The US congresswoman shot in the head in an attack at a constituency meeting in which six people died has been moved to a rehabilitation centre in Texas.
Gabrielle Giffords was transported from a hospital in the Arizona city of Tucson to Memorial Hermann Rehabilitation Hospital in Houston.
Scores of well-wishers turned out to wave at Ms Giffords' ambulance.
Jared Loughner, 22, has been jailed pending trial for the attack in Tucson, in which six were killed and 13 hurt.
Ms Giffords was flown from Tucson to William Hobby Airport in Houston on Friday afternoon, from where she was transported to the rehab facility.
The congresswoman was taken in an ambulance led by a police escort from the University Medical Center to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base earlier in the day.
Ms Giffords' husband, a Nasa astronaut, says he hopes his wife will make a full recovery.
"GG [Gabrielle Giffords] going to next phase of her recover today. Very grateful to the docs and nurses at UMC, Tucson PD, Sheriffs Dept....Back in Tucson ASAP!" her husband, Mark Kelly, wrote on micro-blogging website Twitter early on Friday.
Doctors in Arizona, where the congresswoman has undergone a series of operations, say her condition has stabilised to the point where Ms Giffords can move into the rehabilitation phase of recovery.
But despite her steady progress, doctors say Ms Giffords still has a long road to recovery and are not sure what, if any, disability she will have.
'Biggest smile'
On Thursday, hospital workers in Tucson brought Ms Giffords to an outside deck where she was given the opportunity to breath fresh air and feel the sun, trauma surgeon Peter Rhee said.
Mrs Giffords is being transported to a rehabilitation clinic in Houston in the state of Texas
"I saw the biggest smile she could gather," Mr Rhee said, adding that those at the hospital are "very happy to have her enjoying the sunshine of Arizona."
A University Medical Center spokeswoman said Ms Giffords had also been able to scroll through an iPad, and had picked out colours and moved her lips.
Hospital staff are also unsure of how well the congresswoman can see.
Earlier this week, Ms Giffords had reportedly stood, aided by medical staff.
Mr Kelly said on Thursday he believed she was attempting to speak and could recognize those around her, calling his wife "a fighter like nobody else that I know".
"I can just look in her eyes and tell," Mr Kelly said, adding that he is hoping she will make a full recovery.
Ms Giffords' mother has said the Democratic congresswoman has made remarkable progress since the early January attack at a constituency event outside a store in Tucson.
Mr Loughner was indicted earlier this week on three counts of attempting to kill federal officials, relating to Ms Giffords and two of her aides wounded in the assault.
The indictment does not include a charge in the death of John Roll, a federal judge. The Arizona US attorney described the initial indictment as the beginning of federal legal action against Mr Loughner.
Authorities in DR Congo have arrested an army officer over a mass rape of civilians in the east of the country on 1 January, officials and the UN say.
Lt Col Kibibi Mutware is accused of leading the rape of more than 50 women in Fizi, in South Kivu province.
Col Kibibi has dismissed the allegations as rumours.
There have been numerous cases of mass rape in eastern DR Congo, but this is believed to be the largest single incident allegedly involving the army.
Tahirou Diao, a UN spokesman in Uvira near Fizi, said Congolese military officials carried out the arrest during a visit to Fizi by peacekeeping officers.
Maso'a Mwenembuka, head of Fizi's municipal administration, confirmed that he had seen Col Kibibi being handcuffed and driven away, along with about 10 other soldiers arrested in connection with the violence on New Year's Day.
Military and humanitarian sources say the events over the New Year period began when a mob lynched a soldier who had shot a civilian - allegedly in a fight over a woman.
A group of soldiers then took revenge on the people of Fizi.
The UN's humanitarian coordination office said the soldiers had stabbed 26 people, including a four-year-old child, looted more than 20 homes and shops and raped dozens of women.
Several residents of Fizi and a victim of the alleged rapes have accused Col Kibibi, the local commanding officer, of directing the violence.
But in a BBC interview this week, he dismissed the allegations and said the soldiers who had committed crimes had disobeyed his orders.
The 16 years of unrest in eastern DR Congo have become notorious for the widespread sexual abuse of women and young girls.
More than 300 women, men and children were raped by a coalition of rebel groups in the town of Luvungi and neighbouring villages in North Kivu within miles of a UN base in August.
Tony Blair: "I think it is right to say it and it is what I feel."
Tony Blair has said he "regrets deeply and profoundly the loss of life" during and after the 2003 Iraq war.
The ex-PM said his refusal to express regret for the decisions that led to war at his first appearance before the committee had been misinterpreted.
But his words were met with cries of "too late" from the public gallery.
Mr Blair also urged the West to stop apologising for its actions in Iraq and warned of the threat from Iran, during a four-hour grilling by the inquiry.
Asked whether what had happened in Iraq had made the risk from Iran and other countries developing nuclear weapons worse, rather than better, he said: "I don't think so."
'Wretched policy'
Mr Blair, who is now a UN Middle East peace envoy, said there was "a looming and coming challenge" from Iran.
"I am out in that region the whole time. I see the impact and influence of Iran everywhere. It is negative, destabilising and it is supportive of terrorist groups. It is doing everything it can to impede progress in the Middle East peace process, and to facilitate a situation in which that region cannot embark on a process of modernisation it so urgently needs.
"And this is not because we have done something. At some point - and I say this to you with all the passion I possibly can - the West has got to get out of what I think is this wretched policy, or posture, of apology for believing that we are causing what the Iranians are doing, or what these extremists are doing. The fact is we are not.
"The fact is they are doing it because they disagree fundamentally with our way of life and they will carry on doing it unless they are met with the requisite determination and, if necessary, force."
In a personal statement at the end of his evidence session, Mr Blair said it was never his "meaning or intention" to say he had no regrets about the loss of life in Iraq when he appeared before the Iraq inquiry last January.
"I wanted to make that clear, that of course, I regret deeply and profoundly the loss of life, whether from our own armed forces, those of other nations, the civilians who helped people in Iraq, or the Iraqis themselves and I just wanted to say that because it is right to say that and it is what I feel."
Committee chairman Sir John Chilcot had to tell the public gallery to be quiet as some members shouted "too late".
Several people walked out and Rose Gentle, whose son was killed in Iraq, told the former prime minister that she did not believe him, adding: "I hope you can live with it".
Earlier, Mr Blair revealed that he had privately assured US President George Bush "you can count on us" eight months before the invasion.
He also revealed he disregarded Lord Goldsmith's warning that attacking Iraq would be illegal without further UN backing because the advice was "provisional".
The ex-PM said he had believed his top legal officer would change his position on whether a second UN resolution justifying force was needed when he knew the full details of the negotiations.
'Difficulties'
Sir John repeated his call for the private statements Mr Blair made to Mr Bush and then US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld in July 2002, to be made public, saying it the panel was "disappointed" that this had not happened.
The panel have seen the notes but they will remain secret after Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell said releasing them would compromise diplomatic confidentiality.
Mr Blair said that, although he agreed with Sir Gus's decision, he was "not going to hide behind the cabinet secretary".
Summing up the contents of the statements, he said he had told Mr Bush: "You can count on us, we are going to be with you in tackling this, but here are the difficulties."
The message he wanted to get across, he added, was "whatever the political heat, if I think this is the right thing to do I am going to be with you, I am not going to back out if the going gets tough. On the other hand, here are the difficulties and the UN route is the right way to go".
'Tapestry of deceit'
Mr Blair was also quizzed about apparent discrepancies between what he told the committee in January 2010 and recent statements to the committee by his Attorney General Lord Goldsmith.
Lord Goldsmith said he had been "uncomfortable" with statements Mr Blair made in the Commons ahead of the war suggesting Iraq could be attacked without UN authorisation, when he was warning at the time that such a move would be illegal.
Mr Blair said he was also "uncomfortable" at the time but was trying to make the "political" case for military action, rather than a "legal declaration".
Mr Blair told the inquiry he "would be astonished" if the Cabinet did not know military preparations were under way
Asked if Lord Goldsmith's legal doubts constrained him from making a commitment to the US, Mr Blair said "No", adding that airing legal doubts at that time would have damaged the coalition and encouraged Saddam.
He said he was convinced that if Lord Goldsmith spoke to Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK's then ambassador to the UN, and to "the Americans" he would change his mind on the legality of war, which turned out to be the case.
Mr Blair issued a 26 page written statement ahead of his appearance in response to more than 100 detailed questions from the inquiry panel, in which, among other things, he set out the process by which he said Lord Goldsmith changed his mind.
The inquiry also released a note from Mr Blair to Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, shortly before his visit to then US President George Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002, in which he argued that Labour should be "gung-ho" about dealing with Saddam Hussein.
Giving his reaction to Mr Blair's appearance, Former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell said Mr Blair's "evangelical, even messianic, determination" to confront Saddam Hussein meant he had ignored anyone with misgivings.
The public were not given the "full information" about the extent of division in the government over the issue, he told the BBC.
SNP leader and Scottish first minister Alex Salmond accused Mr Blair of weaving a "tapestry of deceit".
Bouazizi's family distraught but proud of hard-working son who stood up for rights after years of misery.
Middle East Online
By Dario Thuburn - SIDI BOUZID, Tunisia
'As a martyr he set free the whole country'
Mohammed Bouazizi climbed onto his fruit cart, doused himself with fuel and flicked on a lighter -- a protest that set off Tunisia's revolution and has left his family bereft but proud.
"My son set himself alight and took me away with him too," said his mother Mannoubia, as she wept in the four-room family home in a desolate farming town, Sidi Bouzid -- a world away from Tunisia's Mediterranean tourist resorts.
"There's nothing that can replace him. He was the pillar of this household," she said. His sisters remembered the 26-year-old as a hard-working and playful brother who would always give them money to buy school books and food.
"I miss him a lot but I think that as a martyr he set free the whole country," said his sister Samiya, 19, her head covered in a black shawl.
"We have been suffering for a long time," she said.
Bouazizi's self-immolation was the shocking climax of years of humiliation by local police, who would often come and take his fruit for free, confiscate his scales and write him up for selling without an official vendor's permit.
'He was the pillar of this household'
After a police officer slapped him and took away his oranges on a cold morning in December, Bouazizi finally cracked. He pushed his cart in front of a regional administration building and set himself on fire.
"When I arrived he was so badly burnt that I couldn't recognise him. But then he prayed and I recognised his voice," his step-father, Ammar, said as he pointed to Bouazizi's charred cart, still strewn with mandarin rinds.
The family keeps the cart locked away in a garage -- they say the burnt-up fruit crates could become a monument one day to a man who has become a national martyr of the Tunisian revolt and whose name has echoed around the Arab world.
As Bouazizi lay dying in hospital, the pent-up anger of a population fed up with the daily humiliations of an authoritarian regime erupted in protests.
After he passed away on January 4 the protests escalated and just 10 days later president Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali resigned abruptly and fled in disgrace.
There have since been several similar public suicide attempts in neighbouring Algeria and in Egypt by people fed up with their rulers.
"He liberated the Tunisian people and I hope he will free the Arab peoples," said Salem Bouazizi, as he came to pray at his brother's tomb in a rubble-strewn landscape outside of town, where olive trees and cactuses grow.
"The people who have the millions are respected and can do whatever they want and someone who just has a simple cart to live off gets banned. It's unacceptable. This is a huge problem here," said Salem, a builder.
Bouazizi's relatives are distraught but proud of a hard-working son who finally stood up for his rights after the family's years of misery.
The Bouazizis said they have had their farm land taken away by a powerful local businessman and his father worked himself to death on building sites.
His 50-year-old mother works on a farm and his step-father works as a builder too -- together they make around four euros ($5) a day.
"He was like a tree that caught fire but whose roots are still here," his aunt Radhiya cried out on the cement patio in front of the family home, as mourners came to pay their respects and were offered biscuits and fruit juice.
Bouazizi has become a local hero in a town where poverty is widespread.
"Everyone here has a lot of respect for him. He was the leader of this revolution. He is a hero for young people," said Zyad Al Gharbi, 27, a friend.
"He sacrificed himself for his rights and the rights of others," he said.
Tunisia began three official days of mourning on Friday for the victims of the revolution -- Bouazizi and the dozens of people shot dead by security forces in the wave of protests against the Ben Ali regime in the past month.
"Freedom" and "Bouazizi the Martyr" read graffiti on a wall near his home.
The national hero is a much-missed brother for his 16-year-old sister Besma.
"I remember him coming back from work when there was heavy rain. The first thing he would do is give us our pocket money," she said.
Her voice breaking into a whisper, she added: "He was very, very gentle. I'm proud of him. I'm very, very proud of him but sad at the same time.
Gazans mob French minister in mix-up as protesters call for releasing Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
Middle East Online
Her first tour of the region
GAZA CITY - Angry Palestinians mobbed French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie as she visited Gaza on Friday in a mix-up over a "war crimes" quote mistakenly attributed to her.
The foreign minister, on her first visit to the enclave since taking over the post in November, was met by angry protesters as her convoy arrived, then again as she visited a hospital in Gaza City.
During the visit, the underfire Alliot-Marie in a speech issued an impassioned call for an end to Israel's blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory.
The protests began early in the day when her road convoy was stopped by dozens of demonstrators waving signs reading "Get out of Gaza" who hammered on her car with their fists.
Others hurled shoes and one jumped on top of her car in a protest over a statement which was mistakenly attributed to Alliot-Marie when she met with the parents of captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in Jerusalem on Thursday.
At the meeting, father Noam Shalit asked Alliot-Marie to press the European Union to "condemn as a war crime" the detention of his son, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.
Shortly afterwards, however, Israel's public radio posted a story on its Arabic-language website mistakenly quoting Alliot-Marie as saying the EU "must condemn the war crime that Hamas is committing by keeping Gilad Shalit in captivity."
Among the protesters were women and children holding placards of men kept behind bars in Israel.
One person shouted slogans through a loudhailer, angrily denouncing the "war crimes" statement, while another was holding up a large picture of Alliot-Marie with a crude red line drawn across her face.
Hamas police eventually cleared the protesters allowing the convoy to continue its way to Gaza City.
"There were between 30 and 50 demonstrators, it wasn't very serious," the minister told reporters afterwards. "Among the demonstrators were mothers whose sadness I can understand, but there were others who had other intentions."
She then set off for the Al Quds hospital which has been newly-renovated with French funding.
But there too Alliot-Marie was met by angry protesters, who shoved and jostled the security detail surrounding her as she went in, a correspondent said, although they did not manage to physically reach her.
One hurled a shoe which was deftly caught by one of the bodyguards as Alliot-Marie ducked out of the way.
In light of the protests, the delegation cancelled a planned visit to the new site of the French cultural centre, saying it was "too open."
The "war crimes" quote was published on the website of the Arabic-language website of Israel public radio, and it was repeated in other Arabic news media -- even prompting a sharply-worded response from Gaza's Hamas rulers who said Shalit was captured "from the battlefield."
"We reject these statements and we call upon France to review such positions which do not serve the French role in the region," said a Hamas statement released on Thursday.
Jordan opposition calls for 'national salvation government', demands social justice, end to oppression.
Middle East Online
'People of Jordan will not bow'
AMMAN - Around 4,000 Jordanians staged a protest march in Amman after weekly prayers on Friday against the country's economic policies, demanding "bread and freedom" and that the government resign.
"(Prime Minister Samir) Rifai, out, out! People of Jordan will not bow," protesters chanted as they marched from the Al-Hussein mosque in the city centre to the nearby Amman municipality building.
"Our demands are legitimate. We want bread and freedom."
Police handed out bottles of water and juice to the demonstrators, who carried banners reading, "We demand social justice and freedom", "No to oppression, yes to change" and, "We need a national salvation government."
Police spokesman Mohammad Khatib said about 4,000 people took part in the protest, organised by the powerful Muslim Brotherhood and its political arm the Islamic Action Front.
Rifai on Thursday announced a $283 million (211 million euro) plan to raise salaries of government staff as well as the pensions of retired government employees and servicemen in the face of popular discontent.
The $28 a month raise came nine days after a $169 million plan to improve living conditions.
The current minimum wage is $211 a month.
But the Islamist opposition and others say the new measures are not enough as poverty levels are running at 25% in the desert kingdom, whose capital Amman is the most expensive city in the Arab world, according to several independent studies.
Official unemployment is about 14% in the country of six million people, 70% of them under the age of 30. But other estimates put the jobless figure at 30%.
A $1.5 billion deficit, equivalent to 5% of gross domestic product, is expected on this year's $8.8 billion budget.
Thousands of Jordanians took to the streets of the kingdom in a similar protest on Friday last week.
Tunisia's popular revolt, which has ousted the country's strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, has inspired dissidents across the Arab world and sparked protests in countries including Algeria, Jordan and Egypt.
Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution still burning in poverty-stricken town where protests first began.
Middle East Online
By Dario Thuburn - SIDI BOUZID, Tunisia
'We want real democracy'
An authoritarian ruler has fallen but the resentments at the heart of Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution are still burning in the poverty-stricken town where the first protests began last month.
"The regime has taken everything from us and left us in misery. We don't have the right to live like everyone else," said Yusfi, 42, a bricklayer in a scuffed baseball cap marching in one of the daily protests in Sidi Bouzid.
"We need equality in this country," shouted one of the hundreds of protesters. Another said: "Be careful Gathafi, the Tunisian revolution is coming" -- a reference to veteran leader Moamer Gathafi in neighbouring Libya.
One passer-by in a traditional robe said: "We're dying of poverty here."
This rocky rural region of olive groves and almond trees in central Tunisia has been a key flashpoint for social protests that led to last Friday's ouster of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in the Arab world's first popular revolt.
"We've had enough. We're not terrorists, we're pacifists. We just want equality. We will continue the revolution," said Mohammed Dali, 58, a seasonal worker, as dozens of soldiers and armoured vehicles patrolled the city.
"We are all ready to sacrifice ourselves for the martyrs," read a banner put up by protesters on a central square in the city. Another sign read: "No to state terrorism. Yes to the liberation of political prisoners."
Protesters chanted: "Down with the RCD!" -- a reference to Ben Ali's once all-powerful ruling party which has dominated Tunisia for decades.
Anger against the RCD has been one of the main drivers behind continued protests against the country's new leadership a week after Ben Ali's ouster.
But in this town of 40,000 people it is local social issues that are upmost in people's minds. Journalists are quickly surrounded by dozens of local residents keen to voice their list of frustrations over the prevailing misery.
"A lot of people are unemployed here," said Zyad Al Gharbi, 27, a friend of Mohammed Bouazizi -- the young fruit vendor who set himself alight on his cart last month after police prevented him from selling to make a living.
Angry social protests in Sidi Bouzid began with a small rally on December 18 -- the day after Bouazizi's self-immolation and they quickly escalated.
A fruit vendor, who declined to give his name, said: "The police take money off us to sell here. Why is it banned? Why do we have to pay off the police?"
As he handed oranges to customers from his cart near the mosque, another vendor said 26-year-old Bouazizi was a victim of widespread corruption.
"It was a tragedy. He was a victim of people who make a lot of money. It's always the poor man who pays the price," said the 26-year-old.
One of the town's squares has been re-named in honour of Bouazizi by local authorities to assuage an angry population. It has turned into a gathering place for malcontents and a shrine to the vendor who set himself on fire.
A large picture of Bouazizi has been tacked onto a monument in the square.
"We have been destroyed by poverty. The young people here need jobs. We want real democracy," said Abassi Toufik, a 47-year-old activist, standing on the square as dozens of youths in leather jackets and baseball caps crowded round.
Mrs Giffords is being transported to a rehabilitation clinic in Houston in the state of Texas 
