Roof of BJ’s Wholesale Club in New Jersey partially collapses during heavy rain
The flooded interior at a BJ’s Wholesale Club is seen following a partial roof collapse at the store in Ocean Township, New Jersey, July 6, 2026. (Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office)
(OCEAN TOWNSHIP, N.J.) — The roof of a BJ’s Wholesale Club in New Jersey partially collapsed during heavy rain on Monday, temporarily entrapping two people who were able to safely escape, authorities said.
No injuries have been reported following the incident at the big-box store in Ocean Township, authorities said.
Video from the store’s security camera captured the collapse, showing a portion of the roof fall near the bakery section as a deluge of water flooded the interior. Local officials have confirmed they are looking at the video as part of an investigation into the incident.
Multiple agencies responded to the store around 11:16 a.m. ET following reports of the partial roof collapse, authorities said. There were 27 people inside the store at the time, including two who became partially entrapped but were able to free themselves and safely leave, according to local authorities.
First responders conducted a “comprehensive search” of the building, and a drone and K-9 teams were also involved in the search effort to ensure no one remained inside, the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office and Ocean Township Police Department said in a joint statement.
The collapse occurred as heavy rain pummeled the area, resulting in “extreme flooding,” the sheriff’s office said. Up to six inches of rain was reported in the area over the past 24 hours, with most of the rain falling since early Monday morning.
“This incident is another reminder of how quickly severe weather can create dangerous and unpredictable conditions,” Monmouth County Sheriff Shaun Golden said in a statement about the collapse. “We commend all first responders who worked with urgency under challenging circumstances. Despite the ongoing flooding and severe weather affecting our communities, all worked seamlessly together to ensure everyone was safely accounted for.”
ABC News has reached out to BJ’s Wholesale Club for comment.
Monmouth County Board of County Commissioners Director Thomas Arnone commended the “swift response” by agencies in the incident while urging residents to stay alert for updates regarding flash flooding and other storm-related damage in the area.
The heavy rain that was occurring at the time of the roof collapse has since ended, though additional rounds of rain are possible through the evening hours.
A flood watch remains in effect until 8 p.m. ET Monday in Monmouth County, according to the National Weather Service.
People walk on the campus of Cornell University on Sept. 30, 2026, in Ithaca, New York. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The former Cornell student who reported an alleged gang rape at a campus fraternity has faced a series of threats and doxxing attempts in the three weeks since filing her explosive lawsuit, her attorney told ABC News.
Attorney Thomas Giuffra said Jane Doe is concerned about the threats but vowed to continue the case — saying the national attention is bringing awareness to the issue, pushing lawmakers to reconsider laws surrounding consent, and providing a rare chance for accountability.
“Jane Doe is fearless,” said Giuffra. “She always was interested in trying to make things better for other women, so there’s no more Jane Does.”
In an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, Giuffra argued that Jane Doe has been subject to the “most incredible sequence of failures” by school officials and law enforcement, which ultimately led to this situation.
“It’s been the most incredible sequence of failures I’ve seen in my 30-plus years of practice. I mean, it’s not just one thing,” he said. “I can’t keep them straight half the time because there are so many. I mean, you have a failure everywhere along the line, everywhere.”
ABC News has reached out to Cornell for a comment.
Cornell said in a statement on Sept. 21 that it takes allegations of sexual violence “extremely seriously” and that it “investigated and adjudicated the allegations consistent with university policies.”
In a subsequent statement, the school said it conducted a “thorough” Title IX investigation and “issued a range of sanctions, which included expulsions and suspensions from Cornell.”
Cornell’s president, Michael Kotlikoff, released a video statement on Oct. 3, saying the incident is a “defining moment” and pledged reforms to campus culture and university policies and procedures.
Giuffra also called out Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, who initially declined to bring charges in 2024.
Van Houten reopened the case on Sept. 27 after speaking with Jane Doe and her lawyer in the wake of a civil suit being filed alleging that she had been drugged and raped.
In an interview with ABC News after reopening the case, Van Houten defended his decision not to bring charges, saying “she clearly consented in the beginning, and there was never any indication that she changed that to the things that she participated in” but that “If at any point Jane Doe had said, ‘I don’t consent to this anymore,’ or in those words, or in any form of communication. If there had been continued sexual activity, contact by these individuals, that would be a crime. But that’s not what was alleged in her statement.”
Last week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul removed the local DA from the case and named state Attorney General Letitia James to take over the criminal investigation of the incident. Separately, Cornell has announced an outside law firm would be tapped this week to review the university’s handling of the allegations and subsequent investigation.
Giuffra also pushed back on claims from attorneys for the accused fraternity brothers — who argued that she consented or distanced themselves from the allegations — arguing their “self-serving statements” are detached from reality and contradicted by the accounts of witnesses that evening.
Giuffra defended his client’s decision to secretly record some of the men.
“She wanted to process what was going on. Because she couldn’t really wrap her head around it because she was traumatized,” he said.
Giuffra also tried to cast doubt on the claims by some of the men that they were too intoxicated to consent by pointing to the Snapchat group where they invited others to join. He described the chat as a “smoking gun.”
ABC News obtained an extended version of the Snapchat group chat shared among more than 50 fraternity brothers during the alleged assault.
The fraternity brother who invited Jane Doe to the house that night sent a photo to the chat that appears to show her in the bedroom. He allegedly wrote in the chat, “Boys come whip it out.”
“I don’t care what their defense lawyers say. I don’t care what the university says. That is the classic gun. It’s like a body on the ground, a smoking gun. That’s that Snapchat,” Giuffra said.
Jane Doe withdrew from Cornell due to the incident, according to her attorney, and the civil suit filed in the case. None of the men named in the suit have responded in court, although each has denied wrongdoing to investigators, in public statements, or through their lawyers.
U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the nation from the East Room of the White House on July 16, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Saul Loeb/Pool – Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Newly-declassified documents touted by President Donald Trump during his address on election security Thursday cast doubt on some of his claims about “shocking vulnerabilities” in the country’s election infrastructure.
While Trump claimed during his address that the nation’s election systems are vulnerable to “hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference,” the intelligence reports released by the White House concluded overall that the main infrastructure used to conduct elections in the United States “would be difficult to manipulate on a wide enough scale to alter the election outcome.”
“Great damage has been done to our country. Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen, and the trust of the American people was lost,” Trump said, without providing evidence.
‘Difficult to manipulate at scale’
The documents noted that although some internet-connected election infrastructure — like voter registration databases and pollbooks — are vulnerable to cyberattacks, the systems used to tabulate, transmit, and display election results cannot be manipulated on a wide scale, and audits and paper trails “would uncover such efforts in the nearly all U.S. states.”
“We assess that hostile actors could also manipulate systems that count or tabulate votes — such as voting machines — on a localized basis, but it probably would be difficult to coordinate a campaign to alter voting results on a wide scale,” said an August 2020 report from the National Intelligence Council. “Similarly, foreign actors would have difficulty coordinating a large scale campaign to manipulate mail-in voting, and robust postal tracking probably would detect any large-scale effort.”
The report concluded that cyber attacks could potentially delay voting but “probably would not affect the integrity of certified results.”
While another report said that foreign adversaries such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea “have the capability to access and potentially manipulate data in U.S. election-related computer systems,” the report did not identify “specific plans to interfere with the functioning of these systems” or past instances when results were changed due to the actions of foreign actors.
“We assess that vote tabulation systems would be difficult to manipulate on a wide enough scale to compromise election results,” said a January 2020 report from the National Intelligence Council.
“Although an adversary could manipulate voting results across multiple jurisdictions and enough states to influence a presidential election, we judge that conducting such a campaign would be difficult and that postelection audits and paper trails very likely would uncover such an effort,” that report said.
According to the August 2020 report from the National Intelligence Council, the only country that was observed attempting to target or manipulate election systems during the 2020 election was Russia, which used “a range of measures primarily to denigrate former Vice President Biden” and share largely favorable information about President Trump.
‘Delays on Election Day’
According to the National Intelligence Council’s January 2020 report, the systems vulnerable to disruption are official election websites or registration databases — which are often publicly accessible — or poll books, which are used by election officials to look up eligible voters.
The report said that bad actors could “alter data to potentially prevent individual voters or groups of voters from voting, causing delays on Election Day or forcing voters to use provisional ballots” — but those actions wouldn’t affect the votes themselves.
“We assess that cyber operations targeting the electronic tabulation of results could delay results reporting from affected jurisdictions, potentially creating public uncertainty but probably not affecting the integrity of certified results,” the report noted.
According to a 2026 report from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, election-related software is “subject to the same security concerns as most other software systems.” The report called for election officials to be transparent about issues to improve public trust.
“By openly acknowledging incidents and describing mitigation steps, vendors and localities can show that they are proactively defending critical infrastructure rather than obscuring vulnerabilities. This transparency encourages continuous improvement, drives investment in stronger defenses, and reinforces that protecting elections is a collective national priority,” the report said.
‘Russia, China, Iran’
A January 2020 memo from the National Intelligence Council warned that countries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea “have the capability to access and potentially manipulate data in U.S. election-related computer systems” — but a subsequent report said such manipulation would be hard to do on a widespread basis.
“We judge that Russia, China, Iran, as well as many nonstate actors, have the capability to conduct such activities, although it would be difficult for them to manipulate voting processes at scale and without detection,” the report said.
Russia and China have pushed back against those claims.
The January 2020 report noted that Russia “almost certainly” surveyed election networks in 2016, accessed election infrastructure in two states, and exfiltrated voter data from one state.
According to the August 2020 report, Russia sought to amplify discord in the United States ahead of the 2020 election, spread false claims about then-candidate Joe Biden, and boost positive information about Trump.
The 2020 CIA memo noted that China probed presidential campaigns in every election since 2008 to get insights on U.S.-China issues.
According to the memo, the intelligence community detected Chinese state-sponsored cyber actors specifically targeting the Biden campaign “to gather intelligence that could enable future operations.”
“The IC assesses that China does not currently intend to covertly interfere to try to sway the outcome of the election, although this activity could enable such operations,” the report said.
An August 2020 report from the National Intelligence Council concluded that China “did not intend to try to affect the election” though it “prefers that President Trump be defeated.”
“We assess that China prefers that the President whom Beijing sees as unpredictable and tough on China does not win reelection,” the report said.
However, an October 2020 memo noted the overall intelligence community believed that China considered but did not deploy influence efforts for the upcoming 2020 election. The memo said that Chinese leadership believed Trump appeared likely to lose and that “there is little point to taking the risk of an influence effort because they believe their preferred outcome is probable.”
“As early as [REDACTED] this year, Chinese [REDACTED] assessed that the pandemic and economic downturn had diminished the President’s reelection prospects and since then Beijing has been planning for either electoral outcome and conducting outreach to both candidates and their campaigns, [REDACTED],” the memo said.
The August 2020 report noted that Iran “is conducting an influence campaign to undermine the current President and US democratic institutions, and to divide the country in advance of the 2020 elections.”
However, the report noted that Iran is focusing on covert online influence — such as sharing memes and recirculating news reports that are critical of Trump.
“Iran could attempt to manipulate or attack election infrastructure as it has in elections in the Middle East and South Asia — but we do not have any information indicating that it intends to do so in the United States,” the report said.
‘An election outside of Venezuela’
The release of documents included a CIA assessment from June 2026 summarizing the last two decades of intelligence related to Venezuela’s manipulation of voting systems, following longstanding claims by Trump’s far-right supporters of Venezuela’s involvement in 2020 election interference.
The memo said that Venezuelan government officials developed the capability to manipulate electronic voting systems in their own elections, including replicating and overwriting voting data to make fraudulent votes legitimate.
However, the report noted that the intelligence “did not definitively confirm that large-scale electronic fraud was successfully executed in specific Venezuelan elections.”
Notably, the report noted that there was no evidence that the Venezuelan government was able to manipulate election results outside of their own country, because their ability to rig elections “rested in part on its ability to control every stage of the electronic voting process.”
“Neither [the voting machine company] Smartmatic nor the Venezuelan Government had the capability — that is the level of control or access required — to manipulate the outcome of an election outside of Venezuela in a predictable fashion,” the report said.
‘False narratives’
In addition to assessing technological vulnerabilities in the election system, a newly-declassified memo from the National Intelligence Council explicitly raised concerns about adversaries exploiting most Americans’ lack of knowledge about voting systems to “undermine confidence in U.S. democratic processes.”
“Much of the voting public probably knows little about the process of administering U.S. elections, which could allow false narratives to gain traction,” said the January 2020 memo.
The memo noted that efforts to “publicly invalidate such claims could take weeks or months” and that “disproving claims would also be impossible if adversaries evaded U.S. intelligence collection.”
“A widely publicized compromise of election infrastructure probably would undercut public confidence in the election, even if the compromise was not used to manipulate election-related data or systems,” the memo said.
An Air Force B-52 Stratofortress bomber crashed shortly after takeoff at Edwards Air Force Base in California, June 15, 2026. (KABC)
(LOS ANGELES) — The eight people killed in an Air Force B-52 Stratofortress bomber crash in California have been identified.
The B-52 was on a “routine test mission” Monday morning when it crashed shortly after takeoff at Edwards Air Force Base and burst into flames, officials said.
Everyone on board was killed: four crew members, one civilian and three contractors, officials said.
The victims were identified by the base as: Col. Gregory Watson, 53, weapon systems officer, Boeing; Lt. Col. Gabriel Estrella, 40, weapon systems officer, Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center; retired Lt. Col. Miles Middleton, 50, pilot, Boeing; Maj. Alexander Davis, 34, weapon systems officer, 419th Flight Test Squadron; Maj. Robert Dee, 40, pilot, 419th Flight Test Squadron; Maj. Brad Hovey, 35, pilot, 419th Flight Test Squadron; Jeromy Smith, 32, flight test engineer, 419th Flight Test Squadron; and Christopher Rischar, 41, flight test engineer, JT4 contractor.
“They were dedicated professionals, beloved family members and irreplaceable teammates,” Col. Thomas Tauer, 412th Test Wing Commander, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Our thoughts, prayers and deepest sympathies are with their families, loved ones and fellow Airmen, Air Force civilians and mission partners affected by this tragedy.”
Two Boeing employees were among the victims. Boeing said in a statement, “The loss of Miles and Greg is deeply felt across our teams, and our hearts remain with their families, loved ones and those who worked with them.”
The cause of the crash is under investigation, a process that will likely take several months, Col. James Hayes, deputy commander for the 412th Test Wing at the base, said Monday.
Test missions take place multiple times a day at Edwards Air Force Base, Hayes said.
