Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona Congresswoman who has emerged as a symbol of courage and endurance in the 12 months since she was shot in the head while meeting her constituents outside a supermarket in Tucson, surprised her supporters yesterday by announcing that she is giving up her seat.

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She came, she smiled and she was greeted by tearful colleagues. But the glow of Gabrielle Giffords' unexpected appearance on Capitol Hill on Monday to vote for the debt-ceiling deal was quickly tempered by her frustration with the mess Congress had created over tax-and-spend policies in her absence.

It has been a remarkable recovery. In January the US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head at an open-air meeting with constituents in Tucson, Arizona. Five months later, two photographs of her show how far she has progressed.

Five months after US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords nearly died after being shot in the head by a gunman whose bullets killed six others, the first pictures of her released since the massacre show the smile of a woman recovering remarkably well.

The army reject accused of a shooting spree that left six people dead and a US congresswoman critically injured has been declared unfit to stand trial. Jared Loughner, 21, was ruled by US District Judge Larry Burns to be mentally incompetent to stand trial and has been sent to a secure unit for treatment and assessment.

Doctors were due yesterday to replace a piece of Gabrielle Giffords' skull with a plastic implant, another encouraging step in the Arizona congresswoman's recovery from a gunshot to the head more than four months ago.

Loud, proud, and to the applause of vast crowds who had gathered to cheer her into orbit, the space shuttle Endeavour has successfully blasted into the skies above Florida at the start of what will be her final mission.

Welcome to Arizona; please shoot carefully. And if you really want to blend in with God-fearing locals, you may also want to be in possession of a cowboy hat, a sunburned neck, and at least one revolver, tucked into the waistband of your denim trousers.

Three months since she was shot in Tucson, the senator is ready to appear in public to wave off her astronaut husband

Doctors have given approval for Gabrielle Giffords, the US congresswoman who was shot in the head, to travel to Florida to see her astronaut husband's space shuttle launch this week.

Survivors of the multiple shooting in Tucson, Arizona, two months ago – which left US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords seriously injured – have come face-to-face with the suspect at a court hearing.

For years in Germany it was social golf for an exclusive set, preserve of the hacking rich man, with all the gear and no idea. With Kaymer, it’s changing

The scion of the family that for generations ran America's most famous brewery, Anheuser-Busch, seems to have ducked the threat of criminal prosecution following the death just before Christmas of his former-model girlfriend from a drug overdose in his own bed. But the disdain of his home town may now stick to him forever.