Palestinians carry a wounded boy to a hospital in Gaza City this week.

RAFAH, Egypt – It’s a 2 1/2-hour journey that should take 30 minutes. A hair-raising sprint on dirt roads through bombed-out cities and military checkpoints, all while coping with the ever-present threat of gunfire or a stray bomb.

Such is the ordeal faced by paramedics ferrying patients out of Gaza – where hospitals are overflowing due to the conflict with Israel – into neighboring Egypt. Ambulances run by the Red Crescent, the Islamic world’s equivalent of the Red Cross, have been busy transporting amputees, spinal cord patients, burn victims and other severe medical cases.

On Wednesday, Israel and Hamas observed a three-hour pause in fighting to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid such as food, fuel and medical supplies into Gaza. Similar lulls will occur in the future, Israel said.

The pauses “will help the movements of the ambulances,” said Hesham Hassan, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross. “But three hours is not enough.”

Nearly 3,000 Palestinians have been wounded since the war began Dec. 27, along with 690 dead, according to Associated Press figures based on interviews with Palestinian health officials. Ten Israelis have been killed, Israel’s government has said.

Abdel Bassam El Sharafi, 40, often accompanies the wounded in ambulances. The Gaza City doctor was injured in the first week of the fighting when a piece of shrapnel lodged in his back, yet he presses on in spite of the pain.

The most dangerous part of the 25-mile trip from Gaza City to Rafah, El Sharafi said, comes each time they encounter an Israeli army checkpoint.

“We usually stop,” he said, “and wait until they wave us through. Last time they shot in our direction.”

Hakim El Habashi, a paramedic from south Gaza, noted that slow ambulance response times have led many Gazans to transport the wounded in their own vehicles. This prevents the injured from getting adequate medical care during transport, he said.

Ambulance drivers operate in the extreme stress of a live combat zone, with mortars and rockets often shaking the ambulance and rattling its patients.

“There is a risk on the road from the Israeli bombings,” said Ahmed Abdel Wahab, a health official at the Rafah border crossing.

Since the conflict began, Egypt has allowed only medical supplies to cross its border into Gaza. There are signs, though, that the Arab state is loosening its policy slightly as baby formula and dried milk were among the goods permitted to cross Wednesday.

Still, the situation in the Gaza Strip, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, remains critical.

“If electricity is not restored,” said Hassan of the Red Cross, “the hospitals, which are running on generators, will soon be unable to provide basic services.”

An Israeli missile hits the Gaza Strip Thursday.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israel is methodically targeting the Hamas domain, bombing government offices, security compounds, commanders, and even Hamas-linked clinics, mosques and money changers. Yet Gaza’s Islamic rulers show no sign of buckling under the aerial onslaught.

Israel says Hamas still has thousands of rockets. Hamas TV and radio remain on the air, broadcasting morale-boosting battle reports. Hamas’ political and military leaders communicate from hiding places by walkie-talkie. Police patrol streets to prevent price gouging and looting.

“Israel has destroyed the buildings, but Hamas is still here,” Ahmed Yousef, a Hamas spokesman, said Thursday, the sixth day of the bombing campaign. “There is no anxiety over the existence of Hamas – even if they destroy all of Gaza – because we are among the people.”

Hamas’ survival will depend on how far Israel is willing to go to obtain its declared objective: crippling the group’s ability to fire rockets at Israeli towns and cities. Thousands of Israeli soldiers are amassed on Gaza’s border, waiting for the signal to invade.

Yet Israel, which withdrew its troops from Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation, also says it does not want to reoccupy the area. That suggests Hamas will be able to cling to power in Gaza, which it seized by force from moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007.

Hamas’ future also hinges on the conditions of the cease-fire that will eventually be brokered.

The group’s leaders are demanding that Gaza’s borders be opened in exchange for calm; the territory has been largely sealed off by Israel and Egypt since the Hamas takeover. A plan promoted by Egypt and the U.S. would link any opening of the borders to giving Abbas a new foothold in Gaza.

With Hamas losing much of its infrastructure to the Israeli assault, it might be more willing to cut a deal with Abbas, said Gaza analyst Emad Falluji, a former Hamas activist.

For now, Hamas has proven surprisingly resilient.

Since the offensive began, the group’s fighters have fired nearly 400 mortar shells, homemade rockets and Iranian-supplied Grad rockets, according to the Israeli military. It has struck two new targets closer to Israel’s center, the southern cities of Ashdod and Beersheba. Four Israelis have been killed.

Hamas has thousands more rockets in its arsenal, said Maj. Avital Leibovich, an Israeli army spokeswoman. Most of the weaponry has been smuggled in through some 300 tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border, including about 300 tons of explosives imported in the last three years, she said.

Israel has destroyed about a third of the tunnels, along with explosives and missiles stored in basements and mosques, Leibovich said. That has hurt Hamas’ ability to fire rockets, but hasn’t crippled it, she said.

Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon said the bombing would continue. “Hamas has suffered a lot,” he said. “We have hit its military infrastructure, its government infrastructure, its tunnels. We still have a lot of targets to attack in coming days.”

Israel is also hunting Hamas’ political and military leaders.

On Thursday, a warplane dropped a one-ton bomb on the house of Hamas strongman Nizar Rayan, killing him, his four wives and nine of his 12 children. Rayan, among Hamas’ top five leaders in Gaza, had taken few precautions in recent days, even appearing in public, unlike other prominent Hamas figures who have gone into hiding.

Hamas has had years to prepare for battle with Israel, particularly after Israeli troops pulled out of the territory more than three years ago.

The group has dug bunkers and tunnels, copying tactics of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, another ally of Iran, Leibovich said.

One of Hamas’ other trump cards is an Israeli soldier, Gilad Schalit, who was captured by Hamas-allied militants in a cross-border raid in 2006.

The initial round of Israeli bombing wiped out key police installations, and Hamas officials say 185 members of the group’s security forces are among the nearly 400 dead. Hamas security men have slipped into civilian clothes to avoid being targeted, but still patrol the streets. Hamas’ Al Aqsa TV and radio have broadcast a toll-free number for residents to make criminal complaints.

Policemen direct traffic and run checkpoints near bombed-out government buildings to prevent scavenging. They tour gas stations, bakeries and groceries to make sure owners don’t take advantage of growing shortages to hike prices.

On Tuesday, two Hamas plainclothes cops drove up to a small gas station in Gaza City and learned from customers that the price for diesel fuel had tripled. They approached the owner who swiftly lowered the price.

Hamas inspectors with scales visit bakers, making sure that the government-fixed price for bread — 55 pitas for 7 shekels, about $2 — is being honored.

Hamas leaders say the militant movement is able to keep fighting.

“Our spirits are high, because Israel has failed to reach its target,” said Hamas legislator Mushir al-Masri. “They conducted powerful strikes in the first few days, but in reality Hamas is stronger, we rose from the rubble and hit places we’ve never hit before.”

Palestinians examine wreckage Wednesday after an Israeli air assault on suspected Hamas positions in Gaza.

JERUSALEM – Israel’s Gaza offensive was launched at a time when it would not harm relations with the U.S. and could perhaps benefit leading politicians six weeks before a general election in Israel.

Israel’s leadership insists that the punishing assault against Gaza’s Hamas rulers is motivated purely by security considerations. Some experts said launching the assault now was unavoidable, in order to restore Israel’s power of deterrence and halt a steady weapons buildup by an Iranian-backed foe on Israel’s doorstep.

They note that Hamas’ decision not to renew a truce beyond Dec. 19 forced Israel’s hand.

Israel’s deadliest-ever offensive on Palestinian soil does come at a time when it’s likely to cause minimum friction with the White House. President George W. Bush’s is in his final month in office.

Some Washington analysts say Israel may have timed the airstrikes, in part, to prevent the situation in Gaza from becoming President-elect Barack Obama’s first major foreign policy crisis when he takes office Jan. 20. Yet the offensive could also undermine any short-term initiative the incoming administration might try.

In Israel, a successful outcome would certainly boost the electoral prospects of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who are competing for the job of prime minister against hard-line opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been calling for tough action against militants and Iran, which is Hamas’ patron.

However, Barak and Livni could get hurt politically if the offensive fails to achieve its objective.

“If by the end of the operation, the general sentiment is that Israel has once again failed to meet its goals, if rockets continue to land … the public will turn its anger at Barak and Livni, and power will drop like a ripe fruit into Netanyahu’s lap,” the Haaretz daily wrote in an editorial.

Netanyahu has been careful not to criticize his rivals. “We are all united,” Netanyahu told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday. “There is no opposition and no coalition on this.”

He said he has suspended his campaign for now. “There will be enough time for politics later,” he said.

Militants in Gaza, a coastal strip on Israel’s southwest flank, have been firing rockets across the border since 2001. Israeli figures show that between January and the end of November, about 2,500 rockets and mortar shells crashed into Israel, killing eight people and causing a public clamor for the government to send Israel’s vaunted military in to halt the barrage.

An unwritten truce between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, which took effect in June, brought some respite. It began to unravel in November, when Israeli soldiers entered Gaza to destroy a tunnel that the army said could have been used in a cross-border raid. In response, Palestinians launched a fresh wave of rockets at Israel. On Dec. 19, six months to the day since it went into effect, Hamas formally declared the truce over and warned that it would take action.

In the days that followed, rockets thudded faster and deeper into Israel, and Israeli diplomats launched a campaign to prepare world opinion for a military response.

Barry Rubin, an expert on Israeli security policy, said the harsh Israeli response was inevitable.

“When someone says, ‘I’m ending the cease-fire and I’m going to war with you,’ you take that seriously,” he said. “It’s like why did the U.S. attack Afghanistan? Because al-Qaida attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11.”

Emad Falluji, a former Hamas leader now in a Gaza-based think tank, said he believes Hamas did want to renew the truce but felt that Israel failed to keep its side of the bargain by keeping Gaza’s borders sealed.

“Israel didn’t want to give Hamas anything in return for the cease-fire, which was effectively free,” he said.

Falluji said Hamas had calculated that Israel would not take major military action so close to its own elections and the start of Obama’s term.

“I don’t think it expected this kind of destruction,” he said. “They were gambling on a new U.S. administration to revive some kind of dialogue, they were gambling on time.”

Some Palestinians believe the assault on Hamas was also meant to shore up Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the movement’s bitter rival. Hamas wrested control of Gaza from Abbas in a violent takeover in June 2007.

Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in 2006, says it will not recognize Abbas as president once his four-year term ends in January. Hamas’ threat changes little on the ground, since Abbas would remain in power in the West Bank in any case. However, it could further reduce his stature and legitimacy in the eyes of many Palestinians, particularly after a year of peace talks with Israel produced no tangible results.

A senior Israeli defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with Defense Ministry regulations, said that Barak had been against a major military offensive almost to the end and only finally approved the operation on Thursday.

The official said Israeli military decision-makers came to the conclusion that the truce was not going to be extended after Barak’s envoy, Amos Gilad, returned dispirited from talks with Egyptian mediators in Cairo and Israeli troops shot and killed three Hamas gunmen as they were planting explosives on the Gaza border, sparking a renewed hail of rockets.

“That’s the only reason, nothing to do with elections nothing to do with anything,’ Rubin said. “It was a decision taken reluctantly but, eventually, decisively. That’s it, that’s the story.”

Editor’s note: Steve Weizman has covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1985.

A student raises his hand to vote in student council elections as a photo of the Cuba's former leader Fidel Castro hangs in an elementary school in Havana, Cuba, in October.

HAVANA – Barack Obama will be the first American president in nearly 50 years to have a relatively free hand in deciding whether to ease punitive Cold War-era policies toward communist Cuba, and the foreign policy team he announced this week seems predisposed to make it happen.

Obama said during the campaign that immediately after taking office on Jan. 20, he will lift all restrictions on family travel and cash remittances to Cuba – not just roll them back to previous rules that were tightened by the Bush administration.

Obama also said he would up uphold the embargo imposed after the island went communist, to use as leverage until Cuba shows “significant steps toward democracy,” starting with freedom for approximately 219 jailed political prisoners.

For nearly five decades, the embargo is where the two nations have been stuck, each side demanding that the other change first.

What’s different now is that Obama says he will talk directly with Cuban President Raul Castro, who recently and repeatedly offered to negotiate on neutral ground as equals.

These openings have Cubans feeling more optimistic about getting unstuck than ever before.

“What we want is that the Americans no longer look at us as enemies,” said Lazaro Medardo, 68, who was selling sunflowers, red roses and gladiolas from a pushcart in old Havana on Monday. “We aren’t their enemies.”

Cuban-Americans have had a mixed reaction to Obama’s campaign promises — most voted against him, but Obama carried Florida and didn’t even need the state’s votes to win the presidency, confounding the notion that the support of anti-Castro Cuban exiles is essential in presidential elections.

“Obama already has a much freer hand than Bush did,” said Daniel Erickson of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington, D.C. think tank. “He does not owe any of his political success to Cuban-Americans in South Florida.”

Obama is therefore free to chart a new course. He can reverse some policies of President George W. Bush with a pen stroke, and while undoing the embargo would take a majority in Congress, that’s easier than ever with Democrats holding sizable majorities.

A fresh U.S. approach could improve relations across Latin America, according to a report last week from the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, which said America’s Cuba policy has hindered Washington’s ability to work with other countries throughout the region.

Top figures in the incoming administration also have favored more open relations.

As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Vice President-elect Joe Biden called for re-establishing mail service with Cuba and easing family travel restrictions.

The future secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, campaigned against Obama’s openness to talking with Raul Castro, but said she would respond positively to Cuban actions demonstrating a willingness to change. Also, Obama’s initial moves have a Clinton precedent: President Bill Clinton eased travel regulations during the last three years of his tenure.

Obama’s nominee for U.N. ambassador, Susan E. Rice, has said America needs a new approach, one that “actually tries to catalyze change on the island.”

The new commerce secretary, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, has been there and done that, in small ways.

As a congressman, Richardson secured the release of three Cuban political prisoners during talks with Fidel Castro in Havana in 1996. As U.N. ambassador in 1997, he held talks about terrorism with then Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina.

Richardson will replace Cuban-born Carlos Gutierrez, a harsh Castro critic who co-chaired the White House Commission for Assistance for a Free Cuba. Cuba called it a cover for regime change, and it seems unlikely to survive into the new administration.

The saga of Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy who was rescued at sea and became a cause celebre in 2000, is being revisited as Obama’s appointments are studied for clues to future Cuba policy:

Manny Diaz, Miami’s Cuban-American mayor and a candidate for housing and urban development secretary, was on the legal team that fought unsuccessfully to keep Elian with his Miami relatives.

Eric Holder, Obama’s choice for attorney general, was the No. 2 Justice Department official when armed federal officers seized Elian and returned him to his father in Cuba. The White House counsel will be Gregory Craig, who was the father’s attorney.

Embargo supporters fear the Obama team will concede too much.

“For the embargo or the additional sanctions to be lifted, certain steps must be taken: Respect for human rights, the release of all political prisoners and free and democratic elections,” Miami radio and TV host Ninoska Perez wrote in an opinion piece in USA Today. “It’s the Cuban regime that must change, not U.S. policy.”

Cuba’s communist leadership, which blames the embargo for most Cuban problems, also is skeptical.

“It would be extremely naive to believe that the good will of a smart person could change what is the result of centuries of selfishness and vested interests,” ailing former President Fidel Castro recently wrote about Obama.

But some Cubans think Obama just might make change happen.

“His thinking is more international,” 35-year-old Eduardo Betancourt said as he leaned on his bicycle in an Old Havana plaza. “I don’t have family in the United States, but many of my friends do and hope they will now see them more often.”

A Palestinian police officer gestures as he and other supporters of the Islamic group Hamas gather Friday during a demonstration, in Gaza City.

JERUSALEM – A June truce between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers comes up for renewal next month and it looks like both sides are trying to dictate more favorable terms.

That would explain why Israel and Hamas have been trading rocket fire and air strikes for two weeks, even as they keep saying they’re interested in a continued cease-fire. But the attempt to establish new ground rules could easily spin out of control, especially if there are civilian casualties.

Domestic concerns further complicate the situation.

Israel is holding general elections Feb. 10 and the cross-border violence has become campaign fodder.

Over the weekend, the hard-line opposition party Likud predictably portrayed the government as weak for not responding more harshly to the rockets. Put on the defensive, the leaders of the ruling Kadima and Labor parties delivered tough speeches, warning Hamas that Israel would strike a punishing blow if necessary.

Yet a high-risk Israeli offensive in Gaza seems unlikely ahead of the election. And at a time of political transition in the United States, Israel might not want to start its relationship with Barack Obama in crisis mode.

Yet continued rocket fire from Gaza would hurt the election prospects of Kadima and Labor and could turn the public mood against a key election promise of both parties — to keep trying to forge a peace deal with the Palestinians.

Hamas, meanwhile, is trying to fend off criticism at home, particularly from smaller militant factions, that it accepted a bad deal and that the cease-fire hasn’t improved life in Gaza. The territory has been under an international blockade since the violent June 2007 takeover by Hamas.

The Egyptian-brokered truce took hold June 19 and was to be renewed after six months. The details were never made public, but the general idea was for Israel to allow more goods into Gaza, which has suffered from chronic shortages under the sanctions.

This was to be followed by negotiations on the release of an Israeli soldier held by Hamas-allied militants and by the eventual opening of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

The truce largely held, though Israel has closed the borders for brief periods in response to occasional rocket or mortar fire from Gaza. But even when the crossings did open, Israel never allowed in more than a trickle of goods. Negotiations over the captured soldier, Gilad Schalit, bogged down and Rafah, Gaza’s main gateway, remained closed.

On Nov. 4, this uneasy balance was upset.

Israeli forces moved 300 yards meters into Gaza to destroy a border tunnel dug by militants. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said at the time that militants’ had planned to abduct Israeli soldiers through the tunnel, similar to the 2006 capture of Schalit.

However, defense officials acknowledged that Israel also was also trying to send a message that it would not allow Hamas militants to operate close to the border.

Hamas responded with barrages of rockets and mortars on Israeli border communities. Israel, in turn, targeted rocket squads with air strikes, killing at least 15 Palestinian militants, including four on Sunday.

Israel also stepped up pressure by keeping Gaza’s borders closed, causing widespread power cuts, disrupting U.N. food distribution to the needy and drawing international condemnation.

Hamas raised the stakes by firing several longer-range Grad rockets at the Israeli city of Ashkelon. By taking aim deeper inside Israel with the deadlier Grads, rather than at small border communities with crude homemade rockets, Hamas was trying to boost its powers of deterrence.

The idea is to “force the occupier to respect our people’s rights and demand and stop all sorts of aggression against our people,” said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.

Israeli critics of the truce have repeatedly warned that Hamas is using the cease-fire to amass weapons via smuggling tunnels and that Israel is losing the ability to take the initiative.

Hamas “determines the rules of the game, it determines the pace, it decides when to fire rockets on Israeli citizens and how many,” Gideon Saar, a senior Likud legislator, told Israel Radio.

Still, both sides have an overriding interest in a cease-fire.

Hamas needs calm in Gaza as it heads into a political showdown with its rival, moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas contends that Abbas’ term expires Jan. 8 and says it will install its own president at that time, closing perhaps the last door to the elusive possibility of restoring national unity.

Israel, meanwhile, doesn’t want to be dragged into a major military offensive in Gaza. Barak that would risk the lives of Israel soldiers for uncertain gains.

Reoccupying Gaza would at best bring temporary calm, but more likely bog down his forces without an exit strategy. It would also distract the military from other key challenges, including the threats from Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas.

“Fiery rhetoric is not a policy,” he told his right-wing critics Saturday.

Karin Laub has covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1987.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaks on Iranian TV. A photo of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei is in the background.

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s supreme leader said Wednesday that his country’s hatred for the United States runs deep and differences between the two nations go beyond a “few political issues.”

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s comments on state-run television less than a week before the American presidential elections were seen as a signal that a thaw in U.S.-Iran relations was not expected no matter who wins the Nov. 4 race.

Khamenei said the hatred is rooted in 50 years of U.S. intervention in Iran’s domestic affairs and hostility toward Tehran.

“The hatred of the Iranian nation is deep-seated. The reason is the various conspiracies by the U.S. government against the Iranian people and government in the past 50 years,” Khamenei said.

He was addressing a group of students in Tehran days ahead of the 29th anniversary of the 1979 storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by militant students.

Iran blames the CIA for helping topple the elected government of Mohammad Mosaddeq in the 1950s and blames the United States for openly supporting the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi against the 1979 Islamic revolution that led to the collapse of the dynasty.

Iranians also condemn Washington for arming and supporting former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

“This dispute (with America) goes further than differences of opinion over a few political issues,” the leader said.

Iranian political analyst Saeed Leilaz said Khamenei’s address sent a clear message that he will have to approve any efforts for reconciliation with U.S.

“Khamenei wants the U.S. and Iranian political factions to know that he will be in control of any efforts to politically restore their relations,” said Leilaz.

Leilaz said Khamenei is also telling Iran’s political factions not to get excited should Barack Obama win the U.S. presidential race.

Iran’s government refused to publicly side with any of the U.S. candidates, but Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani said last week that Obama seemed “more rational” than rival John McCain.

Obama, a Democrat, has called for direct diplomacy with Iranian leaders that he says would give the U.S. more credibility to press for tougher sanctions — though Obama now says he’s not sure hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the right person to meet with.

McCain, a Republican, has said he favors tougher sanctions against Iran and opposes direct high-level talks with Ahmadinejad.

The United States and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since the 1979 embassy storming.

The atmosphere between the two countries improved marginally under former President Mohammad Khatami, who encouraged athletic and cultural exchanges.

But it deteriorated after the Sept. 11 attacks when President Bush declared that Iran belonged to an “axis of evil” with North Korea and Saddam’s regime in Iraq.

Since taking office in 2005, Ahmadinejad has widened the gap with Washington by taking a hardline stance on Iran’s nuclear program and calling for Israel’s destruction.

The U.S. and some of its allies accuse Iran of developing nuclear weapons, but Iran insists its program is peaceful.

The past year has not been Olson's finest. But that can't dull the shine on his unparalleled achievements with the Wildcats.

For 25 years – before any of his current players were born – Lute Olson has been the face (and the perfectly coiffed hair) of University of Arizona basketball.

His impact on UA, on Tucson and on the state of Arizona has been unmatched. Lute has been our version of Madonna – a person so popular and well-known that one name suffices.

The Lute Olson era at UA apparently has ended – not with the bang of one more exciting season capped with the now-traditional trip to the NCAA Tournament, but with a confusing series of meetings and secondhand statements presaging an awkward departure on the season’s eve.

The past year has not been Olson’s finest at UA. It started with last year’s mysterious leave of absence, which has not been explained but was extended for the entire season. There was a messy and sometimes-public divorce and an angry, finger-pointing press conference as Olson returned to his program late last spring and all of his assistants departed.

But one bumpy year cannot mar the previous 24 – a period in which Olson took a UA basketball program that had become a farce and built it into a national power with a consistency that was the envy of the nation.

In the year before Olson arrived, UA won only four of 28 games. Over the next 24 years, Olson’s teams won 3 of every 4 games and went to the national title tournament every year but his first.

Along the way, Olson and team won 11 Pac-10 titles, and Olson leads both UA and the conference in career victories.

His on-court résumé included the 1986 World Championship, the 1997 national title for UA and Olson’s 2002 enshrinement into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Olson also left his mark outside McKale Center. The athletes he recruited and brought to Tucson were quality individuals who remain a credit to UA.

Among them were Steve Kerr, now the general manager of the Phoenix Suns, and Sean Elliott, who has been active in nonprofits both here and in his adopted home of San Antonio.

So what will the Lute Olson legacy be?

Tens of millions of Americans can’t find Tucson on a map, but they know one thing about the Old Pueblo (and it may be the only thing): We have one helluva basketball program.

We have Olson to thank for that.

The University of Arizona in 2005 received a $1 million endowment for the Bobbi Olson Endowment for Ovarian Cancer Research.

We have Olson and his family to thank for that. The money is designated to find a cure for the disease that took the life of Olson’s first wife in 2001 after 47 years of marriage.

Making a graceful exit is the hardest task in sports. Just ask Brett Favre of the Green Bay . . uh, the New York Jets. Olson botched his goodbye. OK, we’ll let him take a mulligan.

But the past year cannot dull the shine on UA’s two-decades-plus of unparalleled achievement in basketball.

And we have Lute Olson to thank for that.

———

LUTE OLSON ARCHIVE

Read more Citizen coverage of the Olson years at tucsoncitizen.com/ss/lute

In a recent formal opinion, Goddard said it is OK for members of a public body to engage in online discussions and deliberations.

But Goddard made it clear that the public still must have access to the discussions. And elected officials are not allowed to vote online.

Arizona’s Open Meetings Law is a model of simplicity and clarity. It reads:

“All meetings of any public body shall be public meetings and all persons so desiring shall be permitted to attend and listen to the deliberations and proceedings. All legal action of public bodies shall occur during a public meeting.”

In giving his approval for online discussions, Goddard said it must be possible for people to log on and watch the proceedings. And there must be alternatives for people who don’t have computers.

If people can sit at their home computer or at a computer in a nearby library and know what their elected officials are doing, it could increase public involvement and knowledge.

And despite the concern among some state officials, we doubt that the intended anti-abortion message will prove to be too contentious.

Colorado started producing a “Respect Life” license plate after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre of a teacher and 14 students, including the two killers.

Anti-abortion activists pay extra for that license plate without even knowing the message is to honor the Columbine victims, the Gazette in Colorado Springs noted last week.

Despite the new Arizona plates, we suspect folks here will continue to choose, well, as they choose.

Tucsonans long have appreciated the delicious, authentic and, yes, “legendary” Mexican fare at El Charro.

And now downtown Tucson, where the original family establishment has flourished for decades, finally is coming back to life with new restaurants, shops and other businesses and entertainment venues springing up.

Tucson is fortunate to have five El Charro restaurants, but it is the downtown cafe that caught the eye of Gourmet.

And it is the downtown eatery – with its spacious outdoor patio and tiny gift shop of Southwestern goodies – that longtime locals long have loved.

Congratulations to El Charro and owner Ray Flores – local legends.