India's top court granted bail Friday to a powerful south Indian film star turned politician jailed last month for corruption, sparking jubilation in her home state.

Jayalalithaa Jayaram, a 66-year-old ex-film star and a longtime head of Tamil Nadu, was convicted last month of having assets vastly exceeding her income in a case that had dragged on for nearly two decades, and sentenced to four years in jail.

Natural disasters claimed over 22,000 lives last year, with Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines the deadliest of all, the Red Cross said Thursday.

In its annual report on disasters, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warned that the outlook was bleak.

India plans to build a highway along its remote, disputed border with China in the country's northeast, an official said Wednesday, prompting concern from Beijing.

China defeated India in a brief but bloody war in 1962 and their border remains unresolved, with both sides regularly accusing soldiers of crossing over into the other's territory.

Nearly 100 million Indians began voting in state elections Wednesday in the first major test of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity since he stormed to power in May on a pledge to reform the economy.

Five months after Modi's rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a landslide national victory, voters are electing two regional assemblies -- in Haryana in the north and huge Maharashtra state in the west, of which Mumbai is the capital.

Powerful Cyclone Hudhud which battered India's east coast at the weekend has killed at least 22 people, damaged thousands of homes, blacked out villages and left people scrambling for supplies, officials said Tuesday.

Schools remained shut, electricity lines were down and communication systems were only partially working in the port city of Visakhapatnam in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh, worst affected by the cyclonic winds which slammed into the coast at 200 kilometers (125 miles) an hour Sunday.

Senior Pakistani and Indian military officials spoke Tuesday by hotline after days of intense cross-border firing in the disputed region of Kashmir heightened tensions.

At least 20 civilians have been killed and thousands of people on both sides of the de facto border in Kashmir have fled their homes in what residents have described as some of the worst shelling in years.

Workers rushed Monday to restore communication and power links and clear roads after a cyclone battered India's east coast, killing at least 17 people and leaving a trail of destruction.

Relief centers ladled out food as officials said the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people from the southeastern states of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa ahead of Cyclone Hudhud's arrival had helped avert a far larger tragedy.

At least three people were killed Sunday when Cyclone Hudhud slammed into India's east coast packing winds of almost 200 kilometers (125 miles) per hour, ripping down power cables and forcing roads and railways to shut.

Around 370,000 people living along the eastern coastline were evacuated before the storm hit around 11.30 am (0600 GMT) on Sunday morning, as authorities tried to avoid mass casualties.

India on Saturday began evacuating thousands of people from fishing villages as it braced for Cyclone Hudhud barreling towards its east coast, officials said. 

The states of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa in the southeast were on high alert for what the weather office described as a "very severe cyclonic storm" due to make landfall Sunday.

Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai, who became the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, made a high-level peacemaking move after sharing the award with India's Kailash Satyarthi for championing children's rights.

The 17-year-old girls' education activist -- who heard of her win during a chemistry lesson at her school in Birmingham, England -- invited the prime ministers of oft-warring India and Pakistan to the ceremony in Oslo in December when she and the 60-year-old Indian activist will receive the award.