Five members of a California family who were celebrating a birthday are among the 34 people assumed dead in a fire on a scuba diving boat. Relatives said Michael Quitasol, his daughters Evan, Nicole and Angela Quitasol, and his wife, Fernisa Sison, were on the Conception.

Twenty-five bodies have been recovered from the wreck so far and authorities are working to identify them. The boat caught fire on Monday while passengers slept below decks.

On Tuesday the search for survivors was called off. Of the 39 people on board, just five – all crew – survived by jumping overboard. A sixth member of the crew is also thought to have been trapped below. The cause of the blaze is unknown but an investigation is under way. The Conception is currently underwater near Santa Cruz Island, about 90 miles (145km) west of Los Angeles.

Susana Solano Rosas said “with a broken heart” that her three daughters had died along with her ex-husband and his wife. “The authorities do not have much to say to us,” Mrs Rosas wrote. “Thank you to all of you for your support prayers and good wishes.” Her partner, Chris Rosas, told the Los Angeles Times that Evan was an emergency department nurse, Nicole was a bartender and Angela was a middle school science teacher. “They were outstanding girls. That’s about all I can tell you right now.” Mr Rosas said. The family was on the boat celebrating Mr Quitasol’s birthday, relatives said.(BBC)…[+]

Africans have come out to boycott South Africa after days of looting and violence targeting foreigners in which five people died. Nigerian singers and Zambia’s football team are among those in the boycott.

South Africa’s social development minister told the BBC the rioters feared losing their jobs to foreigners. The country has become a magnet for migrants from other parts of Africa. It has one of the continent’s biggest and most developed economies.

Nigerian Afrobeats star Burna Boy vowed to never go to South Africa again until the government “wakes up”. He tweeted that he himself had had his own “xenophobic experiences at the hands of South Africans ” in 2017.Another Nigerian singer, Tiwa Savage, announced on Twitter she was pulling out of a concert she had planned to perform at in South Africa in September, condemning “the barbaric butchering of my people”.

It is not clear whether any Nigerians have died in the violence but the singer later clarified that “my people” could be any African person. The Nigerian government has also boycotted the World Economic Forum meeting in Cape Town. Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo was originally expected to attend the regional meeting between business leaders and governments. And the country has issued a travel warning to its citizens, tweets Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s assistant.(BBC)…[+]

CARICOM- (PANCAP Coordinating Unit, CARICOM Secretariat): The Pan-Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP), the mechanism that provides a structured and unified approach to the Caribbean’s response to the HIV epidemic, will convene the Second joint regional dialogue with parliamentarians, faith leaders, civil society leaders, national AIDS programme managers and youth leaders in Port-of-Spain, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago on 10 September 2019. The theme of the event is “Assessing progress towards ending AIDS”.

 According to Director of PANCAP, Dereck Springer, the Dialogue will provide an update on the implementation of recommendations that emanated from the first Regional Dialogue held in April 2018.  Stakeholders will also explore personal values and attitudes that may contribute to reinforcing differences or fostering an environment that supports diversity.

The Director further explained that the five stakeholder groups – Parliamentarians, Faith Leaders, Civil Society Leaders, National AIDS Programme Managers and Youth Leaders – would be involved in interactive sessions which will allow them to discuss and propose options on the way forward for each stakeholder group, including areas for collaboration with other stakeholder groups beyond the current Global Fund grant.

“Conscious that there remain challenges with differences among some stakeholder groups, the Regional Dialogue will provide a space to allow stakeholders to explore their personal values and divergent views, as well as the implicit biases that serve as barriers to communication with and acceptance of different groups,” stated the PANCAP Director.  He further highlighted that through group discussions stakeholders would clarify their values, identify the challenges and responses required to overcome the gaps in trust, diversity and social identity that currently exist among stakeholders.

The PANCAP Director emphasised that the Dialogue will seek to ascertain from stakeholder groups what is needed to develop positive attitudes to diverse social identities, such as men who have sex with men, transgender persons, sex workers, persons who use drugs, migrants and persons with disabilities…[+]