There was mild amusement yesterday when newly-minted President Hollande had to delay his arrival in Germany after lightning struck his government jet.  The jet in question (seen back on the tarmac above) looks quite modest from the outside.  Let’s hope that there was at least some Sarkozy-era bling on the inside.  After all, other world leaders have some pretty luxurious plane interiors.  Check out a fun series of photos here.  Dilma Rousseff of Brazil can enjoy an in-flight shower:

But the Brazilian shower looks positively suburban compared to the one on the Russian presidential jet, which Vladimir Putin is presumably glad to have back:

That said, the real surprise is that some countries are still able to maintain presidential jets at all. Cash-strapped Greece has one.  Italy has one for the president and a couple of extra for officials.  Spain has a whole air group devoted to bearing the King and senior politicians about… check out a helpful list here.  Sadly, the quality of the bathrooms involved in call cases is not clear, but in an age of austerity shouldn’t some of these planes be grounded?

Robert Silvers is best-known for editing the New York Review of Books since its foundation, but he started out at The Paris Review, the classic “little magazine”.  But how did he get there?  It all began with a posting to NATO HQ in the 1950s:

I was a soldier at NATO military headquarters—called SHAPE—near Paris. One of the best things about working there was that, by some international understanding, practically everyone had Wednesday afternoon off—you could go to the Louvre, you could go to the Café de Flore. And there, one Wednesday afternoon, at the kiosk in front of the Flore, I bought a copy of The Paris Review and took it back to our international barracks at Rocquencourt and read it in my bunk. I thought I should know more about it.

For unknown to NATO, some of my old college friends at the Noonday Press in New York had asked me to be their scout in Paris and see what books I might find for translation. So on some of those Wednesday afternoons, I would see publishers.

One of the people he went to see was George Plimpton, who took him to a party:

The sun began to set over the Luxembourg Gardens nearby, and suddenly the lights came on in the street, and George said, “Pati Hill is having drinks on the Île Saint Louis, and why don’t we go over there?” So we walked down to the Île de la Cité and over the little bridge to the Quai d’Anjou and found the beautiful Pati Hill—once a model, now a writer for the Review—and she offered us tall glasses of blanc de blanc in her charming rooms near the Seine. And among the blur of American and French writers and artists there, I talked to John Train, who was one of the founders of The Paris Review, and he asked me to see him at his flat on the Avenue Franco-Russe the following Wednesday.

The rest is literary history.  Could a NATO official follow the same path now?

Jazz has inspired some great writing.  And this.

In November 2011, during the UNESCO General Conference, the international community proclaimed 30 April as “International Jazz Day”. This International Day will bring together communities, schools, artists, historians, academics, and jazz enthusiasts all over the world to celebrate and learn about the art of jazz, its roots, its future and its impact. This important international art form will be celebrated for promoting peace, dialogue among cultures, diversity, and respect for human rights and human dignity, eradicating discrimination, promoting freedom of expression, fostering gender equality, and reinforcing the role of youth for social change.

Yes, hepcats, the UN is digging jazz like never before.

By celebrating International Jazz Day, UNESCO intends to:

• Celebrate the unique musical style that jazz represents!
• Raise international awareness of the need for intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding;
• Mobilize the intellectual community, decision-makers, cultural entrepreneurs, cultural and educational institutions and the media to promote jazz-related values as a vector of UNESCO’s mandate, pioneering role and intellectual mission;
• Reinforce international cooperation and communication in the field of jazz music.

I’d devote a bit more time to mocking this (especially that exclamation mark) but as the album cover at the top of the post demonstrates, there’s a long history of jazz-multilateral-policy fusion.   Long may it continue.  Just try to keep the syncopated rhythms a little further away from the UN bullet points…

I have almost nothing to add to the NYT’s investigations, except that Luxembourg is running for a seat on the UN Security Council at the end of 2012. Watch out Belgium!

The Washington Diplomat, a magazine focusing on diplomats in Washington, brings us exciting sporting news:

On Feb. 25, Asia’s time-honored tradition of “ping-pong diplomacy” took on a whole new meaning when [Chinese ambassador to the U.S.] Zhang Yesui and fellow diplomats representing the neighboring countries of Kazakhstan and Russia converged on the Kazakh Embassy to anoint a local ping-pong champion.

The formal-sounding “Kazakhstan-China-Russia Table Tennis Friendship Tournament” was anything but. The host team donned bright yellow “Kazakhstan” T-shirts that quickly became soaked in sweat; the Chinese wore red. In between action-packed games, these weekend warriors quenched their thirst with ice-cold Stella Artois beer and snacked on Costa Rican bananas and gala apples from Washington state.

All that sweat, beer and fresh fruit erased the diplomats’ daily cares:

On this particular Saturday afternoon, the diplomats’ attention was focused not on the war in Afghanistan, or Iran’s nuclear buildup, or the recent U.N. Security Council resolution imposing economic sanctions against Syria that was vetoed by both China and Russia — but on the fierce ping-pong battle being played out among three teams representing the world’s largest, fourth-largest and ninth-largest countries by size.

China won by a big margin.  But the Washington Diplomat would like to reassure readers that the Kazakh ambassador Kazakh Ambassador Erlan Idrissov was not downhearted:

Even if his country doesn’t produce the world’s best ping-pong players, it’s an undisputed champion when it comes to vodka.

After the lavish Kazakh-style buffet dinner following the tournament, Idrissov handed each of his guests a goodie bag containing, among other things, a 750-ml decorative bottle of potent Snow Queen. This rare spirit, named “Top Vodka” at the 2008 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, sells for $70 a bottle and is the international winner of 10 gold, seven silver and eight bronze medals for excellence — a spirited end to a long day of hands-on diplomacy.

I for one would have needed a few shots of Snow Queen after all that.