Two women who were raped as schoolgirls on "the trip of a lifetime" to Belize have lost their High Court damages action.

Conservative Party donor's Caribbean operations lose $13.6m in final quarter of 2011

Johnny Silvo was the sort of populist folk singer for whom Britain's folk scene coined the expression "folk entertainer". He was an old-school folkie whose repertoire of folk and folk-blues standards, jazz and blues material chimed with the country's folk scene in the 1960s and 1970s in particular. His name seldom figures in accounts of the subject, except maybe as a marginal note associated with Sandy Denny – the female lead singer of Fairport Convention and Fotheringay and Led Zeppelin IV guest vocalist – through her time singing with the Johnny Silvo Folk Four and their joint album Sandy & Johnny (1967). Silvo's audience, concentrated in Western Europe and Scandinavia, did not care and stayed true to the end.

Destination of the week: Belize, not via the US

Ashley Young is expected to tie up his £17m move to Manchester United this week when the personal terms are finalised with the midfielder.

There are some individual things in life so terrible, so unspeakable, so hideous that ordinary language no longer works A few days ago, Isis Nassar, a 54-year-old British-Lebanese artist, a woman who paints portraits and landscapes filled with so much colour that they almost glow in the dark, was following her habit of travelling the world, teaching art to the poor and painting their lands.

The work of the artist and teacher Isis Nassar was informed both by her complex roots and her extensive travelling. In the tradition of the lady adventurer, Isis made her way carefully and thoughtfully through dozens of indigenous communities, learning their languages, customs and histories as she went. She was lost to us for weeks during q volcano eruption in the Philippines, and was similarly incommunicado in the Australian outback. She went to Laos, Vietnam, Mali, Ethiopia, Iran, Nicaragua, Bolivia... to over 70 countries in total, and each of these adventures is represented in her art.

The BBC has aired its Panorama investigation into the financial affairs of the Conservative donor Lord Ashcroft, two weeks after removing it from its schedule at the eleventh hour.

Falling profits at Lord Ashcroft's Caribbean banking business have sent shares in his British holding company towards all time lows.

At Prime Minister's Questions, David Cameron had fun gloating over the problems that memoirs like those of Lord Mandelson are causing the Labour Party. But he may not be laughing for long, because there is a book in preparation by a very senior Conservative which is expected to lay bare some of the simmering tension inside the Conservative Party.

Britons in Belize will find it harder to avoid UK taxes after an agreement signed yesterday by the UK and Belize governments. It was welcomed by Labour MPs, because of the link between Belize and Lord Ashcroft, the deputy chairman of the Tory party.