President Obama today ordered that American flags at all federal properties be flown at half-staff until Veterans Day—next Wednesday—to honor the people killed at Fort Hood yesterday. The gesture is “a modest tribute to those who lost their lives even as others were preparing to risk their lives for their country,” he said. The president called the massacre “one of the worst mass shootings ever to take place” on a military base, according to the Chicago Tribune. (More President Obama stories.)