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JC's Girls is an Evangelical Christian women's organization in the United States whose members preach the gospel to female workers in the sex industry. The group does not focus upon conversion but rather on communicating its message that Christians exist who are not judging female sex workers and are willing to accept them. Now based at The Rock Church in San Diego, the organization was founded in 2005 at Sandals Church in Riverside, California, by Heather Veitch (pictured), a stripper for four years before becoming a Christian and leaving the sex industry in 1999. Terry Barone, spokesman of the California Southern Baptist Convention, said that JC's Girls members "are doing what Jesus did ... He ministered to prostitutes and tax collectors." Criticism of the organization has focused on the way that members dress and the fact that they do not explicitly encourage women in the sex industry to quit. Philip Sherwell of the Calgary Herald called the evangelism of JC's Girls "America's most unusual Christian outreach operation". (Full article...)

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Wollaton Hall, Nottingham

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... that former Saturday Night Live writer Neil Casey has just signed on to play a villainous role in the female-set Ghostbusters?
... that between 1995 and 1997, revenues from the mining industry of Uganda increased by about 48%?
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In the news

Temple of Bel

The ancient temples of Bel (pictured in 2010) and Baalshamin in Palmyra are destroyed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The United States announces the renaming of Mount McKinley in Alaska to its traditional name of Denali.
Flash floods and mudslides caused by Tropical Storm Erika kill at least 31 people across Dominica in the Lesser Antilles.
Wildfires across the U.S. state of Washington, including the Okanogan Complex fire, destroy more than 200 homes and burn 920 square miles (2,400 km²).
At least 11 people are killed when a Hawker Hunter crashes onto a busy road during an airshow in Shoreham-by-Sea, UK.
A bomb explosion in Bangkok, Thailand, kills 20 people and injures more than 120 others.

Ongoing events:
- European migrant crisis
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On this day...

September 2: National Day in Vietnam (1945)

Shigemitsu signing the Instrument of Surrender

47 BC – Caesarion, possibly the son of Julius Caesar, became the last king of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, ruling jointly with his mother Cleopatra.
1807 – The British Royal Navy began their bombardment of Copenhagen to capture the Dano-Norwegian navy.
1885 – White miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming, US, attacked Chinese immigrants, killing at least 28 Chinese miners and causing approximately US$150,000 in property damage.
1945 – On the deck of the United States Navy battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, representatives from the Empire of Japan and several Allied Powers signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender (pictured), formally ending World War II.
1990 – Transnistria unilaterally declared its independence from what was then the Moldavian SSR of the Soviet Union, but it remains only a partially recognised state.

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Today's featured picture

The Inca tern (Larosterna inca) is a species of seabird in the family Sternidae and the only member of its genus. This piscivorous species is restricted to the Humboldt Current and breeds on the rocky coastal cliffs in Peru and Chile, laying one or two eggs which hatch after 4 weeks.

Photograph: Olaf Oliviero Riemer

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