If last’s week Thursday morning linkage was Africa-themed, this week’s links are China-related and inevitably harken back to the events in Boston:

• Laurie Garrett, as she is wont to do, wonders if this recent bird flu outbreak in China is “the big one“
• Beijing air is so bad they are canceling recess, kids at grave risk
• Oh, and Shanghai air sucks too
• China’s shale gas revolution has yet to begin (Armond Cohen thinks it will take too long to take off)
• Japanese tree die-off blamed on air pollution from China
• New bilateral effort between U.S. and China to address climate change
• Chinese demand for fish bladder for soup threatens endangered Baja California species

Here are some of the leading stories on the terrorist attack in Boston:

• Micah Zenko questions what we will learn about their motivations
• Max Abrahms suggests that these guys were dumb (Mother Jones identified 11 dumb things: no escape plan, leaving hostage in the car while going to get snacks, admitting guilt, can’t seem to use ATMs, leaving hostage’s cell in the car, allowing themselves to be photographed)
• Charles King argues that these are not your typical Chechen jihadis but they may end up serving Russia’s interests in Syria
• Patrick Meier on the positive aspects of crowdsourcing after Boston
• Did Reddit f-up the effort to ID the bombers?

From Tumblr “Office Hours Are Over”: When Colleagues Stop By To Tell Me About How Somebody Didn’t Cite Their Work

Some other things you might have missed:

• Steve Martin (yes, that wild and crazy guy) and Edie Brickell (What I Am?/Paul Simon’s mid-life muse) have an album of banjo folk music
• The National will be playing their song “Sorrow” for six hours straight at MoMA
• Hey, the bassist from the Ace of Base used to be a Nazi
• Daft Punk brings back the 1970s with this jam with Pharrell
• Phoenix kicks off their new album sounding like David Bowie’s “China Girl”