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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.