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CYCLONE: Rescue workers in Bangladesh found 44 more bodies under collapsed houses Wednesday, raising the death toll from Bangladesh's cyclone to 150. The cyclone injured 10,000 when it struck southern Bangladesh on Monday for about five hours with winds up to 130 mph. The storm washed away bridges, flattened tens of thousands of mud-and-thatch houses, and damaged high-ways.LAUNCHED: India successfully launched Wednesday the fourth developmental flight of its ambitious Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle from the southern test center of Sriharikota, the Indian Space Research Organization chief announced. The ASLV-D4 placed a 248.6-pound satellite series, SROSS-C2, in a low Earth orbit after a "perfect liftoff," Dr. K. Kasturirangan, ISRO Chairman said. He called the program "a grand success." The satellite is carrying two payloads, one to record gamma ray bursts from celestial sources and another to study ionospheric and atmospheric phenomena.

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WELFARE: A federal appeals court refused to let California cut welfare benefits for newcomers from other states. The law took effect in 1992 but was blocked less than a month later by a federal judge who said the state must treat new and old residents equally with respect to the necessities of life. In a brief order Friday, a unanimous, three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left that decision intact and endorsed its reasoning.

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WHALE FINE: A commercial photographer who sold footage to television's "I Witness Video" of a pilot whale biting his assistant was fined $10,000 for whale harassment. The fine, the maximum possible in a whale harassment case, was levied Tuesday in Honolulu against Lee Tepley. Tepley, an experienced underwater photographer, should have known better than to violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act by chasing the pod of whales, said Hugh J. Dolan, the federal administrative law judge who fined him. Tepley and assistant Lisa Costello steered a powerboat toward a group of whales in 1991, allowing Costello to swim with the mammals. She was petting one when it bit her thigh and briefly held her 40 feet under water.

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