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Dallas Zoo Runs Out Of Parking

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The Dallas Zoo is out of parking spaces. Zoo officials say the lots filled up an hour earlier than yesterday.

This is spring break, and both the Dallas and Fort Worth Zoos are expecting big crowds all week.

Dallas zoo-goers are urged to take DART. The light-rail Red Line stops at the Zoo’s front gate. And today, the Zoo is offering a ticket discount to DART passengers who show their same-day pass.

In Fort Worth, the special Safari Shuttle runs between the Intermodal Transit Center downtown and the Zoo every thirty minutes.

BJ Austin, KERA News

Spring break's Texas week in full force

When guests at the party next door number about 10,000 and the sound system is rock-concert quality, the available options are to flee, adjust or enjoy the spectacle.

All three moves were on display as Texas week - the apex of South Padre Island's nearly monthlong spring break festivities - bounced back from a chilly opening weekend and packed the barrier island with students freed from their studies.

Residents and guests at the staid Isla del Sol condominium complex - a Frisbee toss away from the main stage of the beach party - marveled Monday at the size of the gyrating, tangled mass just beyond their property, taking in the scene with binoculars, cell phones and video cameras.

City officials say hotel occupancy is at 95 percent this week.

AP

'Homeless Hotspot' stunt draws ire at SXSW

A marketing stunt that paid homeless people to carry Wi-Fi signals during the South By Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas, is drawing widespread criticism.

BBH Labs, a unit of the global marketing agency BBH, gave 14 people from a homeless shelter mobile Wi-Fi devices and T-shirts that announced "I am a 4G Hotspot."

BBH New York chairwoman Emma Cookson says the company paid them a minimum of $50 a day. She called the experiment a modernized version of homeless selling street newspape rs.

But many have called the program exploitive. Wired.com wrote that it "sounds like something out of a darkly satirical science-fiction dystopia." ReadWriteWeb called it a "blunt display of unselfconscious gall."

The experiment was meant to begin last Friday but rain delayed its implementation until Sunday. It stopped Monday.

AP

LCRA water plan submitted to TCEQ, review begins

Texas regulators have up to a year to review a water management plan from the Lower Colorado River Authority to better deal with drought.

The LCRA on Monday submitted the plan to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The proposal offers methods to manage water downstream from lakes Travis and Buchanan during dry conditions.

The lakes provide water for more than a million people in Central Texas, as well as serving industrial and farm needs.

The measure would eliminate the so-called "open supply," which makes unlimited water available for downstream agriculture use when the lakes are above a defined trigger point. Restrictions would apply.

The proposal was adopted by the LCRA board on Feb. 22.

AP

Beehive stolen from outside Houston restaurant

Some thieves might truly have sticky fingers after a 500-pound beehive was swiped from a garden outside a Houston restaurant.

Houston police spokesman Victor Senties said Tuesday that nobody has been arrested.

Surveillance security video shows a truck pulling up before dawn Saturday near the Haven Restaurant. Authorities believe at least two people loaded the box-style hive into the vehicle and drove away.

Chef Randy Evans says the thieves apparently knew what they were doing by taking the hive during rainy, chilly weather. He says bees are usually inactive during such conditions.

Evans says about 5,000 bees lived in the hive, worth an estimated $1,000. Honey made by the bees is used in some restaurant dishes, plus the insects help pollinate the garden.

AP