The Stars and Stripes atop the White House was lowered Wednesday after President Barack Obama ordered all flags on government buildings to half mast to honor Americans slain in Libya.

"I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds," Obama said in a proclamation.

President Barack Obama Wednesday condemned the "outrageous" attack which killed four Americans including the U.S. ambassador in Libya but vowed it would not break America's bond with the liberated nation.

In a somber statement in the White House Rose Garden, Obama paid tribute to Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues, killed when an Islamist mob, angered by reports of a film deemed insulting to Islam, stormed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

Israel's opposition leader on Wednesday accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of "meddling" in the U.S. presidential election and harming Israel's ties with Washington in a dispute over Iran's nuclear program.

The remarks by opposition leader Shaul Mofaz came as Netanyahu and the White House locked horns over how to handle Iran's nuclear program, with Israel threatening unilateral military action against Tehran, despite American objections.

President Barack Obama called Benjamin Netanyahu Tuesday after he provoked a sudden crisis in relations by warning Washington had no moral right to stop Israel attacking Iran's nuclear program.

In an unusual move, Obama called the Prime Minister in the early hours Israel time, after a day of fast-rising tensions, exacerbated when Israeli officials said Obama had snubbed Netanyahu's request for talks on U.S. soil.

President Barack Obama will not receive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to the United States later this month, an Israeli official told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

Netanyahu, who will be attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York, had asked for a meeting with Obama, proposing to travel to Washington for it, the official said

Americans marked the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in a somber, but more low key mood as memory of the cataclysm gradually fades.

As every year, relatives of the nearly 3,000 people killed when hijacked airliners slammed into New York's World Trade Center gathered at Ground Zero to read the names of the dead.

President Barack Obama nominated a career diplomat as the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq on Monday, after the previous candidate withdrew amid allegations of sexual impropriety.

The White House said it was nominating Robert Stephen Beecroft, who has served at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad since July 2011, first as the deputy chief of mission and since June as the charge d'affaires.

Western powers which have overseen Kosovo since its 2008 declaration of independence have ended their supervision over the territory, a top official said Monday.

"The supervision of Kosovo is finished ... The International Steering Group has decided to end the period of (Kosovo's) supervised independence," Dutch diplomat Pieter Feith, the highest international representative in Kosovo, told a press conference, speaking in Albanian.

President Barack Obama reputedly loves nothing more than a good old campaign trail hug -- but he may have got more than he bargained for Sunday.

Obama was lifted at least a foot in the air in an intense bear hug by hulking pizza shop owner Scott Van Duzer, during a bus tour of Florida.

Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Treasury Neal Steven Wolin is expected to arrive in Beirut in the coming two days where he will meet senior Lebanese officials, An Nahar newspaper reported on Monday.

Wolin will seek to reiterate his country's decision to control individual cases of financial deception.