If coloring Easter eggs has put you in the mood for some scrambled eggs, you might want to take the advice of food author Michael Ruhlman. He whipped up some perfect scrambled eggs for the Seattle Times. He says most home cooks let their eggs cook way too long. His were on the burner for less than a minute. VIDEO

Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is spending $50 million to form a grass roots organization aimed at curbing gun violence. The New York Times says Bloomberg hopes the organization will one day be able to outmuscle the National Rifle Association. Bloomberg says gun control advocates need to use the N.R.A.‘s tactic of punishing lawmakers who don’t support their agenda.

Google has unveiled plans for a modular smartphone that users could customize with different hardware options. Owners would purchase different modules, like a better camera or a heart rate monitor, which would then be installed into the phone’s frame. Google would design the skeleton for the phone, while developers would come up with the designs for the different modules.

Cornealious “Mike” Anderson was sentenced to 13 years in prison for armed robbery in 2000. But when no one ordered him to jail, he went on with his life, getting married, having four children, filing taxes and starting a construction business. Last year, around the time when he would’ve been due for release, corrections officials noticed a clerical error and he was finally sent to prison. Now his attorney is fighting for his release.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch profiles 15-year-old Michelle Marquez, a remarkable young woman who has discovered the mathematical structure of sound that triggers emotions. She began working on this concept as a 12-year-old after seeing the movie, “Inception.” Her research into how sounds affect our emotions could have applications for attention disorder and PTSD treatment.

In what’s becoming a semi-annual tradition, window washers at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago donned superhero costumes yesterday. The Chicago Tribune says Batman, Captain America and Spider-Man descended from the roof, stopping to interact with the young patients. They posed for photos and fist bumps, hoping to lift the spirits of those undergoing treatment for cancer or other serious disorders. VIDEO

Talk about saddling the next generation with debt. The Washington Post says the government has confiscated refund checks from thousands of taxpayers - to cover debts owed by someone else in their family - usually their parents. Some of these debts go back several decades. The government’s effort to collect these outstanding debts goes back three years - when a single line tucked into the farm bill lifted the 10-year statute of limitations on government debts.

CBS has made it official - naming Stephen Colbert as David Letterman’s successor. New York Times media writer Bill Carter says Colbert was an immediate front-runner who had made it clear over the past couple of years that he wanted this opportunity. Carter says Colbert has never really played himself on TV. We all know him as the right-wing blowhard who he says he’ll leave behind.

When maroon colored bluebonnet flowers started popping up on the campus of the University of Texas, groundskeepers were confused, since they’d only planted regular bluebonnets. As more maroon flowers started to sprout, they began suspecting their rivals at Texas A&M University (whose school colors are maroon and white). Horticulturists at A&M confirm they bred the special maroon bluebonnets - and they say it’s unlikely they would just sprout up someplace - but so far no one at the school has confessed to the botanical high jinks.

A female protester was arrested for throwing a shoe at Hillary Clinton during an appearance at a metal recycling conference in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Review-Journal says Clinton, after realizing someone had thrown a shoe, made several quips. “Is that part of Cirque du Soleil?” Clinton asked. She followed up by saying, “thank goodness she didn’t play softball like I did.” The audience gave Clinton a standing ovation. VIDEO

The San Francisco Chronicle says the Fox is Silicon Valley’s spirit animal - becoming the mascot for a number of startup tech companies. They’re a popular choice since they’re seen as sneaky and clever - yet non-threatening and cute. There’s also the parable of the fox and the hedgehog - which says the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

USA Today says it would’ve been a bold move in even the best of times - launching a newspaper to compete with the Los Angeles Times. But in this era where newspapers struggle to stay alive - starting a new paper is almost unthinkable. But that’s what Aaron Kushner, the publisher of the Orange County Register is doing. The Los Angeles Register debuts next week.

The New York Post’s Andrea Peyser has had enough of the “retching, crying, sniveling, vomiting degenerate” Oscar Pistorius. She says he deserves an “Oscar” for his performance as he stands trial for killing his girlfriend last year. Peyser says he also played the sympathy card by removing his prosthetic legs for the jury to show how vulnerable he is without them.

Soda sales have taken a nose-dive amid concerns about sugar intake and obesity. But despite that, the Wall Street Journal says, Coca-Cola is doubling down on carbonated soft drinks by increasing advertising, introducing new products and adding Taylor Swift as a spokeswoman. Coke’s CEO says he’s convinced of the power of the company’s brand name.

It’s one of the most performed and translated songs of all time, and possibly one of the most annoying. “It’s a Small World” turns 50 years old today. The Tampa Bay Times says Disney Parks celebrated by holding a sing-along. More than a billion people have gone on one of the rides that made the song famous at the various Disney parks around the world. VIDEO

The professional wrestling world was shocked this week to learn of the death of the wrestler known as the Ultimate Warrior. The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi says the 54-year-old Warrior, who was born James Hellwig, is one of more than five dozen wrestlers who died before his time. He says wrestlers have a mortality rate that would be considered a crisis if it were any other sport like boxing or racecar driving.

A week and a half into the Major League Baseball season, the New York Times says attendance has been particularly bleak at many ballparks. Getting fans to sit through games on chilly evenings is always a difficult sell. But it’s impossible to know exactly how bad attendance is since baseball attendance figures only go by the number of tickets sold, not the number of people actually going to the game.

New York Times National Editor Sam Sifton shares the secrets for making pizza from scratch that he says will rival some of the best pizza on the planet. One of the keys is the dough - and Sifton gives us the recipe for dough recipe used by Roberta’s of Bushwick, Brooklyn, which I visit often because it’s fantastic.  When it comes to topping your pie, Sifton says, don’t overdo it. Otherwise your pizza will end up soggy.

The Wall Street Journal says more companies are deciding to do away with traditional human resources departments. The argument is they stifle innovation and bog down companies with inefficient policies. But employees at firms without HR departments say they have more difficulty resolving workplace disputes and paycheck issues.

Arthur Smith, the guitarist and banjoist who wrote and recorded “Guitar Boogie” and “Duelin’ Banjos,” has died at the age of 93. The Washington Post says “Guitar Boogie” was known as the song that launched a million guitar lessons. Smith wrote and recorded “Feudin’ Banjos” in 1955, which was later renamed “Duelin’ Banjos” when it was featured in the 1972 film, “Deliverance.” The back-and-forth between two musicians has been recreated countless times, even by Kermit the Frog and Steve Martin. VIDEO

The Seattle Times says geologists are baffled by the speed of the landslide that devastated a small town in Washington. One estimates the slide was traveling at 60 miles per hour. It also traveled nearly a mile, more than three times as far as similar slides. Experts will soon begin a detailed study aimed at preventing similar tragedies.

Expect your summer barbecue to cost a lot more. The Los Angeles Times says extreme weather has thinned the nation’s beef cattle herds to levels not seen since the 1950s - when the population of the U.S. was half what it is today. That’s raised beef prices to all-time highs.

Twitter is rolling out a redesigned layout for user profiles. It’s drawing criticism for looking too much like Facebook. The New York Post says Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has been working to keep users’ interest amid concerns the microblogging website’s growth is starting to slow.

Enter for your chance to win! The San Jose Mercury News introduces us to a few of the people who are obsessed with sweepstakes. Some have won upwards of a million dollars worth of prizes. There’s one woman who bought “cold cuts by the armful” to win a $50,000 grand prize that she’ll put toward a Mexican cruise with her sons and grandkids.

Today is “Equal Pay Day,” a day aimed at raising awareness of the gender pay gap. It’s often said that women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. But in the Wall Street Journal, two scholars claim the pay gap evens out when you consider education, marital status and occupation. Mark Perry and Andrew Biggs say making it easier for women to sue for gender discrimination would create disincentives for firms to hire women in the first place.

The New York Times says when Eric and Charlotte Kaufman were rescued from their disabled sailboat along with their 1 and 3 year-old daughters, it launched a debate over whether they were bad parents for embarking on such a journey or just unlucky. The family set out from Mexico for what was to be a month’s-long journey to New Zealand before running into trouble less than two weeks later.

The Smoking Gun website has released hundreds of pages of court filings and FBI reports detailing the Rev. Al Sharpton’s work as an FBI informant in the 1980s. Sharpton apparently wore a wire to help take down members of the Genovese crime family. He allegedly became an informant after being caught on tape discussing cocaine deals with a drug kingpin. In an interview with the New York Daily News, Sharpton acknowledged working with the FBI, but denied much of what was in the Smoking Gun’s report.

The Washington Post looks at the research behind organic food, examining the differences between regular and organic meat, milk, eggs, produce and fish. The results seem to be that in most cases, organic products don’t offer significant benefits. But in a few cases, such as in milk, there are some studies that show that fewer hormones in organic milk could lead to a lower risk of cancer.

Engineers all over the world are working on building robots that can be sent in to dangerous situations - such as fighting fires or shutting down damaged nuclear plants. The Boston Globe describes just how difficult it is to fine tune a robot for these types of tasks. This summer, the Navy plans to test a firefighting robot on one of its ships.

Like many tech giants, Apple is sitting on a boatload of cash. But what to do with $159 billion? The New York Times says for that kind of money, Apple could fund a human mission to Mars with the goal of building a colony. It could buy Tesla Motors for around $30 billion. Or if Apple wanted to bypass telecom companies to offer direct service for iPhones and iPads - it could buy T-Mobile and Sprint and still have $90 billion left.

This one is a bit of a head-scratcher. A nine-month-old boy in Pakistan was granted bail by a judge after appearing in court on attempted murder charges. The Independent says police arrested the boy along with 30 others for allegedly throwing stones at police during a raid on their house in Lahore. The judge noted the absurdity of the case in granting bail, but he did not have the power to dismiss the charges. The inspector behind the arrest has been suspended.

USA Today put several popular 3-row SUVs to the test to find out which one offers the best value for $40,000. In addition to a panel of experts, a real family in the market for an SUV tested each vehicle. The Hyundai Santa Fe ranked first - loaded with features at that price point. The Dodge Durango and Toyota Highlander rounded out the top three.

“Everyone knows (Mickey) Rooney, who died at the great age of 93, precisely because he lived so long.” Rooney was the last surviving member of Hollywood’s 1930s Golden Age. Los Angeles Times Film Critic Kenneth Turan says Rooney made the young adult stage of life an object of fascination decades before Ferris Bueller took a day off.

Hillary Clinton hasn’t said if she’s in or out and that, the Wall Street Journal says, has frozen the 2016 presidential race. Potential candidates should be busy raising money at this point, but the paper says no candidate has been able to build up an organization that comes close to the “shadow Clinton campaign.” Instead, some potential candidates are seen as trying to “plant flags” in case Clinton chooses not to run.

As crews were working to clean up oil from a 170,000 gallon spill in Galveston Bay, a storage tank nearby began overflowing, spilling 160 gallons of light crude into the water. The Houston Chronicle says oil spills happen about 285 times a year in Galveston Bay. While most are less than a gallon, the spills happen frequently enough to cause concern for the health of the bay.

The infield shift - employed since the days of Ted Williams - is now common in baseball. The Wall Street Journal says it represents the biggest change in baseball strategy since Reconstruction. Teams now have defensive alignment plans for every batter - and they adjust their positioning during each at bat, depending on the count. Some teams now employ defensive coordinators - like NFL squads do.

Gwyneth Paltrow ruffled a few feathers when she said in an interview with E! that being an actress is so much harder than being a regular working mom. Working mom Mackenzie Dawson responds with an open letter in the New York Post. She says she tells herself almost every day, “thank God I don’t make millions of dollars filming one movie a year!” She goes on to mention how easy it is to balance work and home life, what with reliable babysitters readily available, as opposed to the drag of having your own staff.

How big can it get? That’s the question the Indianapolis Star asks of the NCAA. The collegiate athletic association is approaching $1 billion in annual revenue. Revenues have increased every year since 2001. The NCAA is now being targeted like never before by players seeking a cut of the profits.

Richard Pérez-Peña of the New York Times writes that the ruling that Northwestern University must treat football players as school employees highlights the fact that college has become less of a rite of passage and more of a business transaction. Competitiveness among colleges has “crystallized the understanding that higher education is a market,” says one University of Pennsylvania professor.

Taco Bell has a new pitchman - Ronald McDonald. A new commercial touting Taco Bell’s breakfast menu features men named Ronald McDonald all saying they love Taco Bell’s new breakfast. The Chicago Tribune says McDonald’s responded via Twitter with a tongue-in-cheek tweet, “Mayor McCheese confirms: Ronald, in fact, still prefers McDonald’s.” VIDEO

A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds autism affects 1 in 68 children, up from 1 in 88 just two years ago. USA Today says that means virtually every grade in every elementary school has a least one child with autism. Most experts believe the higher rates are due to better awareness and diagnosis and not an actual increase in the number of children affected with the condition.

Chicago Tribune columnist Phil Rosenthal says Northwestern University should be proud of its student athletes who won a victory against the school when the National Labor Relations Board ruled that football players are essentially employees of the school and should be allowed to unionize. Rosenthal says the school taught its students enough about ethics, economics, history, political science and math to realize how unfair the college athletics system is for student athletes.

At first I thought this was something from The Onion. The New York Post says men in North Korea have been ordered to get the same haircut as their leader, Kim Jong Un; shaved close on the back and sides, with longer hair on top brushed back off the forehead. Prior to now, North Korean men had their choice of 10 state-approved haircuts.

Paul Farhi of the Washington Post examines the gradual decline in local news reporting. He says more and more news gathering operations target a broad and borderless audience online, resulting in less coverage of local news and events. A report from Pew found that just 30 national and international news sites accounted for 60 percent of all new digital journalism jobs in the last five years.

A new study finds autism begins during pregnancy with subtle disruptions in patches of a fetus’ brain. The San Diego Union-Tribune says the small study examined the brains of 11 children with autism who had died. 10 of the 11 children were found to have disruptions in the normal organization of the cortex, the area of the brain that controls social interaction and language skills.

New data released by the Census Bureau finds population growth has been shifting toward the country’s 381 metro areas, especially since the economic recovery began in 2010. USA Today says the growth is being driven by young professionals and retiring baby boomers who prefer to live in the city. Another factor is young people delaying or deciding not to have children, which often leads to a move to the suburbs.

The Wall Street Journal examines the world of luxury bedding, breaking down the cost of a $500 set of sheets. A set of Boll and Branch sheets costs about $150 to make, ship, package and warehouse. The company sells direct to customers for $250 for a King sheet set. Bedding manufacturers say it’s difficult to see what goes into an expensive sheet, noting that the common measure thread count can be easily inflated.

The Sacramento Bee has an interesting look into the thousands of scores businesses use to rank consumers. From customer loyalty to purchasing power, so-called e-scores or predictive scores are used by companies to determine everything from which coupons to send you to how easy it will be for you to open a bank account. These scores have drawn scrutiny since they aren’t regulated by the government, and unlike your credit score, you have no legal right to see how you’re ranked.

Surveillance video posted to YouTube shows the moment a Chicago Blue Line train derailed at O’Hare Airport - sending the train hurtling up an escalator. The Chicago Sun-Times says the original clip posted to YouTube was quickly deleted. Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the crash. VIDEO

“The guy is either really stupid or he just really likes it in jail.” That’s how one New Jersey Corrections Department describes Christopher Miller in the New York Post. Miller spent 15 years in prison for robbing a Stride Rite Shoe store. The day after he got out of prison, police say he went right back to the same store and robbed it again. The manager on duty during the first robbery was there again, she said she recognized Miller immediately.

Smartphones have been getting noticeably bigger the past few years. The Wall Street Journal’s Geoffrey Fowler says bigger phones make life easier. But, you need to be able to reach all of your phone’s key features with your thumb. The Journal has a handy thumb measuring system to make sure your hand will fit your phone’s screen.

It was the longest of long shots - coming up with a perfect NCAA Tournament bracket to win one billion dollars. The brackets were all busted within days, but there was one big winner, Quicken Loans. USA Today says the company sponsoring the contest claims it received one billion social media and PR mentions since it began. And brand awareness for Quicken Loans is up 300%.

The Dallas Morning News says Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Museum is on the cutting edge of efforts to reach out to visually impaired patrons by offering multisensory experiences involving touch, sound and taste. Visitors can hold a pipe similar to the one in Diego Rivera’s Portrait of Ilya Ehrenberg or hear music from the time and place of a particular work. Scents are also used to evoke atmosphere.

Many of us have come up with a few of our own rules for the classic board game Monopoly. Now Hasbro is asking players to submit their favorite “house rules.” The New York Times says the top picks will be incorporated into a special edition of the game due out this fall.  Jeff Lehman, who wrote a book about Monopoly strategy, predicts the new version won’t make much of a difference, saying people who have made up their own rules obviously feel they don’t need Hasbro’s permission.

The Los Angeles Times has a fascinating story about Larry Osterhoudt, a man so obsessed with a roller coaster he never got to ride as a kid, that he may just get the chance to rebuild it. Osterhoudt has spent 17 years building an exact replica of the Cyclone Racer, a roller coaster that once stood on the Long Beach, California pier. Osterhoudt was too frightened to ride it as a 9-year-old and the coaster was torn down before he returned. But now the Long Beach City Council is working on a plan to have Osterhoudt rebuild the Cyclone Racer as a way to boost tourism.

A long sleep debate gets awakened in the Wall Street Journal today. Is it better to wake up when the alarm goes off or to hit snooze and get 10 extra minutes of sleep? Dr. David Dinges says hitting snooze isn’t as bad as you might think. It allows us to gently awaken the mind. But he says it’s really just a temporary fix and the real solution is to get more sleep. Dinges says you’re better off going to bed 10 or 20 minutes earlier.

The New York Times reports on a new analysis of smoking data that finds it’s increasingly becoming a habit of the poor. Smoking has seen huge declines in more affluent counties across the country, but smoking rates have remained the same in poorer counties. That gap in smoking rates among the rich and poor is contributing to inequality in health outcomes.

Rescuers searching for the more than 100 people missing from Saturday’s mudslide in Washington are having a tough time preventing volunteers from conducting their own searches for victims. The fear is that untrained volunteers could become victims themselves in the continually shifting slide.

The Detroit Free Press catches up with Cheong Choon Ng, the Michigan entrepreneur who saw his two girls weaving bracelets out of pony tail rubber bands and came up with the idea for the Rainbow Loom. Ng was able to convince his wife to use their $10,000 in savings to bring the idea to the market. It won Toy of the Year last year and the company saw $50 million in revenue.

Two bridges that span the Missouri River could be yours - for free - if you can move them. The Kansas City Star says the 2,600 foot bridges that carry U.S. 69 traffic over the river are scheduled to be replaced in 2015.  Since they’re eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, federal law requires the bridges be offered for reuse as an alternative to being demolished.