ARKASAS

Two injured, one missing in blast

CAMDEN — At least two people are injured and another is missing after an explosion at a defense weapons plant in Arkansas. A spokesperson for General Dynamics says it happened Wednesday morning at its Ordnance and Tactical Systems facility in Camden, south of Little Rock.

The company initially called it an “incident involving pyrotechnics” but later confirmed it was an explosion. One patient is stable after being treated at an emergency room. Another patient was flown to an out-of-state facility. The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management says it is monitoring and stands ready to assist.

TEXAS

Border wall will take 30 years, $20B

Three years after Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas would take the extraordinary step of building a state-funded wall along the Mexico border, he has 34 miles of steel bollards to show for it.

That infrastructure — which has so far run up a price tag of some $25 million per mile — isn’t yet a contiguous wall. It has gone up in bits and pieces spread across at least six counties on Texas’ 1,254-mile southern border.

State contractors have already propped up more wall mileage than former President Donald Trump’s administration managed to build in Texas, and Abbott’s wall project is plowing ahead at a quickened pace. State officials hope to erect a total of 100 miles by the end of 2026, at a rate of about half a mile per week. And at its current rate construction would take around 30 years and upwards of $20 billion to finish.