deconstruct

A $10,000 reward is now being offered for information that leads to the arrest of a man accused of fatally shooting a Maryland judge in a "targeted attack" outside his home.

The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday that it is seeking the public's help in finding Pedro Argote, 49, who is wanted in connection with the killing of Washington County Circuit Court Judge Andrew Wilkinson. The shooting occurred hours after the judge gave the Argote's estranged wife custody of their four minor children, according to officials.

Argote has ties to multiple areas outside of Maryland including Brooklyn and Long Island, New York; Columbus, Indiana; and Tampa and Clearwater, Florida, the Marshals Service said in a news release. He also has connections to unknown locations in North Carolina.

Argote should be considered armed and dangerous. He may be driving a silver 2009 Mercedes GL 450, authorities said.

Wilkinson was the judge overseeing Argote’s divorce case, filed in June 2022. On Thursday morning, hours before the shooting, he had presided over a hearing in the case and granted Argote's wife an absolute divorce from him as well as sole legal custody of their four children, ages 12, 11, 5, and 3.

A Detroit synagogue president was found fatally stabbed outside her home Saturday morning.

Samantha Woll, 40, led the congregation of Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue. The synagogue confirmed Woll's death Saturday in a statement writing, “We are shocked and saddened to learn of the unexpected death of Samantha Woll, our Board President.”

“May her memory be a blessing,” the statement continued.

Authorities said a 911 call was made to Woll's home early Saturday, reporting an individual lying on the ground unresponsive. Police discovered multiple stab wounds on Woll's body and found a trail of blood leading to her house, where they believe the crime occurred.

An investigation is underway. At this time, the motive for the crime remains unknown.

Speaking from the Oval Office starting at 8 p.m. ET, Biden made the case to Americans that it's vital to both global and U.S. national security to assist Israel as it responds to terror attacks by Hamas as well as to continue help for Ukraine as it fends off Russian invaders.

"Hamas and Putin represent different threads but they share this in common: They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy," Biden said, referring to the extremists and Russia's president.

Biden said he knows the conflicts can seem distant and Americans might be asking why it's vital to U.S. security interests that Israel and Ukraine succeed.

"History has taught us that when terrorists don't pay a price for their terror, when dictators don't pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and debt and more destruction," Biden said. "They keep going -- and the cost and the threats to America and the world keep rising."

Pro-Hamas extremists are flooding social media platforms with calls for attacks on Jewish communities and other targets in the U.S. and Europe, prompting U.S. law enforcement agencies to step up their readiness postures amid deep concerns about possible violence, American officials and private analysts told NBC News.

Tuesday’s explosion at a hospital in Gaza is threatening to become a flashpoint, they said, with posts on X and other platforms portraying it as an Israeli atrocity using an American-made bomb, despite an assessment from U.S. intelligence agencies that the damage resulted from an errant missile fired by a Palestinian militant group.

Groups linked to Al Qaeda and American neo-Nazis have been seeking to exploit the ongoing war to encourage attacks, according to two separate intelligence products obtained by NBC News.

“You must attack them in their homes, shops, posts and places of amusement … Tear their bodies apart, let their blood flow and take revenge for your martyrs,” said one Al Qaeda post quoted in an intelligence bulletin by the New York Police Department, which has maintained a global intelligence network since 9/11.

A Homeland Security official told NBC News that the DHS is monitoring a “heightened threat environment” in the U.S. and is concerned about attacks on Jewish-Americans, as well as Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans.

A separate intelligence bulletin by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that monitors extremism on the web and feeds information to law enforcement agencies, said Al Qaeda-linked groups and others posted a series of messages in response to the Gaza hospital incident, calling for attacks on U.S. and Israeli embassies and other targets.

A Republican activist who has been a reliable donor to Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — despite a racist tweet that put him on the outs with DeSantis’ predecessor, Rick Scott — shot a woman and then himself in the parking lot of a Palm Beach County restaurant, according to sheriff’s deputies.

The activist, 72-year-old Steve Alembik, died. The woman, wounded in the back and arm, survived when she ran into the restaurant bleeding and was rushed to the hospital.

The shooting happened at a Burgerfi outlet in Delray Beach a week ago Monday, although Alembik’s identity wasn’t revealed until last Friday in the Boca Raton News. The wounded victim was believed to be his wife.

Over the past 20 years, Alembik, gave more than $200,000 in political contributions, mainly to Republicans, including thousands of dollars to both DeSantis and Donald Trump. The founder of a Boca Raton digital marketing company, the Democrat-turned-Republican earned notoriety in 2018 by referring to former President Barack Obama as a “f******* Muslim n*****” in a post on the social media platform X, then known as Twitter.

The Coast Guard has recovered remaining debris, including presumed human remains, from a submersible that imploded on its way to explore the wreck of the Titanic, killing all five onboard, deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean's surface, officials said Tuesday.

The Coast Guard said that the recovery and transfer of remaining parts was completed last Wednesday, and a photo showed the intact aft titanium endcap of the 22-foot (6.7-meter) vessel. Additional presumed human remains were carefully recovered from within Titan’s debris and transported for analysis by U.S. medical professionals, the Coast Guard said.

The salvage mission conducted under an agreement with the U.S. Navy was a follow-up to initial recovery operations on the ocean floor roughly 1,600 feet (488 meters) away from the Titanic, the Coast Guard said.

The new materials were offloaded at an unnamed port.

The Coast Guard previously said it recovered presumed human remains along with parts of the Titan after the debris field was located at a depth of 12,500 feet (3,800 meters).

Investigators believe the Titan imploded as it made its descent into deep North Atlantic waters on June 18.

In just one night, more than a thousand migrating birds died after crashing into a single building in Chicago, due to what experts say was a deadly combination of migration season, difficult weather, and a lack of “bird-friendly” building measures.

Philadelphia has dimmed its skyline after a 'mass collision' killed thousands of migrating birds

The Chicago Field Museum collected more than a thousand dead birds that had collided with the McCormick Place Lakeside Center, a convention center located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Wednesday night into Thursday morning, Annette Prince, director of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, told CNN.

Volunteers working with Chicago Bird Collision Monitors collected an additional thousand dead birds from the city’s downtown area, said Prince. And there were likely more birds that flew away after colliding into a building but later died of their injuries, she said.

“It was overwhelming and tragic to see this many birds,” Prince said. “I went to a building where, when I walked up to the building, it was like there was just a carpet of dead and dying and injured birds.”

A combination of factors likely contributed to the extraordinary number of deadly collisions, Prince said.

There was a particularly high volume of birds set to migrate south for the winter that night. The birds had been waiting for winds from the north or west to ease their journey. “Those birds essentially piled up,” Prince said. When the right winds arrived on Wednesday, a large number of birds set off for their migration at once. Additionally, “there were foggy and low cloud conditions, which can bring them into confusion with lights and buildings,” Prince said. The clouds likely caused the birds to fly at a lower altitude, bringing them closer into contact with buildings. McCormick Place in particular “is one of the first buildings birds encounter as they move along Lake Michigan,” she said.

George Tyndall, the former University of Southern California campus gynecologist accused of sexually abusing hundreds of women, was found dead Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles, his attorney told ABC News. He was 76.

Tyndall was found deceased in bed by a close family friend who went to his home after being unable to reach him, according to attorney Leonard Levine. It was the friend's opinion that Tyndall had been dead for quite a while, Levine said Thursday.

An autopsy is expected to be conducted, but Levine and the friend believe Tyndall died of natural causes.

In March of 2021, USC agreed to an $852 million settlement with more than 700 women who accused Tyndall of sexual misconduct.

An alleged Jan. 6 participant who online sleuths dubbed "Conan O'Riot" due to his resemblance to former late-night talk show host Conan O'Brien was arrested by the FBI this week.

Derek Nelson, who was an active-duty U.S. Marine from October 2011 to September 2015, was arrested in Champaign, Illinois, on Wednesday, according to federal court records. Along with his co-defendant, Derek Dodder of Nevada, 30-year-old Nelson faces four misdemeanor charges in connection with the U.S. Capitol attack.

Online "Sedition Hunters" dubbed the redheaded Nelson #ConanORiot, using the hashtag to track his movements at the Capitol. The sleuths had identified Nelson more than two years ago, by the summer of 2021.

Nelson was dressed up in colonial attire on Jan. 6, specifically "a brown tricorn hat along with a blue double-breasted button coat and red or maroon undershirt with a white scarf around his neck," according to the FBI. In one video cited by the FBI, filmed near the Washington Monument, where crowds had gathered to watch then-President Donald Trump's speech, a videographer asks Nelson why he's there.

"To start a revolution," Nelson said. "Why are you here?”

When the crowd descended on the Capitol, Nelson was near the front lines as a pro-Trump mob chased down outnumbered officers on the west side of the building, according to the FBI.

Once inside the Capitol, Nelson wore goggles and a respirator mask, and video presented as evidence in another Jan. 6 case shows him running away after another rioter sets off a fire extinguisher near the doors to the House of Representatives, which were barricaded as members fled the violent mob.

A 77-year-old Florida man was arrested by federal officials, accused of having thousands of dollars worth of illegal pills used to treat erectile dysfunction.

The man lives in the The Villages, a retirement community with homes sprawling through multiple Florida counties, is considered one of the largest retirement communities in the nation.

It is the kind of place where a particular type of prescription pill could be in huge demand. According to federal officials, Reginald Kincer allegedly was willing to satisfy that demand with an illegal pill plot.

“And they are trying to do the right thing and I’m trying to do the right thing too,” Kincer said during a quick interview with WESH from his home in the Villages.

According to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice, Kincer had more than $1,800 worth of the off-brand pills stashed in his house, pills he allegedly got “without a prescription from a licensed doctor” and planned to “redistribute the drugs in and outside of the state.”

Marcus Silva filed suit in March against three friends of his ex-wife, Brittni Silva, accusing the friends of helping her obtain abortion pills last summer to illegally terminate an unwanted pregnancy in violation of Texas’ harsh anti-abortion laws.

Two of the friends countersued Marcus Silva in May, alleging that he actually knew about his ex-wife’s plans before she took the medication and was simply using his lawsuit to manipulate and abuse her as he did throughout their relationship. His previous actions led Brittni to call police to the Silva home twice, according to court documents.

In a Tuesday filing asking a Galveston County judge to either dismiss the case or at least not require her cooperation, Brittni Silva affirmed her friends’ claims and offered additional detail about the situation.

“So now he’s saying if I don’t give him my ‘mind body and soul’ until the end of the divorce which he’s going to drag out, he’s going to make sure I go to jail for [getting the abortion],” Brittni Silva texted her friends last year, according to the filing.

Marcus Silva allegedly wanted Brittni to “play wife” until the divorce was final, the filing stated. She initially agreed, “fearing for her and her young daughters’ wellbeing,” it said.

The divorce was settled in January, around eight months after Brittni filed it.

But Marcus allegedly continued to demand sex and domestic favors from his ex-wife, and he filed his suit against her friends around two months later.

In a transcript of a June 21 conversation included in the new filing, Marcus threatened to upload a sexual video of his ex-wife to Pornhub, adding that he was prepared to do things that would “fck [Brittni’s] entire fcking world up,” such as send the video directly to her family members ― unless she continued to do his laundry.

Shane Jason Woods, 45, was the first person charged with assaulting a member of the news media during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Woods, of Auburn, Illinois, took a running start and tackled the Reuters cameraman “like an NFL linebacker hunting a quarterback after an interception,” federal prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

Woods also attacked and injured a Capitol police officer who was 100 pounds (45 kilograms) lighter than him, according to prosecutors. He blindsided the officer, knocking her off her feet and into a metal barricade. The next day, the officer was still in pain and said she felt as if she had been “hit by a truck,” prosecutors said.

Woods, who ran an HVAC repair business, was arrested in June 2021 and pleaded guilty to assault charges in September 2022.

He also has been charged in Illinois with first-degree murder in the death of a woman killed in a wrong-way car collision on Nov. 8, 2022.

While free on bond conditions for the Jan. 6 case, Woods was pulled over for speeding but drove off and fled from law enforcement. Woods was drunk and driving in the wrong direction down a highway in Springfield, Illinois, when his pickup truck slammed into a car driven by 35-year-old Lauren Wegner, authorities said. Wegner was killed, and two other people were injured in the crash.

Woods was injured in the crash and was taken to a hospital, where a police officer overheard him saying that he had intentionally driven the wrong way on the highway and had been trying to crash into a semi-trailer truck, according to federal prosecutors. He remains jailed in Sangamon County, Illinois, while awaiting a trial scheduled to start in January, according to online court records.