Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).

The strange case of the disappearing news story: Richard Spencer blogs about the difficulties he faced in reporting on the Chinese government's changing story about the "incident" on a flight from Urumqi to Beijing:

There is little way of garnering independent evidence, so you put in a balance.

But my story today was more difficult. I thought it was pretty weird that the claims about the Olympics terror attack just disappeared overnight. The China Daily version had the terror claims but nothing about the Olympics; the story that carried them originally - a Xinhua English-language report - was taken down from the website; and there was no mention in Beijing Chinese-language state media at all. (There was some in provincial newspapers).

Related article in The Telegraph.

Is China the key to Africa's development?: Western media coverage of China's relationship with Africa continues to grow, as the title of this Slate.com article shows. The piece has some information about 'Africa Town' in Guangzhou, and trade in timber between China and Tanzania.

Louise Blouin against Spielberg: From The Huffington Post, by wealthy philanthropist and former media mogul Louise Blouin MacBain:

We have to stop pointing fingers at other nations, making symbolic and hurtful gestures, while not looking first at our own governments, our own policies and our own national ethos. We cannot continue to judge without the expectation of being judged back, or in this case, to further alienate China from engagement in meaningful multilateral peace talks for the region.

Ang Lee protests Tang Wei ban: By Richard Spencer in The Daily Telegraph:

The Oscar-winning film director Ang Lee has written a letter of protest after a young protégé, whose sexually explicit scenes in his last movie turned her into a star, was deemed a 'non-person' by China's state censor.

But it might not be a ban after all.

Hu Jintao in olive: Wearing an olive green Mao suit (中山装) instead of his usual suit and tie, Hu Jintao spoke yesterday at the NPC about the need to further develop China's military. From Xinhua:

'We must aim at improving the capability to win high-tech regional wars and keep enhancing the ability of the military to respond to security threats and accomplish a diverse array of military tasks,' the president said.