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The final curtain will fall later at Taunton's Brewhouse Theatre and Arts Centre, with its board blaming cuts in arts funding for the decision. A statement from the theatre said it "desperately needed more investment from its stakeholders" but could not get an agreement in time to stay open. The venue had faced funding cuts from the Arts Council and Somerset County Council in recent years. It will close its doors on Thursday while all the options will be considered, including staff redundancies. The Brewhouse, a registered charity, opened in March 1977 after 10-years of planning and fundraising by the Taunton Theatre Group.
One of Somerset's leading arts centre is going into administration.

By Steven McKenzieBBC Scotland Highlands and Islands reporter Last month, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta lifted a ban barring women from ground-combat roles. In the weeks since the historic announcement, arguments have been made for and against the ban's demise. There has been debate over whether women are strong enough for combat roles and an argument that service in Afghanistan and Iraq has already placed women on the frontline. But, in the past, women were willing to go to extraordinary lengths to see combat. They disguised as themselves as men and took new, masculine names before enlisting in the infantry. Among them was Glasgow-born Marian McKenzie. Shortly after her birth in 1844, her mother died and her father moved the family from Scotland to New York. As a teenager, she pursued a career as an actress before giving up on that dream and travelling from town to town finding what work she could. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, she saw her chance of a great adventure, according to Larry Eggleston, author of the book Women in the Civil War. Eighteen-year-old Marian cut her hair, dressed in men's clothing and joined the Union army's 23rd Kentucky Infantry Regiment as Pte Harry Fitzallen. Eggleston said: "Harry Fitzallen is described in the military records as 5ft 3in tall, of Scottish origin, with a dark complexion, light blue eyes, black hair and coarse-looking and rounded features." Four months after joining up, Marian's true identity was discovered. She was allowed to remain in the army as a nurse but left two months later to try again at serving as an infantryman. From military records, Eggleston was able to track Marian over three years. She enlisted with various regiments - including the 92nd and 8th Ohio - and managed to last weeks or months before being found out and discharged before almost immediately enlisting with another unit. She did not reach the frontline but did participate in long marches and garrison guard duties. Eggleston said: "She only expressed adventure as her motive, but the fact that she served for three years and continually re-enlisted makes one believe that there were other, more patriotic motives involved in her decisions." While researching his book, the writer also came across Kady Brownell, the daughter of a Scottish soldier who tried to serve as a combatant alongside her husband in the 1st Rhode Island Volunteers during the civil war. Eggleston said: "She was sent back to Rhode Island by Colonel Ambrose E Burnside. "However, Rhode Island governor William Sprauge intervened and she was returned to her husband's regiment, where she became a Daughter of the Regiment." A Daughter of the Regiment, also known as vivandieres, were women attached to a unit and served in canteen duties. Elizabeth Leonard, a professor of history at Colby College in Maine, said between 500 and 1,000 women were thought to have served as soldiers during the American Civil War. She said: "We will never know for sure. Women soldiers did not want to be known and they often hid themselves very skilfully, sometimes not being discovered until very late in life." Prof Leonard added: "I think that women's motivations for going undercover as male soldiers were diverse. "Some surely enlisted so that they could stay close to men they cared about and, early on, this was probably the most common explanation that observers gave. "But women also enlisted because they wanted to provide patriotic service and believed in the 'cause', be it Union or independence or slavery or abolition. "They also enlisted for the sake of adventure: war offered the opportunity of travel and excitement that was inconceivable in regular life even for men - imagine how much more so for women." Prof Leonard said other women, particularly those who needed to support themselves, had limited job opportunities in the 19th Century and soldiering offered an alternative to teaching and domestic service. Several aspects of how armies operated in the civil war and the attitudes of the time may have helped women to maintain their double lives, the professor said. Soldiers spent most of their time outdoors, allowing the women to keep a distance between themselves and men, something that would not have been possible in barracks. The troops also rarely changed their clothes and a person in uniform was always assumed to be a man. Prof Leonard added: "Historians today also think that it's quite possible that women who were passing as soldiers typically had at least one male member of their unit who actually knew their true identity and helped them to pass."
Debate is raging in the US about an end to a ban on women serving in combat roles. But, 150 years ago, a Scotswoman living in America went to extraordinary lengths to fight on the frontline.

The practice, first reported by the Guardian newspaper, has been used to stop a "significant" terrorist attack on the US, a senior congressman said. On Wednesday, the newspaper published the secret order directing the Verizon company to hand over telephone data. Civil liberties groups said the details of the report were "stunning". Senior US Senator Dianne Feinstein on Thursday confirmed the secret court order was a three-month renewal of an ongoing practice. US House intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers told reporters collecting Americans' phone records was legal, authorised by Congress and had not been abused by the Obama administration. He said it had prevented a "significant" attack on the US "within the past few years" but declined to offer more information. Later, White House spokesman Josh Earnest described the practice as a "critical tool" enabling US authorities to monitor suspected terrorists. 'Indefensible' The security agencies and Verizon have not commented. The document published by the Guardian was signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on 25 April and lasts until 19 July. It falls under a section of the Bush-era Patriot Act, which allows access to business records for "foreign intelligence and international terrorism investigations". The order requires Verizon - one of the largest phone companies in the US - to disclose to the NSA the metadata of all calls it processes, both domestic and international, in which at least one party is in the US. Such metadata includes telephone numbers, calling card numbers, the serial numbers of phones used and the time and duration of calls. It does not include the content of a call or the callers' addresses or financial information. The White House has emphasised the court order did not authorise US government agents to listen in on Americans' telephone conversations. But the government could request a wiretap of specific suspicious numbers from the court, which would allow the government to monitor the calls in real time, record and store them. The measure also contains a gagging order, requiring that "no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBI or NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this Order". Reaction for and against the practice has cut across party lines. "To simply say in a blanket way that millions and millions of Americans are going to have their phone records checked by the US government is to my mind indefensible and unacceptable," Senator Bernie Sanders, a liberal independent, said. Republican Senator Rand Paul said in a statement he would introduce a bill to prevent security agencies from searching phone records without probable cause on Friday. But Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he had no problem with the practice. "If we don't do it, we're crazy," he said. "If you're not getting a call from a terrorist organisation, you've got nothing to worry about." 'Millions of people' Mark Rumold, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the BBC the court order covered the telephone calls of "millions and millions of people". He said the law provided for narrower ways for US officials to gain access to the calls of persons of interest and those who contact them. "This isn't that," Mr Rumold said. "I believe the NSA has a running map of domestic communications" enabling officials to track the phone calls of foreign targets to US numbers and then any subsequent calls placed from those numbers. The EFF has suspected authorities had been conducting such surveillance for years. A report appeared in the USA Today newspaper in 2006. Mr Rumold believes the firms do not challenge these orders. The US government has previously said obtaining metadata does not require a warrant because it does not constitute personal information. But rights groups have fiercely criticised the order, with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) describing it as "beyond Orwellian". "It provides further evidence of the extent to which basic democratic rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of unaccountable intelligence agencies," said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU's deputy legal director. 'Stunned' Two Democratic senators have been pressing the Obama administration to clarify the scope of its public surveillance. Last year, Mark Udall and Ron Wyden wrote to US Attorney General Eric Holder saying they believed "most Americans would be stunned" by the government's "secret legal interpretations" of the Patriot Act. The White House came under heavy criticism last month after papers were leaked showing it had gathered the phone records of journalists at the Associated Press. The story prompted questions from both Republicans and Democrats in Washington about how the White House was balancing the need for national security with privacy rights. The Obama administration has aggressively investigated disclosures of classified information to the media, bringing more cases against people suspected of leaking such material than any previous administration, correspondents say.

The US National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans, US officials have confirmed.

