The 2025 NBA Finals are finally here as the top-seeded team in the West, the Oklahoma City Thunder, square off with the red-hot Indiana Pacers. Game 1 tips off at 8:30 p.m. ET on Thursday from the Paycom Center.
Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who took home MVP honors this year after he led the league in scoring, has been the catalyst all postseason. He averaged 29.8 points, 6.9 assists and 5.7 rebounds as the Thunder cruised to the Finals with wins against the Memphis Grizzlies, the Denver Nuggets and the Minnesota Timberwolves. Jalen Williams (20.4 points per game) and Chet Holmgren (8.6 rebounds per contest) have also come up big.
Oklahoma City has just four losses in the playoffs so far.
The No. 4-seed Pacers, meanwhile, weren’t exactly expected to get to this point. But thanks to huge performances from their superstar, Tyrese Haliburton (18.8 points, 5.7 rebounds and 5.7 assists per game), they eliminated the Milwaukee Bucks, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the New York Knicks in impressive fashion. Balance has been the key for Indiana, a team with six players averaging double-digit scoring this postseason.
Who will come out on top? Stay with NBC News all series for the latest from Oklahoma City and Indianapolis.
Newlyweds Jonathan Joss and Tristan Kern de Gonzales held each other in their final moment together on Sunday.
Joss, the 59-year-old voice actor best known as John Redcorn from “King of the Hill,” had just been shot in the head in front of their San Antonio, Texas home.
“I didn’t want him to struggle and everything so I decided to tell him I loved him. And despite the severity of everything he was able to look up at me and acknowledge what I was saying so I know he heard me,” Kern de Gonzales, 32, said. “I just kept telling him ‘it’s okay. You need to cross over. You don’t need to keep struggling. You need to go ahead and cross over easy.’”
Kern de Gonzales said Joss’ alleged killer also had final words for the actor. He called him and his husband “jotos,” a Spanish slur for gay people.
“I’ve been called that word while I was sitting on a bench with Jonathan, eating lunch,” Kern de Gonzales said. “And I got called that holding Jonathan while he died.”
Shortly after, police arrested one of the pair’s neighbors, Sigfredo Alvarez Ceja, for Joss’ killing.
Kern de Gonzales says he believes Ceja, 56, killed his husband because of his sexual orientation. But the San Antonio Police Department says there’s “no evidence” to indicate that Joss’ killing was motivated by hate. Authorities have not yet revealed a motive or additional details of their investigation into the shooting.
Police records obtained by NBC News and interviews with Kern de Gonzales and the pair’s neighbors paint a complicated picture of what led up to the voice actor’s tragic killing.
Ceja could not be reached for comment. He has not yet acquired an attorney, according to the Bexar County District Clerk’s Office.
Tristan Kern de Gonzales and Jonathan Joss.Courtesy Tristan Kern de Gonzales
Kern de Gonzalez, who lived in his husband’s childhood home since March 2024, said that he and Joss were regularly at odds with their neighbors, including Ceja, in recent years.
He claims that many neighbors would hurl anti-gay slurs at them and complain about them being “loud,” making them feel unwanted in the neighborhood.
Police were called to respond to incidents at their home more than four dozen times, according to call logs obtained by NBC News, with most of the calls labeled as “disturbances.”
One of the pair’s neighbors, who asked that their name not be shared due to fear of retaliation, said Joss was difficult to live by.
“He’s been a nightmare,” the neighbor said.
Kern de Gonzales acknowledged that his husband had a tendency to be “loud.”
“Me and Jonathan would be out there late at night playing the drums, singing, being a nuisance,” Kern de Gonzales said. “If you’re going to make it hard for us to live here, you ain’t going to get no sleep.”
The couple’s relationship with Ceja was particularly contentious.
A spokesperson for SAPD confirmed with NBC News that the police department’s “SAFFE” unit, which works to prevent crimes, had been mediating a dispute between Ceja and Joss for over a year.
In June 2024, Ceja told police that Joss approached his house with a crossbow and hurled racial slurs at him, according to a separate police report. Joss confirmed to police that he walked over to Ceja’s house to “talk about their dogs fighting with each other,” according to the report.
The report adds that Joss “got very defensive and stated that he does not bother” Ceja “at all.”
Authorities later searched Joss’ home and retrieved a crossbow from his living room, police records say.
And in January, Joss accused Ceja of burning their house down, according to police records.
Joss told police that on the morning of the fire, he was using a barbecue in his living room because he did not have heat or electricity, according to the report. However, he said he turned the barbecue off before leaving the house to get lunch.
Tristan Kern de Gonzales, left, and Jonathan Joss, center.Courtesy Tristan Kern de Gonzales
He told police that an unnamed individual saw Ceja on his property the day before and suggested Ceja was responsible, according to the report.
“I have classified this fire to be undetermined in nature at this time but cannot rule out human involvement intentional or unintentional,” the officer filling out the report wrote.
The fire caused the pair to be homeless, Kern de Gonzales said. But that did not stop them from getting married. They wed on Valentine’s Day in Houston.
“It was a very nice, simple ceremony, you know, just me and him and it, it really suited us,” he said. “We were really and really proud to be married.”
Kern de Gonzales said that he and his husband returned to their property on Sunday to retrieve mail. When they arrived, he said they found the skull of a dog on their property. The pair thought the skull belonged to their dog that perished in a fire and was placed there by a neighbor as a way to taunt them.
The incident prompted Joss to march up and down their street with a pitchfork and begin yelling, Kern de Gonzales said.
Several minutes later, he said, is when Ceja allegedly pulled up to their property and shot Joss.
“I could give two f—-s less if me or my husband had 50 pitchforks in every orifice of our body rolling up and down that street like tumbleweed,” he said. “It don’t matter.”
JERUSALEM — Israeli soldiers on Monday barred journalists from entering villages in the West Bank on a planned tour organized by the directors of the Oscar-winning movie “No Other Land.”
The directors of the film, which focuses on Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territory, said they had invited the journalists on the tour Monday to interview residents about increasing settler violence in the area.
In video posted on X by the film’s co-director, Yuval Abraham, an Israeli soldier tells a group of international journalists that there is “no passage” in the area because of a military order. Basel Adra, a Palestinian co-director of the film who lives in the area, said the military then blocked the journalists from entering two Palestinian villages they had hoped to visit.
Israel’s military said in a statement that entry into Khallet A-Daba was banned because it was in a live-fire training zone. Tuwani is not in the firing zone, but the military said it had barred “individuals who might disrupt order from entering the area,” in order to “maintain public order and prevent friction.”
“They don’t want journalists to visit the villages to meet the residents,” said Adra, who had invited the journalists to his home. “It’s clear they don’t want the world to see what is happening here.”
Some of the surrounding area, including a collection of small Bedouin villages known as Masafer Yatta, was declared by the military to be a live-fire training zone in the 1980s. Some 1,000 Palestinians have remained there despite being ordered out, and journalists, human rights activists and diplomats have visited the villages in the past.
Palestinian residents in the area have reported increasing settler violence since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel and kickstarted the war in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards — and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.
Adra said the journalists were eventually able to enter one of the villages in Masafer Yatta but were barred from entering Tuwani, the village where he lives, and Khallet A-Daba, where he had hoped to take them.
Adra said settlers arrived in Khallet A-Daba on Monday and took over some of the caves where village residents live, destroying residents’ belongings and grazing hundreds of sheep on village lands. The military demolished much of the village last month.
It said in a statement to AP that the structures in the village were built illegally and demolished after the residents had the chance to present their cases against demolition.
“No Other Land,” which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages. The joint Palestinian-Israeli production was directed by Adra and Hamdan Ballal, another Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, along with Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.
The film has won a string of international awards.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians want all three for their future state and view settlement growth as a major obstacle to a two-state solution.
Israel has built well over 100 settlements, home to over 500,000 settlers who have Israeli citizenship. The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centers.
Leader Kim Jong Un, who witnessed the failed launch of the 5,000-ton warship, said the accident damaged the country’s dignity and vowed to punish those found responsible.
Commercial satellite imagery from June 2 showed the destroyer upright for the first time since the May 21 accident, the 38 North program, which studies the nuclear-armed North, said in a report.
Since the accident, North Korea has said it detained several officials, and Kim ordered the ship restored before a ruling party meeting this month.
“Commercial satellite imagery shows workers at the port in Chongjin have taken a significant step towards that goal,” 38 North said in its report.
Workers were observed pulling tethers, and possibly using barrage balloons, in a manual effort to right the ship, it added. The imagery shows the vessel’s bow still on land, with possible damage to its sonar section.
“To repair this, the ship will need to be moved out of the water to either a large floating drydock or graving dock once afloat,” 38 North said. “However, Chongjin’s shipyard does not offer this infrastructure.”
The east coast shipyard has turned out primarily cargo and fishing vessels and lacks significant expertise in launching large warships such as the new destroyer, other military experts have said.
The Oklahoma City Thunder were the hottest NBA team all season. The Indiana Pacers were the most unstoppable of the postseason’s past month.
Now, they meet in the NBA Finals.
When Game 1 tips off Thursday in Oklahoma City, both teams will be ending long droughts — 12 years since the Thunder’s last Finals appearance and a 25-year absence for the Pacers. Oklahoma City is chasing the franchise’s first championship since it relocated from Seattle in 2008. Indiana won three ABA championships between 1970 and 1973 but has never replicated a title-winning season since it joined the NBA as part of its merger with the ABA in 1976.
The Thunder boast new Most Valuable Player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, while the Pacers lean on their own star point guard, Tyrese Haliburton, but both teams are examples of the modern NBA, in which rosters built around depth, not just two or three All-Star players, have ruled.
Let’s break down who and what could decide the 2025 NBA Finals.
Other than Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Tyrese Haliburton, who is the most important player in the series?
Rohan Nadkarni: By the end of the Pacers’ series with the New York Knicks, Andrew Nembhard had frustrated Jalen Brunson so much to the point that Brunson headbutted him during Game 6. Can Nembhard do the same to the MVP of the league? So far during the postseason, nobody has had an answer for Gilgeous-Alexander.
Indiana can’t simply try to play with pace, because the Thunder like to play fast, as well. If the Pacers are going to have any chance in this matchup, though, they’ll have to make life difficult for SGA. Nembhard and (along with Aaron Nesmith, who could be limited after suffering an ankle injury in the conference finals) is going to be a key factor in trying to slow down the MVP.
Greif: Who winds up becoming the better second option? Because with Indiana trying to take away Gilgeous-Alexander and Oklahoma City the same with Haliburton, it’s on the Pacers’ Pascal Siakam and Oklahoma City’s Jalen Williams to do enough to make their opponent think twice about devoting so much attention to their star teammates. The key difference is that unlike Williams, Siakam has done precisely this role before, during Toronto’s 2019 title team while playing alongside Kawhi Leonard.
What must the Thunder do to win?
Nadkarni: Play Oklahoma City basketball. I know that sounds incredibly simple, but the truth of the matter is, despite how great the Pacers have been over the last five months, the Thunder are the better basketball team. OKC was the only team to finish in the top three in both offense (third) and defense (first) during the regular season. Just about anything Indiana does well, you could make an argument the Thunder do it better.
I’ll add, though, that OKC’s focus in late-game situations will need to be razor sharp. The Pacers have pulled off so many miraculous comebacks this postseason you almost can’t call them miracles anymore. The Thunder can’t let their foot off the gas and give Indiana any kind of life in the fourth quarter.
Andrew Greif: Force Indiana to turn the ball over. Here’s the big number to remember: When Oklahoma City gets 10-plus steals this season, it is 43-4. That is not a misprint. The Thunder led the league in steals during the regular season at more than 10 per game — two more per game than the league average — and have been even slightly better in the postseason.
The Pacers committed the third-fewest turnovers per game this season, and their very best attribute is their ability to play fast without being careless and giving away possessions. (That’s also what makes Indiana so good at pulling off comebacks.) But when their offense is disrupted, their fortunes are, too. The Pacers are 34-19 this season with fewer turnovers than their opponents, compared with 12-12 with more. And Oklahoma City has just the personnel to cause havoc.
What must the Pacers do to win?
Nadkarni: Score in transition as much as humanly possible. The Thunder’s defense has been suffocating all postseason, minus a couple of blips in the conference finals. As much movement and verve the Pacers play with in the half-court, they cannot afford to play against OKC’s set defense if they want to score consistently. That means Indiana will need to do even more of what it did against the Knicks: create turnovers for easy scores and run incredibly hard even off made baskets for semi-transition opportunities.
If the Pacers are forced to play anything resembling a half-court game against the Thunder, they will lose. OKC’s defense is probably the best of this decade, and it has been even better in the playoffs than it was during the regular season. If Indiana is going to win, it needs to consistently attack when the Thunder can’t get set.
Greif: Create ways for Haliburton to operate offensively in ways that Minnesota couldn’t for Anthony Edwards during the Western Conference finals. Edwards is one of the premier young scorers in the NBA, but he was handcuffed by an Oklahoma City defense that ranked first during the regular season and remains No. 1 in the playoffs.
The Thunder have a first-team all-defense honoree in Lu Dort, a second-team member in Jalen Williams, one of the league’s best rim protectors in Isaiah Hartenstein and an elite perimeter stopper in Alex Caruso. Their collective top priority is to contain Haliburton, whose confidence feeds the Pacers’ as a whole. Oklahoma City is so good defensively in the half-court that Indiana must look to score after Thunder turnovers or missed shots. Both of those played to the Packers’ strengths against New York, whom Indiana outscored by 79 off turnovers and by 58 in fast-break opportunities.
Who wins the series?
Nadkarni: Thunder in five. I love the Pacers, who are chaos agents who twist games into pretzels only they know how to unwind. And Rick Carlisle is a genius-level coach who will employ every possible strategy at his disposal.
And yet … Oklahoma City is just that dominant. The Thunder were a juggernaut during the regular season, and so far in the playoffs they have really been tested only by Denver Nuggets superstar Nikola Jokić, perhaps the most unsolvable player in the league. There is a talent gap here that’s reflected in the numbers over now a nearly 100-game sample size. I would love if this were a long series — I just can’t predict that based on the strength of OKC.
Greif: Oklahoma City in six games. When these teams played on March 29, two weeks before the playoffs began, Indiana had won six of its previous seven games and Oklahoma City was playing without big man Chet Holmgren and lost his backup, Hartenstein, for the second half with an injury. Yet the Thunder won by 21 points, anyway.
Yes, it was just one game, but it was an indication of the surplus of talent on this roster and the challenge Indiana will have stopping it. Though Indiana’s unbelievably gutsy postseason can’t be denied, Oklahoma City has played just as well, its young roster maturing in real time.
TikTok often popularizes songs from music’s biggest and buzziest artists.
But one of the most viral songs right now was recorded in 1961.
More than six decades ago, singer Connie Francis recorded enough music to fill three albums. Buried on the back of one of those records was the song “Pretty Little Baby.”
It wasn’t nearly as popular as her other hits of the time, including “Stupid Cupid” and “Who’s Sorry Now?”
But in recent weeks, the forgotten song has found new life on TikTok. Millions of videos have been created with the song on the audio-forward app. It has been featured in videos from everyday users to popular influencers and celebrities. Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner are featured in videos set to the ’60s-era tune.
Streams of the song are growing. It’s now on some of Spotify’s playlists of popular, viral songs.
Francis posted about her viral hit on Facebook, writing, “My thanks to TikTok and its members for the wonderful, and oh so unexpected, reception.”
She wrote that she was “clearly out of touch,” because when she found out the song was trending on TikTok, her initial response was to ask, “What’s that?”
But she’s not out of touch anymore.
Francis is now on TikTok. She hasn’t posted on the popular platform yet, but her page features the song’s album artwork.
BOULDER, Colo. — The 88-year-old Holocaust survivor who was burned during an attack by a man armed with a “makeshift flamethrower” had a message on Tuesday for the rest of America: “We are better than this.”
In her first words spoken publicly since Sunday’s gruesome attack on a group of demonstrators advocating for the return of Israeli hostages in Gaza, Barbara Steinmetz told NBC News that what happened “has nothing to do with the Holocaust, it has to do with a human being that wants to burn other people.”
Steinmetz said she and other members of the group Run for Their Lives were “peacefully” demonstrating when they were suddenly attacked.
During a brief interview, Steinmetz still appeared to be rattled by the ordeal.
“It’s about what the hell is going on in our country,” Steinmetz said when pressed. “What the hell is going on?”
Asked if there was anything more she wanted Americans to know after the attack, Steinmetz said she “wants people to be nice and decent to each other, kind, respectful, encompassing.”
“We’re Americans,” she said. “We are better than this. That’s what I want them to know. That they be kind and decent human beings.”
Steinmetz, who was born in Hungary, was among a dozen people who were injured in the attack allegedly carried out by a 45-year-old Egyptian national named Mohamed Sabry Soliman.
Police said Soliman also hurled Molotov cocktails at the demonstrators.
The attack occurred 11 days after two Israeli Embassy workers were gunned down and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.
In both Boulder and Washington, authorities said, the alleged attackers yelled, “Free Palestine.”
Rabbi Marc Soloway, the leader of Congregation Bonai Shalom in Boulder, where Steinmetz is a member, said the woman suffered minor burns but is “going to be OK” physically.
Soloway said he was less sure about how someone who escaped the Holocaust could process what happened on Pearl Street.
“Can you imagine the trauma that that reactivates?” Soloway said. “It’s just horrendous.”
Soloway said Steinmetz was injured while taking part in a weekly walk “purely to raise awareness of the fact that there are still 58 hostages in tunnels in Gaza.”
In addition to Steinmetz, five other members of his congregation were injured and two remain hospitalized, Soloway said.
The rabbi said Soliman, who has been charged with attempted murder and a hate crime, among other offenses, is “deluded and misguided.”
“If he thinks that an act of unspeakable brutality and violence is going to help the condition of the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza, he is so deluded and so misguided,” the rabbi said.
As for Steinmetz, much of her childhood was spent on an island off the coast of Croatia, which was then part of Italy and where her parents operated a hotel, according to the CU Independent, the student newspaper at the University of Colorado, Boulder, which published an article about her in 2019 for Holocaust remembrance week.
“I lived an idyllic childhood on the banks of the Adriatic,” Steinmetz recalled in the article.
But after Italian dictator Benito Mussolini stripped the Italian Jews of their citizenship in 1938, Steinmetz’s father took the family to Hungary and from there they fled to France two years later.
When the Germans entered France, Steinmetz and her family were forced to flee again, this time to Portugal, where thousands of other refugees were looking for a way to escape from Europe.
Steinmetz said her father applied for asylum to a dozen countries, including the United States. But only one would take them — the Dominican Republic.
They departed for the DR on a Portuguese cargo ship in 1941 and during a brief stop in New York City she got to see the city’s famous skyline, she told the Independent.
Steinmetz said they were resettled in the coastal town of Sosúa, and while her parents toiled at menial jobs, she and her sister were sent to a Catholic boarding school where only the Mother Superior knew that they were Jews.
“For four years, the convent was our home,” Steinmetz recalled in the article. “Although formidable, the sisters were kind.”
Once the war was over, the Steinmetz family was able to move to the United States, where her parents went back into the hotel business in New Hampshire.
Steinmetz moved to Boulder in “the mid-2000s,” according to the article.
One of America’s most storied industries is getting a massive boost from President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs push — at the potential cost of a broader slowdown elsewhere in the U.S. economy.
Trump signed an executive order increasing the already substantial 25% duties on steel imports he first set in March to 50%. He signaled last week that the tariff rate hike was coming. It went into effect at midnight Wednesday.
“We’re going to bring it from 25% to 50% — the tariffs on steel into the United States of America,” Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania, “which will even further secure the steel industry in the United States.”
The new 50% duties also affect aluminum products.
The tariffs on steel, along with those on imported automobiles and auto parts, have been imposed under authorities not affected by recent court decisions that cast doubt on the president’s powers to enact trade barriers.
U.S. steel firms have hailed Trump’s renewed push to raise the cost to American firms that rely on imports of steel. It’s a notably favorable reaction to tariffs amid what has broadly been a backlash against them.
“American-made steel is at the heart of President Trump’s plan to revitalize domestic manufacturing and return our country to an economic powerhouse,” the Steel Manufacturers Association said in a statement that applauded Trump’s remarks about the new 50% tariffs.
Today, the steel manufacturing industry directly employs 86,000 U.S. workers. It’s a fraction of the half million-strong workforce the industry counted in the decade after World War II, though employment levels have stabilized more recently.
While trade globalization bears substantial responsibility for steel’s decadeslong downturn, experts say advances in technology have played an equally significant role. Steel production increasingly revolves around so-called electric arc furnace technology, a more efficient means of production than the classic open blast furnace operations that prevailed for much of the 20th century.
The same levels of output from steel’s heydays can now be achieved with just a fraction of the workforce. As recently as the early 1980s, it took about 10 man-hours to produce a ton of steel. Today, the rate is as little as a single man-hour assuming multiple steel mills are working in tandem.
“The way we make steel in the U.S. has changed a lot,” said an expert on the local impact of industrial transitions, Ken Kolb, chair of the sociology department at Furman University in South Carolina.
“There is simply no way to bring that scale of employment back if a fraction of that workforce is needed to essentially reach the same production levels,” Kolb said.
He estimated that perhaps 15,000 new direct jobs could be added assuming capacity levels increase. But the broader cost to industries dependent on steel inputs, like autos, construction and solar panels — which relies on tariffed aluminum components — would be likely to negate those gains.
“Theoretically you’re going to be able to hire some people, but in reality, the tariffs just raise the average price of steel,” Kolb said. “And when the price of a commodity like that goes up, businesses just buy less and sideline investment.”
A study found that while Trump’s 2018 steel tariffs created 1,000 new direct jobs, it cost downstream industries that rely on steel to make their products as many as 75,000 jobs because they became less competitive thanks to higher costs.
While some limited capacity could come back online in the near term, the on-again, off-again nature of the tariffs limit any immediate job gains, said Josh Spoores, head of Steel Americas Analysis at the CRU Group consultancy.
If the higher tariffs remain, there could be new investments, Spoores said in an email — but building new steel mills can take at least two years.
Nor is it clear that American steelworkers themselves are entirely in favor of the tariffs. The United Steelworkers union signaled only tepid endorsement for the measure in a statement after its Canadian chapter rebuked Trump’s announcement.
“While tariffs, used strategically, serve as a valuable tool in balancing the scales, it’s essential that we also pursue wider reforms of our global trading system, working in collaboration with trusted allies like Canada to contain the bad actors and excess capacity that continue to undermine our industries,” the union said.
The union has also shown signs of a split when it comes to Trump’s proposed “partnership” between U.S. Steel and Japan’s Nippon Steel, whose takeover of the U.S. firm he previously opposed. Trump now sees the deal “creating” as many as 70,000 jobs.
“There’s a lot of money coming your way,” Trump told supporters at the Pennsylvania rally Friday.
The United Steelworkers signaled lingering doubts about the Nippon arrangement in a statement Friday.
“We have not participated in the discussions involving U.S. Steel, Nippon Steel, and the Trump administration, nor were we consulted, so we cannot speculate about the meaning of the ‘planned partnership’ between USS and Nippon,” it said, using an initialism to refer to the American firm.
It continued: “Whatever the deal structure, our primary concern remains with the impact that this merger of U.S. Steel into a foreign competitor will have on national security, our members and the communities where we live and work.”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Marty McFly grabbed a guitar in “Back to the Future” and rocked out with the band at a 1950s high school dance, helping him narrowly avoid blinking out of existence before time-traveling back to the 1980s.
The guitar, in real life, wasn’t as lucky.
Filmmakers went looking for the instrument while making the movie’s 1989 sequel, but even now it’s nowhere to be found. Four decades after the blockbuster film debuted, the guitar’s creator has launched a search for the iconic Cherry Red Gibson ES-345.
Gibson, which is based in Nashville, is asking the public for help tracking it down as the movie turns 40 and as the company produces a new documentary about the search and the film, “Lost to the Future.”
In a video by Gibson, with the movie’s theme song playing in the background, “Back to the Future” stars such as Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson and Harry Waters Jr. make a cinematic plea. There’s also a surprise appearance by Huey Lewis, whose band Huey Lewis and the News performed the soundtrack’s headliner song, “The Power of Love.”
Lloyd, in the cadence of Doc Brown, says in the video that the guitar has been “lost to the future.”
“It’s somewhere lost in the space-time continuum,” says Fox, who played McFly. “Or it’s in some Teamster’s garage.”
In the film, McFly steps in for an injured band member at the 1955 school dance with the theme “Enchantment under the Sea,” playing the guitar as students slow dance to “Earth Angel.” He then leads Marvin Barry and the Starlighters in a rendition of “Johnny B. Goode,” calling it an oldie where he comes was from even though the 1958 song doesn’t exist yet for his audience.
Fox said he wanted McFly to riff through his favorite guitarists’ signature styles — Jimi Hendrix behind the head, Pete Townshend’s windmill and the Eddie Van Halen hammer. After digging and dancing to “Johnny B. Goode,” the students at the dance fall into an awkward silence as McFly’s riffs turn increasingly wild.
“I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet,” McFly says. “But your kids are gonna love it.”
WATERBURY, Conn. — A Connecticut man was sentenced to 33 years in prison on Tuesday for the stray-bullet killing of a Puerto Rican Olympic athlete’s mother.
Jasper Greene, 23, of New Haven, was one of three men charged in the death of Mabel Martinez Antongiorgi on April 9, 2022. The 56-year-old woman was sewing in her home in Waterbury, about 30 miles southwest of Hartford, when a bullet flew through a wall and hit her in the head.
Martinez Antongiorgi’s daughter, Yarimar Mercado Martinez, competed for the family’s native Puerto Rico in rifle shooting at the Olympics in 2016, 2021 and 2024. She was in Brazil for another competition when her mother was killed.
Greene pleaded guilty to murder in February. His lawyer did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment after Tuesday’s sentencing in Waterbury Superior Court.
According to court testimony, the fatal shooting stemmed from a dispute that one of the suspects, Franklin Robinson, had with a man who said hello to his girlfriend. Robinson, Greene and another man shot up a car parked on Martinez Antongiorgi’s street, thinking the man was inside it. A bullet went into Martinez Antongiorgi’s home. Another bystander was wounded but survived.
A jury convicted Robinson of murder and other charges in 2023 and he was later sentenced to 90 years in prison.
The third suspect, Levi Brock, has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges in the case, including murder, and awaits trial.
At the time of her mother’s death, Mercado Martinez lamented in social media posts that she “couldn’t even say goodbye.”
“Why you? Why this way?” she wrote. “You were just sitting in your little house sewing, as you always did.”
Martinez Antongiorgi and her husband of over 30 years, John Luis Mercado, moved to Waterbury from Puerto Rico a few years after the U.S. territory endured 2017’s devastating Hurricane Maria. At the time of her death, they had set a date to renew their wedding vows, their daughter wrote at the time.
