NY Times A New York Times infographic shows the extent of the damage from the West, Tex., fertilizer plant explosion. On Friday authorities announced that an EMT who was at the scene of the explosion had been arrested for possession of a destructive device. Authorities also announced they had started a criminal investigation into the blast. They did not say whether the arrest and the criminal investigation were related, making for another busy day of speculation on cable newscasts. Map links to New Times infographic.

Rural Diversity. The increase in Hispanic residents in rural Wisconsin is changing school districts, the legal system and the economy, reports Laural Morales for Fronteras, a consortium of public radio stations.

The Durand School District in west central Wisconsin has hired an English language coordinator, who helps Spanish-speaking students make the adjustment to the English-speaking classroom. In the Durand district the number of Spanish-speaking students has almost doubled in the last three years.  In a neighboring school district the number of Latino students now outnumbers non-Latinos.

"I never dreamed that this little corner of the world would have this immigrant presence," said Shaun Duvall, an interpreter for many dairy farmers and their workers. She said the newcomers here have changed the community, and not everyone knows how to handle it.

"I mean diversity is if you’re Norwegian growing up in a Swiss community," Duvall said. "You know that’s diversity! And so they don’t have experience. And so it’s not even so much discrimination, but just not knowing really."

Morales’ report is built around data from the Rural Family Economic Success Action Network. The network’s recent report says one out of every two new rural residents is Hispanic. In the last two years, 1.5 million Latinos have moved into rural America. 

There Goes the Neighborhood. Take a look at the West, Tex., neighborhood obliterated by the fertilizer plant explosion. The New York Times has an infographic that shows the location of deaths and physical damage to buildings like a middle school, high school, nursing home, apartment building and scores of homes.

The Times also reports on the Texas antipathy toward workplace and fire-safety regulation. The state has the nation’s highest number of workplace fatalities. “Fires and explosions at Texas’ more than 1,300 chemical and industrial plants have cost as much in property damage as those in all the other states combined for the five years ending in May 2012,” report Times staffers Ian Urbina, Manny Fernandez and John Schwartz.

Song of the Solid South. Elliott County, Ky., is held up as one of the last vestiges of the New Deal coalition that brought FDR and the Democratic party to ascendancy in the rural South. Elliott County continues to vote Democratic in presidential elections, even while its neighbors have shifted toward the GOP:

The majority of Elliott's 8,000 residents have cast their ballots for the Democratic presidential candidate in every election since the county was incorporated in 1869 -- the longest continuous stretch of any county in the United States. This despite the fact that Kentucky as a whole has trended Republican over the last several decades. In 2004, Elliott was one of 11 rural Kentucky counties to vote Democratic. In the 2008, that number dwindled to four. In 2012, Elliott became the last county to vote Democratic -- not just in Kentucky, but among all predominantly white counties in the rural South.

Fly-over Broadband. The Federal Communications Commission has a plan for providing better high-speed Internet service to airline passengers.

Whoopee.

Brian Peterson, Star Tribune“Mount Frac,” a 50,000 ton pile of frac sand in Winona, Minn., blocks from view most of the Winona County Law Enforcement Center. Frac sand is used in fracking, a drilling technique for extracting oil and natural gas. Minnesota environmentalists are trying to slow the spread of frac-sand mining. Their efforts have failed so far, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports. Even a small bill that would block mining within a mile of any trout stream is being resisted in the state legislature by an industry that says additional regulations would kill jobs and economic growth.

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Work on the Farm Bill continues, Jerry Hagstrom reports. It could come to the Senate floor as soon as next week, according to New York Sen. Kristen Gillibrand.

Well, maybe not that soon. Markup of the bill will come next Tuesday. But Majority Leader Harry Reid only says he wants to take up the bill this month. And Sen. Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican, says the bill won't appear on the Senate floor before June.

Hagstrom writes in DTN that proposed cuts in food stamps are a hang-up. Ag Committee chair Debbie Stabenow has proposed a 10-year $4.1 billion cut in the food program, but others are vowing to fight this measure.

Senators are also working on a dairy amendment, Hagstrom reports.

But She “Gets My Work Done.” Bureaucrat-gone-wild award goes to Jeanette Hanna at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. A new report found that a 775 day posting of the Oklahoma BIA official to Washington , D.C., cost taxpayers $178,000. There was $30,000 for the SUV and $33,000 for the hotel room she rented even though she spent 283 days of the detail back home in Oklahoma.

Hanna was a trip. While BIA regional director in Oklahoma, she had 40 new security cameras installed, so that she could keep an eye on employees.

Her boss, Paul Tsosie (chief of staff to the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs) likes Hanna fine. “All I know is she gets my work done,” Tsosie said.

A “Direct Assault” on Rural Colorado. Democrats in the Colorado legislature are near to passing a bill that would require rural electric cooperatives to double the amount of electricity they produce from renewable sources, reports The Goat's Sarah Gilman.

Under the bill, rural co-ops (which serve 70 percent of the state's land and 25 percent of its residents) would have to have 20 percent of their power coming from renewables by 2020.