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Spanish Convents Use Social Media to Recruit New Nuns

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Dwindling numbers of women joining religious orders has prompted convents to modernise their marketing methods Visitors to the Spanish website buscoalgomas.com are greeted by a woman asking if they feel their lives are empty and if they’ve ever considered the religious life. “Don’t run away,” she said. “You may have a vocation without even knowing it.”

The woman is Noemí Saiz, and the website, which translates as “I’m looking for something more”, is used by dozens of Spanish convents to try to recruit nuns. Spain’s religious orders, which are also turning to Facebook, WhatsApp and other social networks as recruitment tools, are facing an uphill struggle: their numbers have slumped from 6,695 in 1966 to barely 250 today.

“The website serves as an intermediary between religious orders and young people,” says Saiz, who spent a year as a nun before deciding she didn’t have what it takes. “Religious institutions need to learn about marketing.”

Convents are learning fast and some have even taken advice on search engine optimisation in order to top Google rankings for terms such as “how to become a nun”.

In 2012 Olga María, the prioress of the barefoot Carmelite convent in Valladolid in north-east Spain, went to Rome to ask for two things: permission to let would-be nuns join the convent for a trial period to see if it suited them and also permission to use social networks to recruit young women.

Since then, the convent has gained more than 200,000 visits to its website, more than 8,000 likes on Facebook, and 461 Twitter followers. It also uses a WhatsApp account to reply to women’s inquiries. The convent has grown from 18 to 30 nuns and the average age has fallen to 35.

“We get 20-30 inquiries a month,” María says, adding that after initial contact there is a certain amount of filtering. Of those who enter the convent for a trial period, about 50% stay, she says.

“They’re young women aged 20 to 30,” she says. “They’re trying to find their place in the world and what attracts them about the convent is the joy and affection they find there.”

Among the new recruits are a boxer who was about to join the army but chose the Carmelites instead, an engineer who gave up a good job to join the convent and a guitarist from a heavy metal band.

Carmen Señor, a nun at the Siervas de Jesús convent in Madrid, describes herself as a “vocational promoter”. “My job is to find out who is suited to an active, married or contemplative life,” she says. “These days, no one goes to a convent, so we have to be on Twitter and Facebook.”

In Mallorca, Xiskya Valladares of iMisión, which seeks to evangelise via social networks, has become famous as the “tweeting nun” and has almost 25,000 followers on Twitter. “We have to be in touch with reality,” she says, “and listen to people who are suffering, both existentially and materially. As Pope Francis says, the shepherd should smell of sheep.”


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E-Business

Kaspersky Brings AI-driven Context to Cloud Workload Security

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Kaspersky has updated its Cloud Workload Security (CWS) offering, introducing AI-powered workload analysis, enhanced integrations and performance optimisations designed to help organisations better secure complex cloud and hybrid environments.

The latest update brings integration with OpenAI API in the Kaspersky Container Security (KCS) part of the offering, also resulting in the creation of a new Advanced Pro license within the product.

The new capability provides contextual descriptions of detected vulnerabilities and potential risks, helping accelerate investigations, reduce knowledge gaps and support faster decision-making.

Designed for modern DevOps and hybrid cloud environments, Kaspersky CWS provides centralised visibility across workloads, Kubernetes clusters and cloud platforms, while supporting runtime protection, shift-left security practices and regulatory compliance requirements.

AI-driven visibility and improved workload protection

The update allows organisations to enrich container image scanning results with automated explanations and risk context generated by third-party large language models integrated via OpenAI API. By transforming technical scan data into actionable insights, the feature helps teams prioritise remediation and streamline security operations.

Additional improvements include single sign-on (SSO) integration and multi-domain Active Directory support, enabling more seamless deployment across distributed enterprise environments.

To optimise performance, Kaspersky CWS now also enhances image scanning efficiency by skipping oversized images when needed and avoiding rescans of identical images within a predefined timeframe. Expanded security policy capabilities and UX/UI updates further simplify workload protection and policy management.

Enhanced protection across cloud environments

The new release also updates Light Agent components, now leveraging the latest versions of Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Windows (version 12.12) and Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Linux (version 12.4) to improve overall security and integration capabilities.

“As AI adoption accelerates across industries, organisations are increasingly relying on containerised environments – placing additional pressure on security teams.

“To help ease this burden, we introduced AI integration within Kaspersky Cloud Workload Security that enables security professionals, including those just beginning their journey in container security, to make faster decisions and gain deeper insight into potential risks and vulnerabilities,” comments Anton Rusakov-Rudenko, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Cloud & Network Security at Kaspersky.

“Combined with performance optimisations and expanded integration capabilities, the solution helps organisations to protect cloud environments more efficiently while maintaining operational resilience.”

 


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SARS Denies Being Hacked by Nullsec Nigeria, Hacker Group

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South African Revenue Service (SARS) has dismissed claims that its systems were breached, following allegations by a hacker group that it had compromised the tax authority’s digital infrastructure.

SARS Denies Being Hacked by Nullsec Nigeria, Hacker Group

The controversy emerged after Nullsec Nigeria, a threat actor  also known as Anonymous Nigeria, claimed to have breached both SARS and the State Information Technology Agency (SITA).

The hacktivist group allegedly posted links to download what it claimed was compromised data on the Breached hacker forum on Saturday, 23 May 2026, sparking concerns over a possible cyberattack targeting government systems.

However, SARS said it had conducted a thorough investigation into the claims and found no evidence that its systems had been compromised.

“SARS continuously monitors its systems for any suspicious activity and has conducted a thorough investigation in response to these reports. These claims are false and unsubstantiated,” the revenue service said in a statement.

“At this stage, there is no evidence that SARS’s systems have been compromised. SARS wishes to reassure the public regarding the integrity of its systems.”

The tax authority stressed that safeguarding taxpayer information remains one of its core responsibilities and forms part of its broader efforts to maintain public confidence in South Africa’s tax administration system.

SARS said the “protection of taxpayer information and the security of its digital platforms” is treated as “sacrosanct”.

The agency also urged South Africans to avoid sharing unverified claims and instead rely on official channels for accurate information.

“Members of the public are urged to verify information before sharing and not to circulate unverified claims or rely on information from unofficial sources,” SARS said.

At the same time, SARS warned taxpayers to remain vigilant against phishing scams and fraudulent messages falsely claiming to be from the tax authority.

For guidance on identifying scams and phishing attempts, SARS directed the public to its official online resource page: SARS scams and phishing guidance

SARS said it would continue monitoring its digital environment and communicate any developments through official platforms should the need arise.


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Pope Calls for ‘Disarming’ of AI, Warns of “New Forms of Slavery”

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Pope Leo XIV called Monday for the “disarming” of artificial intelligence in his long-awaited manifesto on the rapidly developing technology, and warned of “new forms of slavery” behind its rise.

Pope Calls for ‘Disarming’ of AI, Warns of “New Forms of Slavery”

Leo, warned against “a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance”.

He presented his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity) in person at the Vatican, alongside AI experts including Christopher Olah, co-founder of US giant Anthropic.

Anthropic is embroiled in a legal battle with the US military after opposing the use of its technology for lethal autonomous warfare and mass surveillance.

At the presentation, Olah said AI companies operate “inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing”.

He welcomed input from outside actors like the Catholic Church, to “push events in a better direction” saying that “the questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI research community”.

In the encyclical, Leo also sounded the alarm over AI-directed weaponry, saying it was “not permissible to entrust lethal” decisions to tech.

Leo has repeatedly clashed with the White House over the Iran war and its use of religion to justify conflict.

The “just war” theory — espoused recently by the Trump administration — was “outdated”, Leo wrote, adding that “no algorithm can make war morally acceptable”.

AI could be worth up to $4.8 trillion by 2033, a 25-fold increase in a decade, while concentrating its profits in the hands of a limited few, according to the United Nations.

“Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of ‘armed’ competition,” the pope wrote.

“To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity,” Leo wrote.

AI should be “human-friendly”, accessible to all, and open to discussion and debate, he added.

The head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics has made the hot-button issue a cornerstone of his papacy by dedicating to it his first encyclical — a document that lays the basis for Church teaching and longer-term debate.

The manifesto references a range of cultural giants, from Greek philosopher Plato to Beethoven and his Ninth Symphony, even citing a character from JRR Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”.

“Magnifica Humanitas” was signed on May 15, the 135th anniversary of an 1891 encyclical by Leo XIII, which laid the foundations of the Church’s social doctrine during the Industrial Revolution.

 

 


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