A lobbying group backed by Elliott Management's Paul Singer enlisted the American Agriculture Movement, the American Association of University Professors and the Cattle Producers of Washington, to lend heft to investors' efforts to recover defaulted Argentinean debt through political channels. One problem? The trade groups aren't really sure how their good names got associated with anything having to do with Argentina, as The Wall Street Journal reports.

Another strange one: A former employee of William Koch—billionaire brother to Charles and David—says his boss kidnapped him after he raised concerns over a plan to evade $200 million in taxes.

Caxton Associates is trimming management fees to 2.6 percent form 3. percent, and performance fees to 27.5 percent from 30 percent, according to The Journal. Macro funds such as Caxton often charge higher fees than the traditional two and twenty; Caxton follows macro funds Tudor Investment Corp and Graham Capital Management in adjusting fee structures.

High-frequency trading firms are said to be dialing back in the face of lower profits.

James Gorman, Wall Street revolutionary?

Activist investors Warren Lichtenstein and Tim Brog are squaring off over board seats at supply-chain company ModusLink, according to The New York Post.

There's plenty for world finance chiefs to fight over in a series of upcoming meetings. There's Greece, of course, plus Spain, Italy and assorted other eurozone economies. Also: a territorial dispute between China and Japan, not to mention U.S. lawmakers' refusal to deal with the coming fiscal cliff.

Thousands of anti-austerity protesters marched through Madrid, banging pots and pans, to protest austerity measures.

Send in the troops! The Swiss Army is preparing to mobilize in event that the European debt crisis turns violent.

The London Whale—still mysterious/fascinating as ever.

George Soros

Tonight, the Institute of International Education honors a group of high-rollers who’ve helped protect the rights of scholars worldwide, including full-time philanthropist and sporadically engaged GOP bogeyman George Soros and Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek. Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont will be helping present the awards, and Kofi Annan will be in attendance as well ... Meanwhile, a man perhaps more powerful even than Mr. Leahy, HBO auteur David Simon (The Wire, Treme), conducts a conversation with ProPublica investigative reporter A.C. Thompson about the challenges of turning real life into compelling fiction. We’d attend, but every time we think about putting in The Wire, we end up watching a Gossip Girl rerun!

Institute of International Education gala, Cipriani Wall Street, 55 Wall Street, 6:30pm cocktail reception, 7:30pm dinner and awards, tickets and information can be found at iie.org; ProPublica/David Simon panel, Cantor Film Center, 38 East Eighth Street, 8:30pm, open to the public, information can be found at propublica.org.

“He is Kofi Annan,” Mr. Kissinger replied.

“Is he a distinguished fellow?” Ms. Astor asked.

In fact, the sitting secretary general of the United Nations was the guest of honor that night at the very dinner the late grande dame of Manhatthan high society was then hosting.

And so the parade of high-profile witnesses dishing embarassing tales of the esteemed socialite's late-life forgetfulness and delusion continued on Thursday, May 21, in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Mr. Kissinger, wearing a stately black suit with a maroon tie, recounted the conversation in his much anticipated morning testimony at the trial of Ms. Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, who stands accused of raiding his mother’s estate for more than $60 million, through a series of will changes at a time when the wealthy society maven was battling Alzheimer's. (Mr. Kissinger's wife, Nancy Kissinger, testified earlier; next up: Barbara Walters!)

Three months after the Kofi Annan incident, at her 100th birthday party, Ms. Astor would fail to recognize Mr. Kissinger, too. He would not see her again before her death in 2007 at the age of 105.

Prior to her decline, the prominent pair had been friends for almost a quarter of a century, traveling to the Middle East together in the early 1980s, and making a series of holiday trips to the home of designer Oscar de la Renta and wife Annette de la Renta in the Dominican Republic, where the two would take long afternoon walks.

“We had a rule: Never discuss substance, only discuss people,” Mr. Kissinger testified. “It was great gossiping sessions.”

Mr. Kissinger nearly wrecked their friendship twenty years prior, when he mentioned Ms. Astor’s advancing age in a toast at her 80th birthday party. “That was a disaster,” he admitted on the stand. “She shot up from her chair, denying she was 80. A lot of the other guests got up and said I obviously didn’t know what I was talking about.”

After the party, “she wouldn’t talk to me, she wouldn’t take phone calls,” Mr. Kissinger testified. He finally sent flowers, and some kind of note about how the Chinese assign ages arbitrarily, which seemed to do the trick.

The former secretary of state was rather diplomatic in discussing Charlene Marshall, the much-maligned wife of the accused Mr. Marshall. “She was not fond of her daughter-in-law,” Mr. Kissinger said.

On cross-examination, Thomas Puccio, an attorney for Mr. Marshall's co-defendant Francis X. Morrissey, seemed to pry for a little courtroom gossip about their close friendship.

“Would you care to tell me how a close a friend?” Mr. Puccio asked.

“I’m not sure how you mean that,” Mr. Kissinger replied.

On his way out of the courthouse, Mr. Kissinger was helped by a group of guards. “Dr. Kissinger, anything you want to say to the press?” one reporter asked.

“No, thank you,” he replied with a hearty smile. He then stopped, shook the hands of two reporters, and then kissed court officer Jennifer Morgan on the cheek before hopping into a black Audi.

“No one’s ever done that to me,” Ms. Morgan told the Daily Transom after returning to the courtroom. “I was embarrassed. I wasn’t expecting it! My heart’s still pounding."

Ban Ki Moon, who officially succeeded Kofi Annan on January 1, tried to reassure New Yorkers that he would do his best to minimize inconvenience during major meetings of the world body. "Maybe I can help reduce traffic jams by asking visiting heads of state to take subways as Mayor Bloomberg does," he joked.

Keeping the focus local, Mr. Ban also cautioned that the renovation of the UN's headquarters might cause "disruption for the neighbors."

Mr. Ban mostly steered clear of contentious topics. However, in response to a question from the floor about anti-Semitism, he talked about the concern he felt when "a certain country would not recognize the existence of a certain other member state of the United Nations. This is not acceptable." The reference, presumably, was to Iran and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Mr. Ban's remarks came at a breakfast hosted by The Association for a Better New York (ABNY) and The Business Council for the United Nations (BCUN.) Among the attendees were former mayor David Dinkins and Diana Taylor, the mayor's partner and the Superintendent of Banks for the state.

On the vexed issue of the U.S. relationship with the UN, Mr. Ban played safe, arguing that the world body and the superpower both benefited from engagement with each other. But, perhaps showing the degree to which Turtle Bay feels under siege, Mr. Ban told the audience, "I hope you will speak up in favor of the United Nations in New York and around the world, and about the importance of U.S. leadership and engagement with the organization. All of us have a stake in getting these relationships right."

The Secretary General also treated the audience to a long and somewhat labored joke about the pronunciation of his first name. Apparently, it should not be pronounced 'ban' but more like 'bawn'. He admitted that he should have changed the English spelling -- maybe 'Bahn' or 'Bon', he said -- before now. But "since there will be so many things to ban as Secretary General, it is very relevant to my job."

-- Niall Stanage

In flesh-and-blood terms, it is our soldiers and Marines who are trapped, reduced to little more than trying to keep themselves alive as a holocaust of sorts rages around them. On Thanksgiving Day, as our people tried to eat their dinners in safety, Baghdad was drowning in blood. More than 200 people were killed, perhaps twice that number were wounded, and there was nothing that our people could do to prevent it, so they ate their turkey and hoped for the best.

The next day, Shiites who had been the victims of the Thanksgiving massacre retaliated by attacking Sunni mosques and, it goes without saying, killing as many people as they could get their hands on or their bullets into. There were reports, which what passes for the Iraqi government denied, that three or more Sunnis were torched by way of reprisal. The retaliatory attacks were done in contravention of a government order for all to stay off the streets and remain at home. Neither the inaccurately named Iraqi security forces nor the American military enforced the order.

Trying to dope out what’s going on in Iraq is an art form that I admit I have yet to master, but one gets whiffs of what’s happening as American journalism gets accustomed to finding out for itself instead of believing what it is told. In that vein, a few days ago The New York Times quoted a U.S. Army captain who has ordered her troops to stop foot patrols and to travel only when necessary: “I just want to get everyone home …. I’m just not willing to lose another soldier.”

While our overstretched and overused forces must of necessity grow weary of a war against the nameless and the unseen, the other side (or sides) gathers strength. In what must be treated as an ominous development among many other ominous developments, Sunni Arab groups reportedly have established training camps near Baghdad. The training is apparently achieving results: During a recent battle in Turki, a group of insurgents stood and fought a set-piece battle against our professionally trained troops.

Lt. Col. Andrew Poppas, commander of the Fifth Squadron, 73rd Cavalry, a unit of the 82nd Airborne Division, said in an interview with The Times that the fighters at Turki “were disciplined and well trained …. We hadn’t seen anything like this in years.” Little doubt about it: Whoever they are who are shooting at us, they’re getting stronger and we are not. Another indication of the direction of events is the frequent publication of the assertion that Baghdad’s airport is no longer safe enough to receive President George W. Bush and his entourage, as it had been doing in the past. More worrisome was the news that they—those people without names or identification—had penetrated the Green Zone, which houses what is called the Iraqi government as well as all the American rear-echelon types, and had detonated a bomb. It may not be crunch time yet, but none of this speaks well for the future of our people over there.

As our position in Iraq grows more precarious, one gets the impression that, elsewhere in the immediate region, hidden and suppressed anger against the United States is finding open and fearless expression in places where it dared not previously voice itself. In Abu Dhabi, a place which has heretofore received high muckety-mucks from America with deep respect, Bush 41 was heckled and jeered at a meeting where he was told, inter alia, “We do not respect your son. We do not respect what he’s doing all over the world”—which drew forth an emotional defense of his spawn by the man who has come to be known as the Good Bush, but being booed by women in chadors is better than being stoned by one’s own people, which is what happened recently to Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s ineffectual prime minister.

In Washington, as the dimensions of the mess in the Middle East have become apparent even to the obdurate blockheads who run things, confusion and a degree or two of panic have begun to tinge the atmosphere as it grows heavy with far-fetched hopes and “plans” for leaving, staying or hovering around Iraq. Loss of will and direction has reached the point that the President, a man of undeviating personality, is talking about soliciting suggestions regarding what to do next. Expectations are that the Iraq Study Group or Commission or the Baker-Hamilton Whatchamacallit is going to come up with something that gets us out of this fix.

There are a number of fixes to be gotten out of here. What should be the first in importance (but may be the last to command Washington’s attention) is the fix that our troops have been put in by their dunderheaded commander in chief. There is the fix the White House is looking for to lessen the blame, and there is also the fix to accommodate the Democrats, who live in fear that the public will come to know their full complicity in this debacle.

In co-chairman James Baker, you have a master fixer who is credited with making off with the 2000 Presidential election for the Republicans. Lee Hamilton, his co-chairman, is a Democrat, not known to have ever fixed anything, but he is regarded as a studious, sincere, honest, highly clubbable Indianan who has been without a fresh idea since entering public life an eon and a half ago.

The rest are a mixed bag, including an ex–Supreme Court Justice, an agent of Henry Kissinger’s (the man who won the Vietnam War) and some other smart, rich people who have apparently reached that stage in life where they either sit on committees or feed pigeons in the park. The odds are against their finding a drug to cure cancer or a formula for extracting our troops and ourselves from Mesopotamia, a land that has seen armies disappear into it as far back as Assyrian and Parthian times.

The formula that will emerge from the meetings, reports, studies and agonizings will be tailored more to the contours of American culture and politics than to the realities of an angry Middle East. There is bound to be a training component, because we are a people who put great stock in words like “training” and “education.”

The Iraqi Army and the police are to be trained—never mind that for years now, we’ve been told by the Bush administration that this training was well underway. Some thousands of American service personnel—untrained at training, unable to speak Arabic, and ignorant of the politics, the loyalties and the motives of the Iraqis—are going to be doing this stepped-up training. You may count on very little training taking place, but there is reason to fear that some of our people—detached to distant parts of the country, alone and embedded, as we say—are going to be killed.

The formula will also contain provisions for more of this endless round of summits, these perfectly unproductive, repetitive meetings with the politicians from other countries, in which we demand and/or implore them to pull our chestnuts out of the fire. Part of President Bush’s special genius at foreign affairs is his conviction that he can threaten and denounce Middle Eastern countries with the expectation that, at the same time, he can extract quids from them without having to come up with any pro quos. So Syria will be asked once again to close its long border with Iraq, as though such a thing were so easy. We cannot close our own long border with Mexico.

Lastly, there will be the phased withdrawal and/or timetable part of the plan, but the more of the troops that leave, the more vulnerable are the ones who are left there. Not since Vietnam have our soldiers and their families suffered so much for so little—and still there is no end in sight.

As for the Iraqis, the moment has come to blame them for what’s happened. With every passing day, more and more American politicians are complaining that the Iraqis aren’t stepping up to the plate, haven’t lived up to their responsibilities, do not appreciate everything we’ve done for them and are refusing to take advantage of the opportunities we’ve provided—in short, that they aren’t coming through in the clutch. Who knows? American voters may buy it, and as for the Iraqis, in a little less than four years they have gone from regime change to no regime at all.

It’s the only startling thing about Ban Ki Moon, a man whose lack of charisma is absolute.

Even the news that the South Korean foreign minister had effectively sealed his victory in the race to succeed Kofi Annan as the U.N. Secretary General was delivered with a shrug of the shoulders.

China’s U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, announced the result of Monday afternoon’s Security Council straw poll to the waiting media at the organization’s Turtle Bay headquarters.

“It is quite clear from today’s straw poll,” Mr. Wang began, “that Minister Ban Ki Moon is the candidate that the Security Council”—here came the shrug—“will recommend to the General Assembly.”

It is now all but certain that this most unremarkable official, who was the Bush administration’s preferred choice for the post, will be heading up an organization with an annual budget of more than $5 billion. He will become the face of international conflict resolution for the next decade.

(If Mr. Ban serves two terms—of the seven full-fledged Secretaries General to date, only Boutros Boutros-Ghali was denied the opportunity—he will not leave office until the end of 2016.)

Some of the most forceful criticism of Mr. Ban, whose career in his nation’s foreign ministry began 36 years ago, may be unfair. But it is undeniable that an election that was billed as a chance to show the new, dynamic face of the United Nations has ended up following a familiar pattern.

While some other contenders in the field of seven embraced the notion of a more open electoral process, giving numerous speeches, feverishly penning op-ed articles and otherwise making a public case for their candidacies, Mr. Ban was virtually invisible to the public.

He eschewed all but the most scripted appearances and routinely declined interviews. (Repeated attempts by The Observer to contact him in the week before the final straw poll were unsuccessful.)

Mr. Ban did, however, quietly make the rounds of the member states of the Security Council. He also received the energetic support of his government—backing which itself attracted controversy and unfavorable comment late in the race.

Last week, both The Washington Post and The Times of London reported that Seoul had offered aid and other incentives to nations whose votes would be important to Mr. Ban’s bid.

They drew particular attention to Mr. Ban’s pledge of millions of dollars in aid for Tanzania during a trip in May; another recent trip by him to the Republic of the Congo (the first by a senior South Korean official since the African state gained independence in 1960); and a trade mission to Greece headed by Mr. Ban and his nation’s president last month, which culminated in the signing of agreements on trade, tourism and transport. Tanzania, Congo and Greece are all on the 15-member Security Council.

Mr. Ban and his government have vigorously insisted that their behavior was ethically sound. But the stories have been met with dismay—though not surprise—by U.N. skeptics.

“The wheeling and dealing for position at the U.N. is a very unfortunate way of life for the institution,” said the Hudson Institute’s Anne Bayefsky, who is also editor of the eyeontheun.org Web site.

Mr. Ban’s victory is not yet official, but it is virtually sealed. A Security Council meeting is scheduled for next Monday. Barring a colossal shock, that meeting will recommend the South Korean as the next Secretary General. The U.N. General Assembly will then vote on whether to accept the recommendation. The Assembly has never rejected a Security Council–approved candidate before, and there have been no hints that it intends to start now.

Ultimately, the mild-mannered Mr. Ban’s greatest asset has been his status as the candidate least likely to offend anyone important.

Still, some of Mr. Ban’s fellow envoys are dissatisfied with the outcome. “We were expecting other candidates that never came into the race,” one diplomat from a permanent Security Council member state told The Observer wistfully. Speaking on condition of anonymity on the afternoon that the final straw poll was to take place, he added, “We were hoping for candidates from Singapore. Some other places we were expecting never proposed anyone. It is more of that, to be truthful, and less [Mr. Ban’s] outstanding personality that has decided it.”

Some of Mr. Ban’s rivals were undoubtedly more colorful. But all of them had at least one fatal electoral flaw that made it impossible for them to put together a winning bid.

Shashi Tharoor, the official nominee of the Indian government, ran second to Mr. Ban throughout the process. Mr. Tharoor, whose clipped speaking tones, floppy hairstyle and urbane air all suggest a childhood spent in elite English circles—in fact, though born in London, he was educated in India and the United States—has worked for the United Nations since 1978. He is also a novelist.

Mr. Tharoor’s long service in the U.N.—especially his close association with Kofi Annan, which dates back to at least 1997—is understood to have given pause to those nations that wanted the new ‘S.G.’ to be unaffiliated with the outgoing regime.

“An older broom can sweep cleaner, because he knows where to sweep and how to sweep,” Mr. Tharoor insisted to The Observer in the week before the final straw poll. However, it was not to be, and he promptly conceded defeat on Monday.

Mr. Tharoor was also disadvantaged by an accident of birth. Secretaries General have traditionally come from nations that are not major international players. Many at Turtle Bay believe that India is too large and too powerful these days to garner the support that would put one of its citizens in the top job.

The relatively late entry of Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga into the race caused a big media stir. The sole European contender, she would have become the first female Secretary General in the world body’s history. But all the attention was misplaced, The Observer’s Security Council source insisted.

“She was always barred by Russia,” he explained. “They made it known from the start that they wouldn’t accept her.” China was also said to be opposed to her candidacy.

The mini-drama that really roiled U.N. insiders concerned the Thai candidate, Surakiart Sathirathai. In what came to be seen as a strategic error, the influential 10-member bloc of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) threw its support to the Thai early on. But his performance didn’t live up to expectations, and the final nail in his coffin came with the coup in his native country.

To general consternation, rather than withdraw from the race, Mr. Sathirathai traveled to Thailand, then proclaimed that the new government was backing him. His continued candidacy effectively made it impossible for any other candidate from the ASEAN nations to come forward.

“It would be rather hard to go for a new U.N. Secretary General who has been blessed by coup leaders, however bloodless the coup might have been,” CUNY Graduate Center professor Thomas Weiss, an expert on the world body, noted dryly.

One of the few people who did express firm enthusiasm for Mr. Ban was U.S. Ambassador John Bolton. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Mr. Bolton pronounced the U.S. “very pleased” with the outcome of the Security Council’s straw poll.

Mr. Ban served in South Korea’s U.S. embassy during two separate periods, and was also once the director general of American affairs in his nation’s foreign ministry.

In the eyes of some observers, however, this convivial relationship with the U.S. constitutes a barrier that Mr. Ban will have to overcome rather than a feather in his cap.

“One of the current Secretary General’s real problems is that he is perceived as a lackey of Washington—I think unfairly,” Mr. Weiss said. “Ban would really have to bend over backwards not to appear to be on Washington’s payroll.”

Others are not so sure that the U.S. will find Mr. Ban a reliable ally. Ruth Wedgwood, a professor of international law and diplomacy at Johns Hopkins, suggested that differences of emphasis are apparent between the U.S. and South Korea on vital issues, most obviously how best to deal with the threat posed by North Korea.

Ms. Wedgwood also noted that Mr. Ban has suggested that he would leave much of the day-to-day administration of the world body to a deputy. “He ought not to be an absentee landlord,” Ms. Wedgwood warned. “He can’t just be the figurehead.”

Thomas Kilgannon, the president of the right-wing Freedom Alliance and a fierce critic of the U.N., also cautioned that assertions of Mr. Ban’s closeness to the U.S. could prove wide of the mark.

“Kofi Annan was the choice of the U.S. at one point,” Mr. Kilgannon said. “Look what he did! He’s anti-American; he’s presided over scandals—he’s a disgrace.”

Mr. Kilgannon also claimed that South Korea’s campaign on behalf of Mr. Ban “says it’s business as usual at the U.N.”

Not everyone adopted such a gloomy view, however. Tony Fleming runs the unsg.org Web site, which tracked the Secretary General race in great detail. He asserted that Mr. Ban’s “diplomatic skills are unquestionable.” He pointed to his role in the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program as evidence of this deftness of touch.

It is also true that some Secretaries General have risen from great obscurity to widespread acclaim. Dag Hammarskjöld, who occupied the top position from 1953 until his death in 1961, is almost universally considered the most effective leader in the U.N.’s history. But when Hammarskjöld was first recommended by the Security Council, legend has it that even he was shocked by the decision—he wasn’t aware that he was being considered.

With the U.N. under near-constant attack, with memories of scandals involving the oil-for-food program and sexual harassment still fresh, and with a host of knotty international problems to tackle, many in Turtle Bay and beyond will be hoping that Mr. Ban can rise to the challenges that lie ahead.

Whether that hope will be fulfilled, however, remains very much in doubt.

“Let me be unkind: The real reason he looks like winning is because he is so innocuous a person,” Mr. Weiss said.

“Major powers are very fond of having someone at the top who will not make any waves.”

But even if Mr. Annan succeeds and the Israeli blockade is lifted, it will still come too late for Jack Yacoubian, a Lebanese Armenian goldsmith that I met in Amman yesterday. Mr. Yacoubian, who is in his early 30’s, has spent his entire life in Bourj Hammoud, Beirut’s Armenian enclave. He recently lost his job with a large Lebanese jewelry company because the Israeli blockade has made it impossible for his employers to ship their products to overseas customers, mainly in the Persian Gulf countries; about 170 employees were laid off, he said.

“I have lost my work; I have lost everything,” Mr. Yacoubian said. “Many of us Armenians are jewelers, and our business has been ruined. Our boss tried to help us; he paid all of us out of his own pocket for a whole month, even though he couldn’t sell anything. But after that it was all over. He finally had to let us go.”

When I met him in Amman’s Queen Alia International Airport early yesterday morning, Mr. Yacoubian was on his way to seek his fortune in Bogotá, Colombia, where he has friends that he believes may be able to help him to find a new job. He doubts that he will be coming back to Beirut any time very soon.

“I will give it two months, three months, in Colombia, and then I will see what is the situation in Beirut again,” Mr. Yacoubian said. “But I do not feel very hopeful now. I think that Lebanon has many difficulties still ahead.”

Whatever promises to aid Lebanon or to support its troops near the Israeli border that Mr. Annan succeeds in extracting from Arab leaders this week, rebuilding Lebanon’s economy will take a very long time. Many highly educated or specially skilled Lebanese like Mr. Yacoubian, even including some of those who stayed throughout the war, are now making very painful and personal choices: about whether to stay in their country, or to seek greater stability and better opportunities overseas.

Many Lebanese who fled during their country’s long civil war had returned in recent years, and thanks in large part to their skills, energies and investments, Beirut had once again become a thriving Mediterranean capital. But many middle and upper-class Lebanese have dual passports, and extended families abroad. They have ambitions for themselves and their families that are not necessarily rooted in Lebanon, and they have options.

“How many times in your life can you rebuild everything?” a middle-aged Lebanese woman asked me the other week in Damascus. “Two times, three times maybe? You rebuild your home, your business two or three times. And after that maybe you say, that’s enough, and you find a home someplace else.”

A extraordinarily cosmopolitan people, many Lebanese, particularly the educated elite, are asking similarly agonized questions these days, trying to figure out whether the ceasefire will last, trying to decide whether they can bear to start all over again in the midst of such a tenuous peace. Loving your country is all very well, they say, but what good is patriotism in the face of domestic factionalism and the constant threat of Israeli attack? What sort of crazy devotion would make an educated, ambitious young person forsake other opportunities in order to stay in such a place?

In Beirut last week, and among the groups of Lebanese who remain in Damascus and Amman in recent days, I’ve heard these questions asked constantly. How the majority will eventually decide to answer them will have a huge effect on Lebanon’s prospects for a speedy recovery.

Among those Lebanese who have already resolved to stay, there is naturally some resentment of those who are on the fence. A young university professor that I met in Beirut last week spoke witheringly of his privileged students, most of whom had fled to Europe or the United States with the onset of Israeli air strikes, and some of whom have said that they don’t plan to return.

“These kids are rich,” the professor told me bitterly. “That means they have the chance to decide whether or not they are Lebanese.”

For parents, the questions are even more difficult. It is impossible to spend much time in Lebanon these days without hearing a great deal about the effects that the war has had on Lebanese children, about the unusual tearfulness and aggression shown by even normally even-tempered young children. A Lebanese friend, Patrick, spoke of his decision to send his 10-year-old daughter to stay with relatives in Europe during the worst of the fighting, and then his eventual decision to bring her home again, despite some relatives’ urgings that he educate her abroad.

“These children, this generation, knew nothing of war,” Patrick said. “When I was a teenager, we used to go out dancing, and we’d hear explosions. We’d leave the club for a few minutes, pull people out of the rubble and take them to the hospital, and then go right back to drink and dance. We didn’t think anything of it. This was normal life for us.

“I had really thought that for my daughter it would be different,” Patrick continued. “I felt angry when the fighting began, and I decided to send her abroad, so that she wouldn’t see this. But I’ve decided to bring her home. She will start the school year here, whatever happens. She is Lebanese, and this fighting, these bombings, are her heritage. She is 10 years old; she is old enough to understand.”

But even if Mr. Annan succeeds and the Israeli blockade is lifted, it will still come too late for Jack Yacoubian, a Lebanese Armenian goldsmith that I met in Amman yesterday. Mr. Yacoubian, who is in his early 30’s, has spent his entire life in Bourj Hammoud, Beirut’s Armenian enclave. He recently lost his job with a large Lebanese jewelry company because the Israeli blockade has made it impossible for his employers to ship their products to overseas customers, mainly in the Persian Gulf countries; about 170 employees were laid off, he said.

“I have lost my work; I have lost everything,” Mr. Yacoubian said. “Many of us Armenians are jewelers, and our business has been ruined. Our boss tried to help us; he paid all of us out of his own pocket for a whole month, even though he couldn’t sell anything. But after that it was all over. He finally had to let us go.”

When I met him in Amman’s Queen Alia International Airport early yesterday morning, Mr. Yacoubian was on his way to seek his fortune in Bogotá, Colombia, where he has friends that he believes may be able to help him to find a new job. He doubts that he will be coming back to Beirut any time very soon.

“I will give it two months, three months, in Colombia, and then I will see what is the situation in Beirut again,” Mr. Yacoubian said. “But I do not feel very hopeful now. I think that Lebanon has many difficulties still ahead.”

Whatever promises to aid Lebanon or to support its troops near the Israeli border that Mr. Annan succeeds in extracting from Arab leaders this week, rebuilding Lebanon’s economy will take a very long time. Many highly educated or specially skilled Lebanese like Mr. Yacoubian, even including some of those who stayed throughout the war, are now making very painful and personal choices: about whether to stay in their country, or to seek greater stability and better opportunities overseas.

Many Lebanese who fled during their country’s long civil war had returned in recent years, and thanks in large part to their skills, energies and investments, Beirut had once again become a thriving Mediterranean capital. But many middle and upper-class Lebanese have dual passports, and extended families abroad. They have ambitions for themselves and their families that are not necessarily rooted in Lebanon, and they have options.

“How many times in your life can you rebuild everything?” a middle-aged Lebanese woman asked me the other week in Damascus. “Two times, three times maybe? You rebuild your home, your business two or three times. And after that maybe you say, that’s enough, and you find a home someplace else.”

A extraordinarily cosmopolitan people, many Lebanese, particularly the educated elite, are asking similarly agonized questions these days, trying to figure out whether the ceasefire will last, trying to decide whether they can bear to start all over again in the midst of such a tenuous peace. Loving your country is all very well, they say, but what good is patriotism in the face of domestic factionalism and the constant threat of Israeli attack? What sort of crazy devotion would make an educated, ambitious young person forsake other opportunities in order to stay in such a place?

In Beirut last week, and among the groups of Lebanese who remain in Damascus and Amman in recent days, I’ve heard these questions asked constantly. How the majority will eventually decide to answer them will have a huge effect on Lebanon’s prospects for a speedy recovery.

Among those Lebanese who have already resolved to stay, there is naturally some resentment of those who are on the fence. A young university professor that I met in Beirut last week spoke witheringly of his privileged students, most of whom had fled to Europe or the United States with the onset of Israeli air strikes, and some of whom have said that they don’t plan to return.

“These kids are rich,” the professor told me bitterly. “That means they have the chance to decide whether or not they are Lebanese.”

For parents, the questions are even more difficult. It is impossible to spend much time in Lebanon these days without hearing a great deal about the effects that the war has had on Lebanese children, about the unusual tearfulness and aggression shown by even normally even-tempered young children. A Lebanese friend, Patrick, spoke of his decision to send his 10-year-old daughter to stay with relatives in Europe during the worst of the fighting, and then his eventual decision to bring her home again, despite some relatives’ urgings that he educate her abroad.

“These children, this generation, knew nothing of war,” Patrick said. “When I was a teenager, we used to go out dancing, and we’d hear explosions. We’d leave the club for a few minutes, pull people out of the rubble and take them to the hospital, and then go right back to drink and dance. We didn’t think anything of it. This was normal life for us.

“I had really thought that for my daughter it would be different,” Patrick continued. “I felt angry when the fighting began, and I decided to send her abroad, so that she wouldn’t see this. But I’ve decided to bring her home. She will start the school year here, whatever happens. She is Lebanese, and this fighting, these bombings, are her heritage. She is 10 years old; she is old enough to understand.”

The New York Times provides an update (2nd item) on a deal that The Real Estate reported in July, involving China's most famous woman, Yue-Sai Kan. The wealthy businesswoman and TV star plans on combining a recent townhouse purchase with her current home. The result will be a 20,000-square-foot spread with a whopping $42 million pricetag. If the size alone doesn't sway you, consider summer cookouts with Kofi Annan, who shares the private community garden.

Although record-breaking sales grab headlines during Manhattan's housing boom, the majority of people still dwell at the lower end of the buying spectrum. So how does the person not in the market for a palatial Sutton Square townhouse jump into the fray?

While your average New Yorker pinches pennies in hopes of buying that first apartment, television personality and Jeopardy contestant Bob Costas happily drops $100,000 on a new closet in the Time Warner Center, according to the New York Post. Also, are there any celebrities left that have not yet moved to One Beacon Court?

This summer, mega-developer Gary Barnett's two 30-plus story condos garnered the most attention at 99th and Broadway, including community protests and the collapse of a Gristedes that was being demolished. But in the midst of all this drama, a small neighborhood theater might close. Umm...again.

-Michael Calderone

"This has been an exciting twenty-four hours for me. Last night I was introduced by Elizabeth Hurley," said the mayor, who looked tan—either because of the theater lights or all that time spent playing golf in the Caribbean—in a pink shirt and light purple tie. "Today, it's Robert De Niro." He then added with a mischievous grin, that he has to be nice to Mr. De Niro to get "a last-minute reservation at Nobu," which De Niro, in part, owns.

He also quipped that film commissioner Katherine Oliver had "worked [Kofi Annan] over" to let Sydney Pollack shoot The Interpreter at the U.N. "Nobody stands in Katherine Oliver's way," he said. When a reporter asked why it had taken so long to create a festival of TFF's stature, Mike responded, "Well, I wasn't mayor before then. I'm not taking credit. I'm just stating a fact." Bobby D stood there and laughed.