TUCSON, Ariz (Reuters) – Representative Gabrielle Giffords, gravely wounded a year ago in a deadly Tucson shooting spree, submitted her resignation from Congress on Wednesday to focus on her recovery.

“The only way I ever served my district in Congress was by giving 100 percent. This past year that’s what I have given to my recovery,” Giffords said in letters to House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.

TUCSON, Ariz (Reuters) – Representative Gabrielle Giffords walked stiffly into an Arizona charity on Monday in a bittersweet farewell to voters before she steps down to focus on recovering from an assassination attempt last year.

Giffords, 41, was greeted by loud cheers from dozens of workers, volunteers and well-wishers as she entered the warehouse of a Tucson food bank, accompanied by an aide, Ron Barber, himself wounded in a shooting rampage that nearly killed Giffords.

By Tim Gaynor

(Reuters) – Representative Gabrielle Giffords was due to meet on Monday with some of those present when she was shot in the head last year, part of a final flurry of duties before she resigns from the U.S. Congress this week.

Giffords was struck by a bullet on January 8, 2011, when a gunman opened fire at a congressional outreach meeting outside a Tucson grocery store, killing six people and wounding her and 12 others.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – A U.S. Border Patrol agent and an Arizona jailer trapped in a sting operation have been arrested on charges they conspired to help traffickers smuggle drugs from Mexico, authorities said on Friday.

Ivhan Herrera-Chiang, 29, a Border Patrol agent in Yuma, Ariz., and Michael Lopez-Garcia, 28, a corrections officer at the Arizona State Prison Complex in San Luis, Ariz., were arrested on Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona said.

TUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) – Bells tolled, girls in white dresses danced and Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords led a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance on Sunday, one year after a shooting spree that killed six people and left her gravely wounded.

Giffords, still recuperating from the head wound she suffered in the shooting, topped off a daylong series of anniversary tributes and remembrances by attending a candlelight vigil with her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly.

TUCSON, Ariz (Reuters) – Bells tolled, girls in white dresses danced and clergymen offered up prayers in Tucson on Sunday, one year after a shooting spree that left six people dead and 13 others wounded, among them Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Giffords herself, still recuperating from the head wound she suffered in the shooting, was expected to top off a daylong series of tributes and remembrances by attending a candlelight vigil with her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly.

TUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) – U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, wounded in a deadly mass shooting on January 8 last year, visited a Tucson area park on Saturday as survivors and residents prepared for the somber anniversary on Sunday.

A gunman toting a semiautomatic pistol pumped bullet after bullet into a crowd gathered for a congressional outreach event outside a Tucson supermarket a year ago.

TUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) – Congressional staffer Ron Barber was standing in a receiving line next to U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords at her first outreach event of the year when the gunman opened fire at point-blank range.

Moments later he was lying in a pool of his own blood on the sidewalk when Giffords and fellow aide Gabe Zimmerman fell beside him outside the Tucson area grocery store.

TUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) – Congressional staffer Ron Barber was standing in a receiving line next to U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords at her first outreach event of the year when the gunman opened fire at point-blank range.

Moments later he was lying in a pool of his own blood on the sidewalk when Giffords and fellow aide Gabe Zimmerman fell beside him outside the Tucson area grocery store.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – A prominent veteran of the Navajo Code Talkers, who confounded enemy combatants in World War Two by using the Navajo language as a battlefield cipher in the South Pacific, has died, a veteran’s association said on Wednesday.

Keith M. Little, 87, served in the Marine Corps 4th Marine Division in the Pacific and was president of the Navajo Code Talkers Association.