It is safe to say that the work of William Shakespeare is performed and celebrated somewhere in the English speaking world and beyond on a daily basis.

Few, however, would expect to find his plays staged throughout the year in a former industrial mill town, in the southern US state of Virginia.

All the more surprising is the fact the plays are performed in the world’s only authentic recreation of Shakespeare’s long lost Blackfriars Playhouse.

Three hours drive south of Washington DC lies the small town of Staunton (pop. 24,363), where you will find Blackfriars Playhouse, home of the American Shakespeare Center.

The company celebrated its 30th anniversary in September and boasts a reputation as one of the most accomplished Shakespeare companies in the United States.

Its theatre has even attracted the attention of Dame Judi Dench, who on visiting Blackfriars Playhouse declared:  "Crikey! Why isn’t this in England?"

She later added: “I was instantly captivated by its atmosphere and by the amazing work that goes on there. It is a center of excellence and should be protected and cherished.”

The company began life as a travelling repertory group in 1988, when Jim Warren and Ralph Alan Cohen founded the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express to perform the playwright’s work in towns along Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

In 1996 the company travelled to Britain to stage work in primary and secondary schools, returning in 2009 to take part in events at Shakespeare’s Globe on London’s South Bank, which its founders still regard as “our big brother”.

Ten years after the touring company was founded it decided to create a permanent base in Staunton, where the liberal arts students of Mary Baldwin University provided a regular and appreciative audience.

In 2001 Shenandoah Shakespeare began work on recreating as a base for the company Shakespeare’s original Blackfriars Playhouse, which was sited until its demolition in 1655 near what is now the edge of the City of London.

The original building was a Tudor renovation of a 13th Century hall and was the fourth largest meeting space in the City, capable of holding 500 people. Parliament even met there on occasion.

But with no reliable records of what Blackfriars Playhouse looked like, or even its basic dimensions, architect Tom McLaughlin had to rely on plans for other 17th century theatres, surviving halls from the period, Shakespeare’s own stage directions and the work of scholars and historians.

The Blackfriars Playhouse cost $3.7 million to complete and the result is a breathtaking evocation of a 16th century London theatre in the most unlikely of locations.

The town of Staunton sits beneath the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, close to some of the most bitterly contested sites of the American Civil War, including Lexington, Fredericksburg and Appomattox, the scene of the Confederacy’s eventual surrender on April 9, 1865.

Indeed local legend has it that the only reason Staunton escaped the destruction that befell so many other towns as the warring armies crisscrossed Virginia, was that it was home to dozens of prostitutes who entertained the soldiers of both sides.

Though Shakespeare himself might well have made something of that paradox, today’s bawdy entertainment is more likely to be found in a production of The Merry Wives of Windsor or As You Like it.

A unique feature of performances at the Blackfriars Playhouse is the decision to stage each production under the bright lights of a dozen candelabras, recreating the lighting conditions seen in the time of Shakespeare and his contemporaries Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe.

“Shakespeare’s actors could see their audience; our actors can see you,” states the playhouse’s 2018/2019 season programme. “Leaving you in the dark can literally obscure a vital part of the drama.”

In keeping with what is known of performances of the period there are no special effects or elaborate set designs to detract from the actors and their material. Stools and benches placed on the stage for members of the audience emphasise a sense of interactions between performers and observers.

The rest of the 300-strong audience sit directly in front of the stage and in two wooden galleries around the edge of the auditorium, just as they would have at the original Blackfriars Playhouse, 400 years ago and nearly 4,000 miles away across the sea.

Mr Cohen, now Director of Mission at the American Shakespeare Center, said: “The American Shakespeare scene is vigorous and growing, and it’s almost a grassroots movement.  

“As to the likelihood of Staunton being a center for that movement, it’s fair to point out that the two largest Shakespeare companies in North America are Stratford, Ontario, and Ashland, Oregon, both with populations smaller than Staunton’s.

He added: “Staunton, which from the 19th century has had a rich and deep history in the performing arts, is a beautiful small city the Shenandoah Valley, a city celebrated for its architecture and setting. In short, the perfect place for a Shakespeare getaway.”

President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he plans to sign an order next week that could lead to the large-scale detention of migrants crossing the southern border and bar anyone caught crossing illegally from claiming asylum – two legally dubious proposals that mark his latest election-season barrage against illegal immigration.

Mr Trump also said he had told the US military mobilising at the southwest border that if US troops face rock-throwing migrants, they should react as though the rocks were "rifles."

"This is an invasion," Mr Trump declared, as he has previously on a subject that has been shown to resonate strongly with his base of Republican supporters.

He made his comments at the White House in a rambling, campaign-style speech that was billed as a response to caravans of migrants traveling slowly by foot toward the US border.

But Mr Trump offered few details on how exactly he planned to overhaul an asylum system he claimed was plagued by "endemic abuse" that he said "makes a mockery of our immigration system."

US immigration laws make clear that migrants seeking asylum may do so either at or between border crossings. But Mr Trump said he would limit that to official crossing points.

The US does not have the space at the border to manage the large-scale detention of migrants, with most facilities at capacity. Mr Trump said the government would erect "massive tents" instead.

The announcement marked Mr Trump’s latest attempt to keep the issue of immigration front and centre in the final stretch before next Tuesday’s elections. 

The president has spent the waning days of the campaign hammering the issue at every occasion as he tries to energise Republican voters using the same playbook that helped him to power in 2016.

He brought up immigration issues several times during a political rally Thursday night in Columbia, Missouri. He railed against "birth tourism," where mothers from abroad travel to America to have babies so they will automatically be U.S. citizens. And he denounced "chain migration," where these new citizens then bring in their extended families into the country.

"You come into the country – you’re like two months old … and you’re gonna bring ’em all – your aunts and uncles and grandfathers and lots of people," he said.

The president announced Wednesday that he was considering deploying up to 15,000 troops to the US-Mexican border in response to the caravans – roughly double the number the Pentagon said it currently plans for a mission that has been criticised as unnecessary, considering the caravans remain hundreds of miles away.

He said on Thursday that he was "not going to put up with" any sort of violence directed at those US forces, warning the military would fight back. "When they throw rocks like they did at the Mexico military and police, I say consider it a rifle," he said.

The exact rules for the use of force by military police and other soldiers who will be operating near the border have not been disclosed, but in all cases troops have the right of self-defense.

Still, Mark Hertling, a retired Army general, wrote on Twitter after Mr Trump’s speech that no military officer would allow a soldier to shoot an individual throwing a rock. "It would be an unlawful order," he wrote, citing the Law of Land Warfare.

Mr Trump said Thursday that, under his order, any migrants who do enter the country would be housed in "massive tent cities" he plans to build while their cases are processed.

"We’re going to catch, we’re not going to release," he said.

Under current protocol, many asylum seekers are released while their cases make their way through backlogged courts – a process that can take years.

Critics said the speech seemed mostly designed to scare, with no specifics on what mechanisms Mr Trump intended to use to push through his desired changes.

Administration officials told The AP that Mr Trump intends to invoke the same authority he used to push through his controversial travel ban.

"He’s really trying to scare the American public into thinking these are thousands of dangerous thugs," said Greg Chen, of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "It’s a classic strategy that goes back to 19th century nativist thinking."

Mr Trump and other administration officials have long said those seeking asylum should come through legal ports of entry. But many migrants are unaware of that guidance, and official border crossings have grown increasingly clogged.

Immigration officials have turned away asylum-seekers at border crossings because of overcrowding, telling them to return at a later date.

Backlogs have become especially bad in recent months at crossings in California, Arizona and Texas, with people generally waiting five weeks to try to claim asylum at San Diego’s main crossing and sleeping out in the open for days at a time.

Migrants who cross illegally are generally arrested and often seek asylum or some other form of protection. Claims have spiked in recent years, and there is currently a backlog of more than 800,000 cases pending in immigration court.
Administration officials have railed against what they say are loopholes designed to encourage people, especially from Central America, to come to the US and claim asylum.

The US fielded more than 330,000 asylum claims in 2017, nearly double the number two years earlier and surpassing Germany as highest in the world. Generally, only about 20 percent of applicants are approved.

But it remains unclear how many people currently en route to the US will even make it to the border.

There are currently four caravans. The main group of about 4,000 migrants – down from its estimated peak of more than 7,000 – remains in southern Mexico, hundreds of miles from the border. A second, smaller group of 1,000 or so is more than 200 miles behind the first.

A third band of about 500 from El Salvador has made it to Guatemala, and a fourth group of about 700 set out from the Salvadoran capital on Wednesday.

Similar caravans have gathered regularly over the years and have generally dwindled by the time they reach the southern border. And most have passed largely unnoticed.

Mr Trump has nonetheless mounted an enormous show of force in response to their movement – coinciding with elections that will determine which party controls Congress.

The first 100 active duty troops arrived at the border in McAllen, Texas, on Thursday – part of the "more than 7,000" troops the Pentagon said the military were sending to support Customs and Border Protection agents.

"These illegal caravans will not be allowed into the United States and they should turn back now because they’re wasting their time," Mr Trump said on Thursday.

Notably, he said his executive order would come next week, which means it could be after Election Day.

The president has rejected the idea he has been "fearmongering" and using the issue for political purposes, and instead on Thursday he blamed Democrats for the "incompetent, very, very stupid laws that we have." He noted at one point, "Women want security."

Mr Trump also tweeted a video Wednesday alleging, without evidence, that Democrats were responsible for allowing a homicidal immigrant into the US. Many pointed out that the video was reminiscent of the infamous "Willie Horton" ad used against Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988 and condemned as racist.

An associate of Vladimir Putin who was sanctioned for running the troll factory targeting the 2016 US elections has been accused of attacks on anti-Kremlin bloggers.

Valery Amelchenko, 61, told independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta that he was paid by catering mogul Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is known as “Putin’s chef” after he prepared many state dinners for the president, to carry out brutal intimidation tactics against regime critics. 

He claimed to have helped assassinate one blogger with poison. 

Amelchenko, who agreed to talk after journalists identified him as part of an investigation, has since gone missing. 

Prigozhin was indicted by a federal grand jury and sanctioned in the United States this year for funding the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, which impersonated US political organisations and ran fake ads on social media to interfere in the 2016 election. 

Andrei Mikhailov, a key troll factory figure named by Amelchenko as his immediate overseer, confirmed to Novaya Gazeta that he had hired Amelchenko while working for Prigozhin in 2012-14. 

On Friday, the US government charged a Russian woman with participating in a plot by Prigozhin to interfere in the midterm elections in November.

Amelchenko, a former convict, said he had been ordered to beat up a Sochi blogger who had “written bad things about Putin” in 2013, an incident confirmed by Mikhailov.

He also said he was part of a hit squad that poisoned a blogger in Pskov in 2016. Another member of the squad injected the man with an unknown substance as he was leaving his house, after which he fell and could not be revived by paramedics.

Amelchenko said he later photographed the man’s gravestone to prove to his “curator” that the hit was a success. 

Novaya Gazeta identified the blogger as Sergei Tikhonov through Amelchenko’s detailed description of the house. Relatives said he had died of a heart attack in 2016. 

Mr Putin’s spokesman said on Monday the accusations of attacks ordered by Prigozhin had not yet been “confirmed by competent organs”. 

According to Amelchenko, another Prigozhin employee was behind the attack on the husband of Lyubov Sobol, an ally of opposition leader Alexei Navalny who had investigated Prigozhin’s lucrative army ration contracts.

Sobol’s husband lost consciousness and was briefly hospitalised after an unknown man holding a bouquet injected him with an unknown substance in 2016. 

The perpetrator identified by Amelchenko died in mysterious circumstances in 2017, but his widow confirmed that he was the man with a bouquet seen in CCTV footage of the attack.

Amelchenko said he also was sent on operations to the Canary Islands as well as to Ukraine, where he spied on pro-Western protests and helped assassinate a separatist leader in Luhansk. 

In addition, he claimed to have been part of a group sent to test poisons on captured rebels in Syria. When no rebels could be found for the human experiments, he said Prigozhin’s men tried to test the poisons on fighters from the pro-Assad Isil Hunters, one of whom died.

Prigozhin previously employed Dmitry Utkin, who was sanctioned by the United States as the leader of the Russian mercenary group Wagner in Syria. Dozens of Wagner operatives were killed by US airstrikes when they advanced on a Kurdish-held oil and gas field in February.

Fearful of his safety, Amelchenko refused to reveal many details of his work until he could go into hiding. 

He disappeared immediately after meeting with Novaya Gazeta in St Petersburg earlier this month. He had called a reporter to say he was being followed by two young men when the line went dead. His phone was later found on the street with a pair of shoes, and police have issued a missing person notice. 

A funeral wreath was sent last week to the home of the reporter, Denis Korotkov, and a severed goat’s head in a basket was left for him at the offices of Novaya Gazeta. More than half a dozen contributors to the paper, including investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, have been murdered in the past. 

Elena Khusyaynova, 44, was accused by US prosecutors on Friday of filing multi-million dollar budgets as chief accountant of the Prigozhin-funded Project Lakhta, which imitated Americans on social media to inflame tensions around issues like immigration and gun control before the November 6 congressional elections.

British authorities have previously accused Russian operatives of poisoning Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal, spies who defected to the UK. 

Voting for parliamentary elections in Afghanistan’s second city has been postponed after a key security official was assassinated and the country braced for widespread insurgent violence on polling day.

Taliban commanders on Friday tried to further disrupt the election by issuing a nationwide demand for people to remain at home rather than head to the polls.

The vote is seen as a test of president Ashraf Ghani’s grip on the country after a grim year of soaring casualties among his forces and civilians and further encroachment by a buoyant Taliban.

Dr Ghani’s weary international backers, particularly Donald Trump, are desperate for signs of stability and progress after 17-years of pouring troops and money into the country.

Yet preparations were dealt a severe blow on Thursday when Kandahar’s powerful police chief, Gen Abdul Raziq, was shot dead in an insider attack claimed by the Taliban.

Gen Raziq had been a bastion against Taliban encroachment in the region with a ruthless campaign against the insurgents which had largely stabilised Kandahar and made him the most powerful government figure in southern Afghanistan.

The attack at a meeting with US commander, Gen Scott Miller, killed the local intelligence chief and critically wounded the provincial governor, wiping out the local leadership at a stroke.

Kandahar, once considered the stronghold of the Taliban movement, was on edge the day after the attack, as funerals were held and officials decided to postpone voting for a week.

The Taliban have vowed to disrupt an election they declare a sham and its military council issued a statement warning voters that “participation in this process is aiding the invaders”. It ordered Afghans to “remain indoors and desist from bringing out any means of transport”. A bloody or badly flawed election is predicted to strengthen the Taliban’s hand in fledgling talks to find a political settlement to the conflict.

More than nine million Afghans are registered to vote in what is only the third parliamentary poll since the Taliban were ousted after the 9/11 attacks.

Around 2,500 candidates are standing for 249 seats in a parliament which has in the past decade gained a reputation for graft and greed.

This year’s polls have already been delayed since 2015 because of rifts within Dr Ghani’s government and rows how to clean up the voting system.

The vote sees a new generation of election hopefuls, many younger and better educated than previous candidates, take on an old guard frequently tainted with accusations of corruption or involvement in the bloodshed of the 1990s civil war.

But the new generation also contains a raft of candidates whose fathers were formerly some of the country’s most prominent Mujahideen warlords of the 1990s, and who have been towering figures of Afghan life for decades.

This year’s voting lists include children of notorious leaders including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Uzbek strongman Gen Abdul Rashid Dostum, and the Herat powerbroker Ismail Khan.

Jamaluddin Hekmatyar, whose father is remembered for indiscriminately bombarding Kabul as he squabbled with his former comrades in the 1990s, is standing as a member of his father’s Hezb-e Islami party.

The 42-year-old told the Telegraph he had not gained his candidacy through nepotism and wanted to “represent the people and fight for their rights”.

“I have learned from my father to fight for our values, each nation has the right to be independent and we must fight for a good future, no matter how long that fight would be but we should resist.”

He said it was not for him to answer for the deeds of the Mujahideen commanders.

“I think it’s not a good analysis if we say only Mujahideen leaders committed mistakes here, we should note foreigners role in Afghanistan too.”

The possible rise of children whose fathers presided over the destruction of the 1990s is eyed warily by many Afghans.

“There will be no deference between the Mujahideen leaders and their children,” said one Herat resident who lost two uncles during the barbarity of the 1990s, “they are just a shadow of their dads”.

“Mujahideen leaders want to rule their policies through their children. They are all educated in the West by the money that their dads received by selling the blood of innocent Afghans.”

At least 100 members of the migrant caravan travelling through Mexico in an attempt to reach the United States have been kidnapped by the Zetas cartel, according to human rights officials in the country.

Fleeing gang violence and threats back home in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, thousands of the migrants travelling en masse reached Mexico City on Monday and Tuesday.

But reports have emerged that a number of members, including children, have gone missing from the group. They are suspected of having fallen prey to criminal gangs, who abduct migrants in order to extort their family members. 

Human rights activists and officials in the southern states of Oaxaca and Veracruz, across which the massive group of Central American migrants have trekked over the last few weeks, say that at least 100 were kidnapped in the state of Puebla and allegedly handed over to the Zetas gang.

Arturo Peimbert, the human rights ombudsman in Oaxaca, told local media that the migrants were offered rides by fruit trucks, which they took despite warnings not to, and after getting onto the trucks found themselves locked in.

“The testimonies I have heard [of those who managed to escape] was that many of those migrants were handed over to organised crime near the Federal Police base in Puebla," Mr Peimbert related.

The ombudsman said that promises from the state government of Veracruz to provide transport to the migrants to get them to Mexico City were later retracted, creating a sense of desperation among many in the group.

Numbering more than 4,000 now, the Central Americans have been trekking steadily from their home countries in hot, unsanitary conditions in an attempt to reach Mexico’s shared border with the United States and ask for asylum.

In Mexico City, they have been given shelter and other humanitarian help by the city government.

For years, organised crime has preyed on migrants passing through Mexico, from taxing them to use established routes to kidnapping them and imprisoning them in safehouses.

They then ring their relatives either at home or those already living in the US to demand payment in return for their release.

The size of the group of migrants currently passing through Mexico has brought renewed attention and interest to the plight of those fleeing violence and gangs back home.

Donald Trump, the US president, has ramped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric as the migrant groups approaches the US border.

This week, he told the migrants to “turn back now, because you’re not getting in,” and has pledged to send some 15,000 extra troops to the border to protect Americans.

One of America’s most polarised midterm election battles, which could produce the first ever black female governor of a US state, has descended into angry accusations of race-based voter suppression and dirty tricks.

Stacey Abrams, the Democrat candidate in Georgia, is taking on Brian Kemp, one of the most conservative Republican candidates in the country, and polls have the contest on a knife-edge.

Mr Kemp, whose campaign pledges to round up illegal immigrants in the back of his pick-up truck, is also Georgia’s current secretary of state, its chief election officer in charge of voter registration.  

With election day looming a total of 53,000 people, around 70 per cent of them black, have had…