The Tribune

• Ethiopia says it will launch a civilian satellite into orbit in three to five years to better predict weather conditions and for remote sensing activities inside the country.

The announcement comes after a severe drought left more than 10 million people hungry and killed several thousands of animals in the past two years.

Ethiopia is among a number of African countries with growing space ambitions.

The spokesman for the Ethiopian Ministry of Science and Technology, Wondwossen Andualem, says the country likely will launch the satellite from a facility in China.

It is not clear how much the project will cost and whether it will have military uses.

• The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency says the country needs to be able to return fire during a cyberattack, including the ability to disable equipment that’s being used to target Germany.

Hans-Georg Maassen told German news agency dpa in an interview published Tuesday that it’s necessary “for us not just to be purely defensive.”

Maassen, who heads the BfV agency, said Germany “needs to be able to attack the enemy in order to stop him from attacking us further.”

The BfV is responsible for counter-espionage and doesn’t operate outside Germany, so acquiring offensive electronic warfare capabilities would mark a departure for the agency.

Maassen’s boss, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, recently proposed an overhaul of Germany’s security apparatus in response to the threat of terrorism and state-sponsored hacking.

• Two of Boston’s most venerable institutions are teaming up to create an online database of hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholic Church documents to help people trace their family histories.

Officials from the New England Historic Genealogical Society and the Archdiocese of Boston said Tuesday that the digitised parish records of baptisms, marriages, confirmations, ordinations, first communions and other pivotal life events will help people better research their ancestors and how they came to Boston.

The documents span 1789 to 1900 and come from all the parishes in the Boston Archdiocese.

The organisations say it’s the first time a significant number of sacramental records from any U.S. diocese have been digitised on this scale.

The project could take several years to complete and cost up to $1 million.