KABUL -- Four civilians were killed and five others injured as a blast rocked Police District 1 of Afghanistan's capital Kabul on Tuesday, Kabul police spokesman Ferdaus Faramarz said.

"The blast took place in Jadai Miwand area of PD 1 at 2:50 p.m. local time today killing four civilians and injuring five others," Faramarz confirmed to Xinhua.

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GENEVA -- Chinese astronauts' first extravehicular activity (EVA, also known as spacewalk) outside the Tiangong space station was an "important milestone," a former European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.

"I am impressed by the achievements of the Chinese National Space Administration and its leaders, engineers, and astronauts in the first steps of the assembly of this new space station on Earth orbit," said Claude Nicollier, the first Swiss citizen to venture into space and a honorary professor at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne.

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NEW DELHI -- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Tuesday cautioned against callousness regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, a day after an annual mass religious pilgrimage is officially allowed.

"It's a matter of concern that people are travelling without face masks at hill stations and marketplaces," said Modi after interacting with chief ministers of northeastern states on the COVID-19 situation via video conferencing.

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MANILA -- The Philippines' gross international reserves (GIR) level settled at 106.08 billion U.S. dollars as of end of June, the Philippine central bank said on Tuesday.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said the latest GIR level "represents a more than adequate" external liquidity buffer equivalent to 12.1 months' worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income.

"It is also about 7.8 times the country's short-term external debt based on original maturity and 5.2 times based on residual maturity," the BSP added.

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PARIS -- France on Tuesday fined Google 500 million euros (592 million U.S. dollars) for failing to offer a fair deal to local media companies for hosting their news content.

The French Authority of Competition ordered Google to present, within the next two months, "an offer of remuneration for the current use of their copyrighted content."

"When the authority decrees an obligation for a company, it must comply scrupulously, both in the spirit and letter (of the decision). Here, this was unfortunately not the case," said Isabelle de Silva, the chief of the French competition regulator. Enditem

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