Pat Duggins
News DirectorPat Duggins is APR’s news director. As a kid, he watched the Apollo manned moon launches along Florida’s space coast. Pat later spent 14 years covering NASA for NPR. After re-organizing the APR newsroom, he and the team were honored with over 150 awards for excellence in journalism. That includes APR being the first radio newsroom to receive RFK Human Rights’ “Seigenthaler Prize for Courage in Journalism.” Pat holds a master’s degree from the University of Alabama and has published two books on NASA. When he’s not at APR, he enjoys cooking with Lucia, and tending his beloved fig tree.
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Alabama has scheduled a September execution by nitrogen gas for a man convicted of killing a convenience store clerk during a 1997 robbery. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey set a Sept. 25 execution date for Geoffrey Todd West. West, now 49, is on the death row for killing Margaret Parrish Berry. Prosecutors said West drove to Harold's Chevron in Attalla with plans to rob the store where he once worked. Berry, 33, was shot in the back of the head while lying on the floor behind the counter, prosecutors said. -
The Alabama Triple-A is expecting a busy travel day today. More than seventy million Americans are expected to hit the road for the Fourth of July holiday. That’s considered an all-time high. Gas prices may be working in favor of families looking for a holiday getaway this year. -
Last year, Americans spent an estimated total of $13.3 billion on food and beverages for the Fourth of July. As we come together to celebrate Independence Day, food and drinks will be a highlight for many. Several of these dishes echo the same one that the Founding Fathers and American colonists ate in 1776, and others are completely different. One similarity appears to be the barbecue. -
The Trump administration is withholding more than $6 billion in federal grants for after-school and summer programs, English language instruction, adult literacy and more. Officials in Gadsden City Schools say they'll have no choice but to shutter their after-school program serving more than a thousand low-income students if federal funds aren't released. -
A federal appeals court ruled Alabama prosecutors violated the constitutional rights of a man sentenced to death in 1990, saying Blacks were rejected from the jury during his trial. The Monday ruling from a three judge panel on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals means Michael Sockwell, 62, is eligible for a retrial. -
Senate Republicans hauled President Donald Trump's big tax breaks and spending cuts bill to passage on the narrowest of votes, pushing past opposition from Democrats and their own GOP ranks after a turbulent overnight session. Vice President JD Vance broke a 50-50 tie to push it over the top. The outcome capped an unusually tense weekend of work at the Capitol, the president's signature legislative priority teetering on the edge of approval, or collapse. -
The measure taking effect today prohibits the sale of smokable marijuana products to minors. It also limits how consumable cannabis can be sold in stores or online. Vendors of Tetrahydrocannabinol will now have to register with Alabama’s Beverage Control Board and pay excise taxes. This chemical is also known as THC. It’s what makes people high when they use marijuana. -
PAT DUGGINS-- If I were to say, ‘man, have you seen the price of eggs these days?’ You're probably thinking, Oh, he's talking about inflation and the price of groceries and how it became an issue in the presidential race and how nothing has changed, and so on and so on. That's not what I mean. I'm not talking about the kinds of eggs that build omelets. I mean the kinds of eggs that build families. -
Professors and students at the University of Alabama testified on Thursday that a new an anti-diversity, equity and inclusion law has jeopardized funding and changed curriculum, as a federal judge weighs whether the legislation is constitutional before the new school year begins. The new state law, SB129, followed a slew of proposals from Republican lawmakers across the country taking aim at DEI programs on college campuses. Universities across the country have shuttered or rebranded student affinity groups and DEI offices. -
The Supreme Court on Friday put off ruling on a second Black majority congressional district in Louisiana, instead ordering new arguments in the fall. The case is being closely watched because at arguments in March several of the court's conservative justices suggested they could vote to throw out the map and make it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act.
