Suicide bombers hit Afghan city

Taliban militants have carried out suicide attacks on several government buildings in Khost, eastern Afghanistan, police say.
A gun battle broke out between security forces and the fighters who launched co-ordinated attacks on the police chief's office, a hospital and a bank.
Militants were using machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades, and there were reports of casualties.
It comes amid a spike of violence ahead of elections on 20 August.
A doctor at Khost hospital said seven civilians and three police were injured.
It was unclear how many attackers were involved, but Zabihullah Mujahid who claims to be a Taliban spokesman told the BBC from unknown location: "Four of our attackers had entered the city this afternoon."
Khost provinical police chief Abdul Qayum Baqizai told the BBC seven suicide bombers attacked various sites, including one who detonated a bomb-laden car near a military hospital.
One hospital guard was injured in that attack.
Another attacker was shot by security personnel close to Kabul Bank, and another was shot close to a government guesthouse, he said.
Mr Baqizai said the rest, dressed in border police uniforms, tried to enter the police chief's office but "our forces opened fire and killed them all".

Obama Shifts Tone on Gates After Mulling Scale of Debate

WASHINGTON — President Obama tried Friday to defuse a volatile national debate over the arrest of a black Harvard Univercity professor as he acknowledged that his own comments had inflamed tensions and insisted he had not meant to malign the arresting officer.

Mr. Obama placed calls to both the professor, HenRy Lois Gate Jr, and the man who arrested him, Sgt. James Crowley, two days after saying the police had “acted stupidly” last week in hauling Professor Gates from his home in handcuffs. Mr. Obama said he still considered the arrest “an overreaction,” but added that “Professor Gates probably overreacted as well.”
“I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up,” the president said in an appearance in the White House briefing room. “I want to make clear that in my choice of words, I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically, and I could have calibrated those words differently.”