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Two questions were likely chewed over at a lot of cottage-openings, urban farmers’ markets and fun-runs or cycle-a-thons this Victoria Day weekend.

How can Mayor Rob Ford’s base of supporters — despite mounting evidence of his personal troubles and spreading doubts about his fitness for office — continue to back him?

And is it remotely possible — despite international infamy that would have Toronto’s austere and abstemious founders spinning in their graves — that he could be re-elected?

In recent years it has usually taken the weirdness of a decapitation for Canada to make news reports abroad. It’s almost unprecedented for Toronto goings-on to make both the BBC and the New York Times. Yet this week, Mayor Rob Ford managed to pull it off.

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The possibility that Ford might have smoked crack cocaine in the company of suspected drug dealers was so mind-bogglingly outrageous that suggestions he uttered homophobic slurs and ethnic disparagements while doing so became mere background noise.

What must be obvious to most by now is that Ford has never seemed comfortable in his own skin as mayor. At worst, he may have unaddressed substance-abuse issues that are ruining his career, his reputation, and could ultimately threaten his life. At best, he seems to share the same predicament described more than a century ago by L. Frank Baum about another gentleman whose ascent in the world exceeded his abilities. He is not a bad man; he is just a very bad mayor for a cosmopolitan city with a budget of about $10 billion a year.

In any event, city Councillor Josh Matlow, for one, was aghast at the notoriety flowing this way as a result of a video made (and subsequently viewed by two Star reporters) of Ford’s alleged misbehaviour.

On Saturday, Matlow tweeted his surprise to learn from friends in New York that Toronto’s crisis at city hall had made the Times. Then the councillor did his best to staunch the hemorrhaging of his city’s image.

“Toronto is a vibrant and diverse city of 2.8 million people, North America’s fourth largest city and a global capital for finance, arts and culture,” Matlow tweeted. Followed by the plea: “Dear international media: please include the contents of my last tweet into your stories about Toronto. ps — We have no wild moose business card.”

For his part, the mayor’s response to the latest of his serial scandals has not been a textbook study in crisis management. Ford did his cause little good with a few sentences of muttered indignation Friday, calling the allegations “ridiculous” and merely the product of this newspaper’s alleged campaign against him.

Since then, Ford has essentially gone to ground and, it was announced Saturday by Newstalk 1010, even cancelled the Sunday talk-radio program that he and brother Doug use as a weekly bully pulpit to defend the mayor and retaliate against perceived enemies.

Doug Ford did reportedly speak to the station Saturday. But his statement sounded to be something less than a thoroughgoing denial on his brother’s behalf. “I have never seen my brother involved with anything like coke.”

As the author Joyce Carol Oates has said, “in the end, all drama is about family.” So too, it seems, is the phenomenon of Rob Ford.

His formative years as the son of a hard-nosed self-made man, his frequently unruly domestic life, then his unlikely political rise and his unseemly dependence on his brother, are root and branch about both the stunting and supportive nature of family — and its attendant aspects of tribe and class.

In many ways, Rob Ford is a tribal descendant of the Mike Harris provincial government of which his father was part, a phenomenon powered by twin resentments against the shiftless undeserving poor and arrogant undeserving elites.

If Harris brought overt class warfare to the local political scene, and made it permissible to campaign against government itself, he also rebuilt Toronto’s institutional infrastructure in a way that made the election of Rob Ford possible.

It was the Harris amalgamation of Toronto that ultimately let the city suburbs take revenge on the downtown elites, and their support of Ford seems as tribal (and hence irrationally tenacious) as anything described in the novels of Dennis Lehane about the toughest precincts of Irish Boston.

Such a state of affairs has both admirable and appalling aspects, not least of which, on the one hand, is dogged loyalty and, on the other, a wilful obliviousness to the nakedly apparent.

At present, that is both the strength and weakness of Ford Nation — and makes anything possible.

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President Barack Obama tried on Friday to leave behind the political battles that have overshadowed his second-term agenda, saying lawmakers should work on creating more middle-class jobs in the slowly growing economy. “Our work is not done, and our focus cannot drift,” Obama said.

Obama’s jobs tour took him to Baltimore after riding through one eruption after the other during the past few weeks, from new questions over his administration’s handling of last year’s deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, to revelations of political targeting at the Internal Revenue Service and a secret probe of The Associated Press and its confidential sources.

“Others may get distracted by chasing every fleeting issue that passes by, but the middle class will always be my No. 1 focus,” Obama said at Ellicott Dredges, maker of equipment for digging and pumping projects including mining.

The company, which helped build equipment that dug the Panama Canal, has been adding jobs through international sales in spite of a sluggish economy. Obama took a tour of the plant and got a close-up look at the assembly process, including excavation equipment being made for a customer in Bangladesh.

In his speech to several hundred workers and guests, Obama cited growth in the economy, a drop in unemployment nationwide and improvements in the housing and auto industries. But he said Washington still needs to do more to build a “rising, thriving middle class.”

“We’re now poised for progress, but our work is not done and our focus cannot drift,” he said. “We’ve got to stay focused on our economy and putting people back to work and raising wages and bringing manufacturing back to the United States of America.”

Obama added, “That has to be what we’re thinking about every single day.”

His comments seemed almost like a plea to his political opponents, and even some supporters, to shift from all the questions that have been dogging the president. The partisan fighting followed Obama even as he traveled north of the beltway, with Republicans criticizing the trip as stagecraft.

Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland’s only Republican congressman, said Obama should have stayed in Washington to focus on job-creation efforts like the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil from western Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast and create jobs.

“That would boost jobs at Ellicott Dredges, but other than that, it’s just going to be another photo op on a campaign-style tour when the president should be in Washington tending to the nation’s business and to address the huge scandals that are popping up on a daily basis in Washington,” Harris said in a conference call with other Maryland Republicans.

The administration has not yet taken a position on the Keystone project, which is opposed by environmentalists but supported by the president of Ellicott Dredges, Peter Bowe, in testimony before Congress just a day earlier. Bowe said in an interview that he didn’t discuss it with the president.

“I’m not afraid of talking about it, but it didn’t come up,” Bowe said. Instead, he said, he told Obama about how the federal government is helping its export business.

Obama touted his effort to more quickly create construction jobs and repair roads, bridges and railways. He cited as an example the recently approved replacement of the aging Tappan Zee Bridge across the Hudson River in the suburbs just north of New York City. The White House said such large projects can take as many as four years to complete the permitting process, but multiple federal and state agencies coordinated simultaneous reviews to cut the time to a year and a half. Obama signed a memorandum Friday directing his agency heads to follow the practice and speed approval for other projects.

Obama also highlighted his proposal to provide preschool for all low-income families by visiting an early childhood program at Baltimore’s Moravia Park Elementary School. He sat at a table in the library with 4- and 5-year-olds learning to draw and write about their favorite zoo animals. “I’ve got to say, my tiger was not very good,” Obama joked later. “The kids were unimpressed.”

And he visited the Center for Urban Families, a nonprofit that promotes responsible fatherhood and provides job training to parents. One dad, Marcus Dixon, talked about how the center helped him after he got out of jail so he can help provide for his sons, ages 2 and 10. “It’s restored my dignity,” Dixon said of the program.

Obama told Dixon he is setting a powerful example for his sons and noted that he himself grew up without his father.

“I always tell people that, as great and heroic a job as moms do, particularly for boys, that’s a hard situation,” Obama said.

___

Associated Press writer Brian Witte contributed to this report.

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But labeling the strategy a success would be premature. Prices are still falling in the country, and there is little evidence to suggest Japan’s famously cautious savers are starting to spend or that promised structural reforms will be implemented.

Two of Abenomics’ three policy pillars are already in place. Japan has ramped up government spending and the central bank is injecting money into the economy on a massive scale.

Markets have responded as expected, with the yen falling 29% against the dollar since November, and the Nikkei rising to a five-year high while breaking the 15,000 point barrier. Corporate Japan has bought in too, delivering solid returns and forecasting higher profits.

Investors received a progress report Thursday, with Japan’s Cabinet Office reporting annual economic growth of 3.5% for the first quarter. The expansion was much quicker than the 2.7% increase expected by analysts.

Yet it’s not clear that the excitement is translating into all parts of the economy. Wages are flat-lining, while retail sales and industrial production indicators have also failed to impress.

Economists now expect inflation to kick in over the next year — but prices are still falling, continuing a 15-year deflationary trend in Japan.

But it is also too soon to call Abenomics a failure. The remaining pillar of the strategy — structural reforms — could prove to be the most beneficial over the long-term, if also the most difficult to implement guaranteed personal loan approval.

“[Prime Minister Shinzo] Abe himself admits that it will take more than fiscal and monetary stimulus to raise Japan’s long-term growth prospects,” Izumi Devalier, an economist at HSBC, wrote this week.

Abe’s government has proposed reforms that would make the labor market more flexible, encourage immigration, bring nuclear power plants back online and draw more Japanese women into the workforce.

Implementing the reforms in a timely manner will require close coordination with interest groups, sustained public support and deft political maneuvering by Abe’s government. Already there are signs of stalling momentum.

“It appears … that the push for big reforms has recently hit a wall, raising the risks of investor disappointment when the government announces its final growth strategy next month,” Devalier said.

No matter how encouraging the first quarter GDP figures turn out to be, policymakers will still have to erect the third pillar of Abenomics.

“Only bold deregulation can revive ‘animal spirits’ and ensure that Japan can keep up with the competition,” Devalier said.

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Exhibition Place’s push to add another 10 years to the lease of a nightclub in the old Horticulture Building, without a competitive bid process, is on hold.

Some are questioning why the city agency’s board of governors approved Muzik’s 10-year extension, until 2034, given MGM Resort’s campaign to win rights to build a massive casino resort on the Exhibition grounds.

“It just made no sense to me,” said Hugh Mansfield, one of two citizen board members to vote against the proposal at a December meeting.

“Why, in the middle of a larger development discussion, would you single out individual properties for considerable lease extensions?”

Mayor Rob Ford has railed against untendered lease extensions, including one granted to Boardwalk Caf

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President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is poised to swear in a new finance chief as early as tomorrow while his government prepares to set higher subsidized-fuel prices, moving to end policy ambiguity that has hurt investor confidence and the currency.

Acting Finance Minister Hatta Rajasa said today that the inauguration of his replacement, whom he declined to identify, would take place this week. He also said he signed a revised state budget that will be presented to Parliament tomorrow. The government has said the new budget will contain details of a compensation plan to offset the impact of higher fuel prices on the poor.

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Lawyers from Torys and Davies, two of the largest business law firms in the country, are used to being on opposite sides of the boardroom table, fighting to get the best deal for their clients.

Once a year, they take that fight — okay, it’s more like a friendly rivalry — to the streets, and this time their clients are children with cancer.

Seventeen Torys runners will take on at least 20 from Davies Ward Phillips and Vineberg in a race down Yonge Street as part of Sunday’s Sporting Life 10K to raise money for Camp Oochigeas. That Muskoka summer camp and the year-long program at Sick Kids hospital and a downtown Toronto facility are just about the only bright spots in the lives of children undergoing cancer treatment.

Before the race even begins, Torys will have a commanding lead with partner Jamie Scarlett having raised $28,000 for Camp Ooch this year. That’s more than all the lawyers at Davies combined.

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But Davies has history on its side with Jim Bunting and others having dreamed up http://www.ooch.org/page.aspx?pid=1337&frtid=1227 in the first place. That’s where a wide variety of companies egg each other on to raise the most funds. Started in 2008, the industry challenge raised $2.5 million in its first five years.

That means bragging rights may come down to speed on the road.

“I keep telling him to race me for time,” Scarlett says of Bunting, his legal rival and fellow Camp Ooch board member.

“Last year, he had some feeble excuse about running with his wife because it’s Mother’s Day. He’s a complete wimp. You can quote me,” adds Scarlett, whose 10K personal best of 42 minutes and change won’t challenge the world record but is awfully speedy for a 59-year-old.

Bunting, not surprisingly, has a different story.

“The last time I ran, I actually beat him quite handily,” says Bunting, whose PB is 43:00-ish.

“Jamie is really old. You can quote me on that,” said the 36-year-old litigator. “But Jamie is actually very fast, so I have to make sure I’m ready if I’m going to race him.”

Scarlett’s speed and extensive fundraising stem from a personal connection to the cause. His first wife, Debbie, died of thyroid cancer in 2007.

“I run hard because I’m competitive and because I think if I’m doing this in honour of Debbie I should work at it. I should not take it easy,” he says.

As Scarlett puts it, he’s been around a while and knows a lot of the people making it possible for him to raise large sums. But runners without those connections can still make an enormous difference by raising even $100. If each of the 27,000 runners in Sunday’s race did that, they’d blow right by their fundraising target of $2.4 million.

Last year, 23,000 Sporting Life 10K runners raised $2.1 million for Camp Ooch, enough to cover the entire summer residential program.

When a doctor gives a child a lollipop after being stoic, or not, during their vaccination shot they are trying to mitigate the bad with some good. Camp Ooch is that times a million. It’s a place where kids can have the childhood experiences that cancer too often robs them of. If necessary, they can continue chemotherapy between canoeing and gathering around the campfire.

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A London, Ont., man jailed in Mauritania for having ties with Al Qaeda is facing a new trial, the CBC reports.

Aaron Yoon, 24, who has claimed innocence in the attack on a gas plant in Algeria, has been ordered to stand a new trial next week after officials in Mauritania felt that the two-year sentence he received earlier was not long enough, the report said.

A human rights observer told the CBC Thursday that he was afraid that Yoon would not get a fair trial and might receive a heavier penalty.

Yoon has been in custody in Mauritania since December 2011 and was sentenced last July on charges of belonging to an illegal organization.

He went abroad with two high school friends, Ali Medlej, 24, and Xris Katsiroubas, 22, who later died in the attack on the gas refinery in January. At least 38 civilians and 29 militants were killed.

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The fight between Monster Beverage and San Francisco’s city attorney is intensifying. The city attorney is filing a lawsuit accusing the energy drink maker of marketing to young children.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera said Monday that Monster markets it highly caffeinated drinks to children as young as 6 years old, despite scientific findings that such products can cause health problems including severe cardiac events.

The lawsuit comes after Monster last week sued Herrera over his demands that it reduce the caffeine levels in its drinks and stop marketing to minors

On Monday, Herrera noted that his office had been working with Monster in “good faith to negotiate voluntary changes” when the company abruptly filed its lawsuit payday loans in one hour.

A spokesman for Monster Beverage Corp. did not immediately have a comment.

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BEIRUT—With a third airstrike against Syria in four months, Israel is enforcing its own “red line” of not allowing game-changing weapons to reach Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

The third attack came early Sunday. Powerful explosions struck the outskirts of Damascus, sending a fireball into the night sky. Syrian state television said Israeli rockets struck a military facility just north of the capital.

One of the sites hit, the Jamraya military research centre, was also targeted by Israel in January.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights quoted eyewitnesses in the area as saying they saw jets in the sky at the time of the explosions.

“The new Israeli attack is an attempt to raise the morale of the terrorist groups which have been reeling from strikes by our noble army,” Syrian television said, referring to the civil war between the government and rebels.

Israel declined to comment on the Damascus explosions, but that attack quickly followed an Israeli air strike Friday on a consignment of missiles in a Syrian warehouse intended for the Hezbollah, a heavily armed foe of the Jewish state and an ally of President Bashar Assad’s regime.

The two attacks raise new concerns that the region’s most powerful military could be dragged into Syria’s civil war and spark a wider conflagration.

An Israeli official said Friday’s strike targeted a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles, believed to be m600s, a Syrian version of Iran’s Fatah 110 missile. It’s an extremely accurate guided missile capable of travelling roughly 300 kilometres with a half-ton warhead.

The airstrikes come as Washington considers how to respond to indications that the Syrian regime may have used chemical weapons in its civil war. President Barack Obama has described the use of such weapons as a “red line,” and the administration is weighing its options — including possible military action.

Israel has said it wants to stay out of the brutal Syria war, but could inadvertently be drawn in as it tries to bolster its deterrence and prevent sophisticated weapons from flowing from Syria to Hezbollah or other extremist groups.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war in mid-2006 that ended in a stalemate.

Israel believes Hezbollah has restocked its arsenal with tens of thousands of rockets and missiles, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated the Jewish state would be prepared to take military action to prevent the Islamic militant group from obtaining new weapons that could upset the balance of power.

It is especially concerned that Hezbollah will take advantage of the chaos in neighbouring Syria and try to smuggle advanced weapons into Lebanon.

These include anti-aircraft missiles, which could hamper Israel’s ability to operate in Lebanese skies, and advanced Yakhont missiles that are used to attack naval ships from the coast.

In January, Israeli aircraft struck a shipment of what was believed to be Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles bound for Hezbollah, according to U.S. officials. Israeli officials have strongly hinted they carried out the airstrike, though there hasn’t been formal confirmation.

Neither Hezbollah nor Syria responded to that strike.

After Hezbollah’s military infrastructure was badly hit during the 2006 war, the group was rearmed by Iran and Syria — with Tehran sending the weapons and Damascus providing the overland supply route to Lebanon.

“This is a very sophisticated network of Iranian arms, Syrian collection, storage, distribution and transportation to Hezbollah,” said Salman Shaikh, director of The Brookings Doha Center.

Shaikh said Israel had detailed knowledge of weapons shipments to Hezbollah at the time and most likely has good intelligence now. “The Israelis are watching like hawks to see what happens to these weapons,” he said.

With Israel apparently enforcing its red lines, much now depends on the response from Hezbollah and Syria, analysts say.

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