police on Saturday. He was charged with arson and violation of regulatory provisions relating to firearms, officials said Saturday.
(NASSAU, Bahamas) — Search efforts have been suspended for a 66-year-old woman who fell overboard on a Taylor Swift-themed cruise Tuesday night, the U.S. Coast Guard said Wednesday.
The Coast Guard previously said they were assisting with the search, which was being led by the Royal Bahamas Defense Force.
“We were informed by @TheRBDF this afternoon that they are suspending the active search efforts pending further developments & were no longer requesting further @USCG assistance,” the U.S. Coast Guard wrote on X.
The missing passenger fell off the Royal Caribbean ship Allure of the Seas about 17 miles north of Nassau, Bahamas, the Coast Guard said.
The woman has not been publicly identified.
The four-night Swift-themed voyage, known as “In My Cruise Era,” set sail from Miami for the Bahamas on Monday. It was not officially affiliated with Swift.
About 400 people registered for the cruise, which was scheduled to include karaoke, a dance party and friendship bracelet trading.
In a statement from the cruise company, Royal Caribbean said it initiated search efforts as soon as the woman fell overboard.
“Our crew immediately launched a search and rescue effort and is working with local authorities We are also providing support and assistance to the guest’s family during this difficult time. To respect the privacy of our guest’s family, we have no additional details to share,” a Royal Caribbean spokesperson said.
