Air Force’s best GPS yet launched:

SpaceX has launched the US Air Force’s most powerful GPS satellite ever built.

A Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Sunday, hoisting the satellite into orbit.

The satellite was supposed to soar Tuesday but rocket concerns and then

weather delayed the flight.

Heather Wilson, secretary of the Air Force, says this next-generation GPS satellite is three times more accurate than previous versions and eight times better at antijamming. It’s the first in a series and nicknamed

Vespucci after the 15th-century Italian explorer who calculated Earth’s circumference to within 50 miles (80 kilometers).

Lockheed Martin developed the advanced GPS technology and is building

the satellites at a facility near Denver.

Sunday’s launch was Space X’s 21st and final launch of the year, a company record. (AP)

Brazil expels loggers:

Brazilian authorities have expelled a group of illegal loggers and ranchers from a remote area of the Amazon in a risky and rare operation to protect a threatened indigenous tribe.

The Kawahiva are nomadic huntergatherers who live in one of Brazil’s most lawless areas and have no contact with mainstream society. Campaigners say their survival is threatened by intruders seeking to profit from the forest’s vast resources.

On Tuesday Funai, the government agency that represents indigenous people’s interests, said it had evicted five “nonindigenous” people from the area in a joint operation with the environmental protection agency.

Defending the territory was “fundamental for the survival of isolated indigenous peoples,” Funai official Geovanio Pantoja Katukina said in a statement.

But that process is not yet complete and campaigners fear their situation could worsen under the right-wing government of President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, who takes office in January.

“If their land is protected they can thrive ... But they’re going to need all the help they can get to see the legal process to protect their land completed,” said the group’s director Stephen Corry in a statement. (RTRS)

In this Dec 16 photo, workers landscape grounds at the Grand Egyptian Museum under construction in front of the Pyramids in Giza, Egypt. Thousands of Egyptians are laboring in the shadow of the pyramids to erect a monument worthy of the pharaohs. The Grand Egyptian Museum has been under construction for well over a decade and is intended to show off Egypt’s ancient treasureswhile attracting tourists to help fund its future development. (AP)