Filo Tiatia’s men have made a strong start to the season but that might not necessarily translate into a bigger contingent in Tandy’s squad.
Lock Ben Carter is a shoo-in, tight-head prop Dillon Lewis will hope to pick up where he left off in the summer and in-form hooker Elliot Dee would love to battle Dewi Lake and Ryan Elias for action.
The Perpignan fixture highlighted the qualities of Dragons’ grafters with blind-side flanker Shane Lewis-Hughes, who won three caps in 2020, continuing his strong start to the season.
Wales contact coach Dan Lydiate was a guest at Dragons training last week and would have been impressed as Lewis-Hughes put in 27 tackles against the French side’s big carriers.
But the forward, like team-mate Harri Keddie, is competing in a position of real depth.
The same applies for wing Rio Dyer, who is yet to score this season but has been lively with ball in hand and impressive in the aerial game.
Dragons’ man of the match against Perpignan was Aneurin Owen, so often the side’s glue from inside centre.
He carried strongly to go with his distribution skills, while he was strong in defence and came up with two turnovers.
Owen, who turns 26 the day before Tuesday’s squad announcement, was a member of the Wales squad under Wayne Pivac in the summer of 2021 but remains uncapped.
There might be an opening at 12 due to Ben Thomas’ injury should Tandy look to see if a quality operator at club level can take the next step.
“Aneurin knows I love him,” said Dragons boss Filo Tiatia. “He has outstanding leadership and there is lots more to come from him.
“He wants to improve, is coachable and is strong at challenging the coaches.”
Manchester United head coach Michael Carrick says he is “telling the truth” when he says the club have moved on from Lisandro Martinez’s explosive post-match comments this week.
Carrick’s close friend and team-mate Wayne Rooney led the condemnation of Martinez, saying the Argentine defender could “rip the dressing room apart” with his attack on United’s hierarchy after the 2-0 Champions League defeat by Atletico Madrid.
Former United skippers Roy Keane and Gary Neville have also had their say, among a huge amount of analysis.
“There’s a lot of people who say a lot of things – ex-pros or not ex-pros – it doesn’t necessarily mean they understand what is going on here,” said Carrick in his pre-match media conference at United’s Carrington training ground.
“Just because people talk on the outside doesn’t mean that is the truth. I am telling you the truth. The squad today was in a fantastic place, better than I have seen it for a while. That is it, plain and simple. We are living it every day and know what it feels like.
“We are emotional and care a lot. Sometimes someone says something that maybe you shouldn’t say at that certain time, but it doesn’t distract us from what we are creating here and the environment and spirit within the group.
“It [the squad] is not affected, I am telling you.”
Carrick confirmed Martinez would be “part of the squad” for Sunday’s Premier League trip to Leeds at Elland Road (14:00 BST).
The Pentagon announced last week it would execute Hasan on 3 December 2026 by firing squad.
Hegseth then said the execution would be livestreamed for the public to watch, adding that “people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things”.
Trump last Friday called Hasan “totally nuts”, adding: “I really don’t care how he goes, as long as he goes, and I think that the death penalty is a very worthy way of going for him.”
He also said he “absolutely” approved the livestream plans but said the Pentagon was still “making a determination” on it.
Hasan opened fire in a crowded medical building where deploying soldiers were awaiting check-ups and vaccines.
He later admitted in court that he was the gunman and apologised for “any mistakes”. He said during his court-martial in 2013 that he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan from the US military.
The killings on 5 November 2009 were the deadliest ever non-combat attack on an American military base.
US military law requires that a military execution be approved by the US president. It also requires appellate review, when a higher court inspects the decision and gives a final judgement on its legality to move forward.
While there were more than 2,700 executions across 17 countries last year, only two nations carried them out publicly. According to Amnesty International, 11 public executions were known to have been carried out in Iran in 2025 and another six in Afghanistan.
Kallum Watkins has been called up to England’s Rugby League World Cup squad as a late replacement after Morgan Smithies was forced to withdraw through injury.
The 35-year-old Leeds Rhinos second-row forward is set to take part in his fourth World Cup having previously featured in 2013, 2017 and 2022.
The loss of lock and second-row forward Smithies, who is set to join Perth Bears for the 2027 NRL season, comes as a blow to England.
However, in Watkins, head coach Brian McDermott has found a replacement he knows well having previously coached him during a trophy-laden spell at Leeds.
“It’s really unfortunate what has happened to Morgan with an injury picked up in training,” said McDermott.
“Morgan has been great since we entered camp. He’s a real team player and his work ethic and toughness are qualities that we will certainly miss.
“Kallum enjoyed a terrific season with Leeds this year and has been part of our England performance programme building into this World Cup.
“I look forward to welcoming him into camp as we step up our preparations.”
Watkins, who has 32 caps, is set to arrive in Perth before England’s World Cup opener against Tonga on Saturday (10:05 BST) but will not play.
He started his career as a centre before shifting into the pack in recent years and will be available for England’s other group matches against France and Papua New Guinea.
The Pentagon said the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be public and livestreamed. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others at the Texas base in 2009. The White House hasn’t confirmed the Pentagon’s comments.
In confirming his plans to live-stream Fort Hood mass shooter Nidal Malik Hasan’s military execution by firing squad on Dec. 3, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called it a “no brainer” punishment for a “radical Islamist terror attack” on U.S. service members.
“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand [that] there are serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said in an interview with the Real America’s Voice network.
Others across the country and around the world — Democrats and Republicans, human rights experts, legal scholars and military and religious leaders — condemned it as a barbaric throwback to an era when executions were cast as entertainment, and as the world’s leading democracy adopting a form of punishment carried out in modern times only by authoritarian regimes and terrorist organizations.
Nidal Malik Hasan is shown in a courtroom sketch in 2013.
(Brigitte Woosley / Associated Press)
“Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) wrote on X. “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”
“I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do. America is better than that,” Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) wrote.
The United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights said that “the livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture.” The head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said it would “further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people.”
Matthew Robinson, a criminal justice professor at Appalachian State University and author of a book on U.S. capital punishment titled “Death Nation,” said he was “appalled” by the plans. “It strikes me as meant to be entertaining.” He said the last military execution was in 1961, and the last by firing squad was in 1945.
Soldiers hold a candlelight vigil at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, one day after Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 13 people.
(LM Otero / Associated Press)
Hasan was an Army psychiatrist and major who in 2009 entered a medical building on the Texas military base with a laser-sighted handgun, shouted “Allahu akbar” — Arabic for “God is great!” — and opened fire, killing 13 people and injuring 32 others. He has since spoken of being a “martyr” if executed.
President Trump, an outspoken proponent of the death penalty for years but also a past critic of public executions in places like Iran, has signed off on Hasan’s execution but not addressed Hegseth’s plans. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Vice President JD Vance, who is Catholic, said Friday that people should remember that Hasan “brutally murdered a lot of innocent people.” But he also said he would not watch a live-stream of the execution, and expressed doubt that is “actually going to happen.”
On his first day in office this term, Trump issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to restore the death penalty to prominence. In April, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it had taken steps to do so, including by “expanding the protocol” to include firing squads.
Five states currently allow firing squads to carry out executions: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly turned down appeals contending such executions amount to “cruel and unusual punishment,” which is barred under U.S. law. South Carolina executed three men by firing squad last year.
When the Supreme Court last year rejected an Alabama inmate’s request to be killed by firing squad rather than with nitrogen hypoxia, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor — joined by fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented, writing, “Boyd asks for the barest form of mercy: to die by firing squad, which would kill him in seconds, rather than by a torturous suffocation lasting up to four minutes. The Constitution would grant him that grace.”
Kathleen Walter prays outside the Nashville, Tenn., prison where Christa Pike was set to be executed.
(George Walker IV / Associated Press)
Last week, a Tennessee inmate named Christa Pike survived what was meant to be a lethal injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital. Other states have also struggled with executions by lethal injection in recent years.
Much of the criticism of Hegseth’s plan for Hasan has centered not on the method of killing, but on the live-streaming of it.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the center has “no record of any execution being live streamed,” and is “not aware of any regulation or precedent for a military execution to be live streamed on the internet or otherwise made widely available to the public.”
Fox News commentator Howard Kurtz wrote: “I’m sensing revulsion on the left and right, not so much for killing a death row prisoner — although firing squad seems extreme in the modern age — but for the Pentagon to live-stream it, turning this into a horrifying TV show to entertain the masses. Is this America?”
Daniel LaChance, an associate history professor at Emory University and author of the book “Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States,” said the last public execution in the U.S. occurred in 1936, when a Black man convicted of rape was hanged in Kentucky — which still allowed public executions after most states had abandoned the practice.
That execution was “by all accounts a grotesque carnival” and “sort of like a gladiatorial contest brought to life in the 20th Century, where the crowd was surly, shouting,” LaChance said. “It was a debacle.”
That the Trump administration is seeking to turn capital punishment into a public spectacle once more, LaChance said, is out of line with decades of thinking on the issue, but in line with Trump’s own ethos about crime and punishment.
“His whole brand is this kind of populist, anti-elitism. And when executions moved into the bowels of prisons in the early 20th century, they were really becoming bureaucratic affairs, run by experts, carried out in front of a small group of professionals and clergy,” LaChance said. “It was a denial of the public’s right to see a punishment that was carried out in their name, in part because there were elites who thought that the public couldn’t handle this kind of spectacle, that they were misbehaving, that it would generate more disorder when an execution is designed to do the exact opposite: to generate order.”
President Trump points to fans to as he walks to the stage at a political rally Wednesday in San Antonio.
(San Antonio Express-News via Getty Images)
Trump clearly thinks he is pushing back against elitism and expertise and giving people what they want, LaChance said, though the question many scholars have is whether doing so will “increase people’s bloodthirst” or force them to recoil — and ultimate decrease support for such punishments.
Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School, said Trump has publicly mused about killing people by firing squad for years, so Hegseth’s plans to use a firing squad should not be surprising. However, the decision to live-stream the killing is clearly a source of “dismay” for many. “Even people who are resigned to the death penalty, who don’t have religious or other scruples about the death penalty, have real heartburn over this,” he said.
Fidell said “brutality” has become an “operating principle” for the Trump administration broadly, from its decision to host an Ultimate Fighting tournament at the White House to its immigration tactics across the country to, now, it’s plans to live-stream an execution — which Fidell said has “nothing to do” with deterring future crime.
“There’s a pathology going on here that is so out of keeping with the dignity that ought to characterize the taking of a life as a result of a legal process,” he said.
Robinson, of Appalachian State, said a student of his Friday morning asked what would happen when children tune in to watch the execution, which Robinson said he believes they will do, as if it’s a video game. He said the idea was appalling — and not just to him.
“I imagine the rest of the world, the civilized world, will see this and have the same response that I did,” he said. “They’ll respond with shock.”
Times staff writer David G. Savage contributed to this report.
US Vice President JD Vance has cast doubt on the Pentagon’s plans to livestream a firing squad execution of the Fort Hood shooter.
Talking with reporters, Vance expressed doubt that it would happen as planned, saying: “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen”.
He added, that “if it’s through live stream, I’m not going to be watching it”. Vance described the actions by former US Army major Nidal Hasan as “the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9/11”.
Hasan fatally shot 13 unarmed US soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, injuring another 32. His execution by firing squad would be the first military execution in more than 60 years.
Manchester City head coach Enzo Maresca says the “feeling is fantastic” among his players and they “don’t care too much about the noise” surrounding the club after it was found guilty of the majority of the 115 charges brought against it by the Premier League.
The club’s international players returned to training on Thursday, nine days after the Premier League published a damning report that stated the club had used “sham” contracts to disguise secret funding of more than £830m.
BBC Sport reported this week that Maresca would address the players upon their return to domestic duty after news of the verdict broke while the majority of the squad were away with their respective nations.
It is understood the City head coach asked his players not to allow the crisis that has engulfed the club to affect their attitude and focus as the Premier League campaign gets back under way this weekend.
“The feeling is fantastic, to be honest,” Maresca said in an in-house interview when asked about the mood among his squad prior to their trip to face Liverpool on Sunday (16:30 BST).
“The players are excited for the next two games. But especially they are excited because in this moment we are top of the league. The players are just focused on that.
“They know what we can control is the football side – they are not worried at all about different things.
“They know their profession and they know that the noise is there, but they don’t care too much about the noise. They are just focused in this moment on how we can beat Liverpool and how, together with the fans, we can try to win in Anfield.”
Maresca added he felt “calm” and his squad trusts the club “completely”.
City have launched an appeal and have publicly maintained their innocence.
The private communication to those with links to the playing staff at City has been equally as emphatic, it is understood.
Speaking to Sky Sports, striker Erling Haaland echoed his manager’s sentiments, saying: “I care a lot about this place. I spent my first four years here, it’s a special place for us. I care a lot about City and the fans. I am a fan myself. I feel with them.
“The fans will have a good time on Sunday – we have to stick together. We have to stay with each other and stay positive. No matter what happens in life, we always have to smile. Stay positive, look ahead, and try to win football games and enjoy the situation.
“We have to stick together and spread the love to each other. Enjoy the ride and smile.”
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the execution would be “public.”
Hegseth, speaking to the conservative TV outlet Real America’s Voice News on Wednesday, said the execution of Hasan will take place at Fort Hood on Dec. 3. Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a shooting at the military base in 2009.
“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth spoke to the outlet aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier while visiting the long-deployed crew, who supported the Iran war, before their arrival at their home port in San Diego.
When asked if Hasan had made any final requests or reached out to the Trump administration, Hegseth simply replied: “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3rd.”
Officials in the Pentagon clarified Thursday that the execution will be livestreamed and that more details would follow.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell had said Monday that President Trump had approved the execution of Hasan.
Trump has previously been critical of public executions in Iran, at times using the possibility of protesters being killed by the Iranian government as a possible rationale for military action. Those warnings preceded his ultimate choice to attack Iran at the end of February over its ballistic missiles and the risk of it developing nuclear weapons.
“We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping,” Trump told reporters on Jan. 14 of this year. “It’s stopping and there’s no plan for executions.”
He repeated that claim on Jan. 20 at a White House press briefing, saying: “We let them know that if that happens, that will be a very bad day for them. And they decided not to do it. They didn’t hang the people.”
Slightly more than a month later in his State of the Union address, Trump said, “We stopped them from hanging a lot of them with the threat of serious violence.”
The White House on Thursday immediately referred questions about the plans for the livestreamed execution to the Pentagon.
However, experts on military law said Hasan could choose to resist execution and file a habeas petition in civilian court, which could significantly delay the execution.
“It frankly might outlast the current administration, and who knows if the next one will have the same penchant for executions,” said Eugene R. Fidell, a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School specializing in military law.
Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who held the rank of major, walked into a medical building where soldiers were waiting in long lines to receive immunizations and medical clearance for deployment. He shouted “Allahu akbar” — Arabic for “God is great!” — and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun.
During the trial it was revealed that Hasan spent weeks planning the deadly attack, and his preparation included videotaping a sales clerk showing him how to change the magazine on the pistol that he purchased. He would later go to a gun range outside Austin and ask for advice on how to reload with speed and precision from an instructor.
Soldiers later testified that Hasan’s rapid reloading made it all but impossible to stop the shooting. Investigators recovered 146 shell casings inside the building and dozens more outside, where Hasan shot at the backs of soldiers fleeing toward the parking lot.
Hasan said it was an effort to stop them from going to Afghanistan and killing his fellow Muslims. A military judge barred him from presenting that as a defense during his trial. Hasan made almost no effort to defend himself in court, telling jurors when he acted as his own counsel that evidence would show he was the shooter and describing himself as a soldier who had “switched sides.”
Hegseth said the military hasn’t executed a servicemember by firing squad since World War II. The last military execution took place on April 13, 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was executed by hanging.
United States President Donald Trump has approved the death by firing squad of Nidal Malik Hasan, a former army officer convicted of carrying out a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, an army base in Texas.
The move, if it proceeds, will revive executions in the army, which has not carried one out since 1961.
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Death sentences, as well as executions in the US military, are rare and require presidential approval.
Under the army’s code of military justice, premeditated murder does carry the death penalty, but the process is often strict and prolonged.
However, the Trump administration has shown more willingness to seek death penalties for serious crimes, including against civilians.
Here’s what we know about the case:
What is the presidential order?
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had initially recommended an execution order for Hasan, and Trump has now approved it, according to an X statement posted by Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell.
Parnell said the time and date of the execution will be set by Army Secretary Adam Telle, who is serving in an acting capacity.
“Judgement day for Hasan has finally come,” he wrote.
What happened at Fort Hood?
On November 5, 2009, the US-born army major, Hasan, a psychiatrist in the force, walked into an army processing centre in Fort Hood, shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and opened fire on fellow staff members waiting to get medical attention.
Thirteen people were killed, including a pregnant soldier, and 32 others were wounded during 10 minutes of shooting. Analysts have called it the worst shooting at a US military base targeting members of armed forces.
Hasan was shot several times after two officers engaged him and remains paralysed from the waist down.
What happened during the trial?
Hasan was immediately court-martialled, and military prosecutors, from the start, sought the death penalty against him.
However, the process would play out over the course of several years even after his conviction – largely because the US military is averse to capital punishment.
During the trial, Hasan represented himself and admitted to the attacks, saying he was trying to stop deployments to Afghanistan and the killing of his fellow Muslims. He was due to be deployed weeks later.
Investigations revealed Hasan had exchanged emails with Yemeni-American scholar Anwar al-Awlaki, accused of ties to al-Qaeda, before the shooting. He had also repeatedly voiced opposition to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to colleagues and the treatment of Muslims in the army.
Hasan made little effort to defend himself, and his assigned lawyers claimed his testimony aided the opposing side.
He was charged and convicted on 13 counts of premeditated murder in 2013, and jurors recommended the maximum sentence of death. Controversially, Hasan was charged with “workplace violence” because the military justice code does not address the crime of “terrorism”.
The judgement was further delayed by appeals mandated by the military, not because Hasan sought them.
In 2020, the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the death penalty for Hasan, and in 2023, the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces did the same. In March 2025, the US Supreme Court denied a mandatory petition for a judicial review.
In September 2025, Hegseth announced he was seeking presidential approval for Hasan’s execution.
At the time, there was no report of Hegseth specifically seeking death by firing squad.
The president holds the ultimate authority to specify the designated method of execution.
Other forms of execution could have been lethal injection or hanging, which the US military has used in the past.
What next?
While Trump’s approval will begin a series of steps towards preparing for the execution, Hasan can still put the process on hold for years with an appeal in the civilian federal court system.
However, that might be unlikely as Hasan made no effort to defend himself during the trial.
He has been remanded to the US Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where three other men have also been on the military death row for years.
Among them is Hasan Akbar, convicted of two counts of murder after attacking fellow army members on a Kuwait base in 2003, during the invasion of Iraq.
Another is the convicted serial killer and rapist Ronald Gray, who was found guilty of four counts of murder and eight counts of rape in 2008. He was approved for execution in the same year under President George W Bush, but the process was put on hold by a judge.
Timothy Hennis, a former sergeant, was convicted in 2010 of a triple murder and is also on death row.
The last military execution took place in 1961, when former soldier John Bennett was hanged for the rape of an 11-year-old girl.
He felt the issue prior to the match, but played 70 minutes in central midfield alongside Elliot Anderson before being substituted.
Arsenal defender Ezri Konsa has also been ruled out of the fixture at Wembley as a precautionary measure, with the 28-year-old to return to the Premier League champions for treatment on an injury.
Bournemouth are due to play nine games between 10 October and 8 November.
Alongside their weekend Premier League commitments, they will play on Wednesday or Thursday for four consecutive weeks, facing Sturm Graz, AC Milan and Sparta Prague in the Europa League and Aston Villa in the fourth round of the Carabao Cup.
England coach Thomas Tuchel was effusive in his praise for Scott after the Croatia match.
“First start and what a start, what a performance,” said Tuchel. “He is so smooth on the ball, his decision making is at the highest level.
“He plays with so much confidence. He is so active, so confident. The work rate off the ball.
“He is just the complete package. He gave us a lot of mobility and a lot of variety and work rate in the centre of the pitch.”
Scott made his England debut in a 2-0 win over the Czech Republic in Prague on Tuesday, before his full debut four days later.
He joins French forward Eli Junior Kroupi on Bournemouth’s injury list, with the 20-year-old still unavailable after sustaining a foot problem in pre-season.
The Cherries are 17th in the Premier League and are winless after five matches, drawing three times and losing twice.
They return to Premier League action at Chelsea on Saturday (15:00 BST) and play Sunderland, Manchester United, Leeds and Ipswich prior to the November international break.
Nico O’Reilly has withdrawn from the England squad for their final two Nations League matches of the international break because of injury.
The left-back played the full game for manager Thomas Tuchel’s side in the 3-2 defeat by Spain but missed Tuesday’s 2-0 win against the Czech Republic.
O’Reilly has now returned to club side Manchester City for “further assessment” and will miss the trip to Croatia on Saturday and the return game against the Czechs on Tuesday.
England do not plan to call-up any replacements.
Lewis Hall replaced O’Reilly against the Czech Republic and the Newcastle United full-back combined well with former Magpies team-mate Anthony Gordon on England’s left flank.
