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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Preliminary testing showed the bullets that killed two bystanders during a shootout at a crowded Seattle food festival last weekend didn’t come from the gun a 15-year-old arrested at the scene was seen firing. That finding was in court documents from police. One of the fatalities was Ashley Whitehead, who had just moved to the Seattle area from Alabama a year ago. -
Police say the 15-year-old arrested after a shootout at a food festival near Seattle’s Space Needle over the weekend was armed with a ghost gun with an extended magazine. The attack killed Ashley Whitehead, an Alabama woman who moved to the Pacific Northwest a year ago. -
There were at least three suspects involved in a shootout at a crowded food festival near Seattle’s Space Needle over the weekend. One of them was among those killed in the violence. Another fatality had just moved to Washington from Alabama a year ago -
“We will not tolerate the victimization of vulnerable women here in Shelby County,” said Lieutenant Clayton Smith, commander of the Shelby County Drug Task Force to the press. His comments followed the arrest of fifteen men now accused of soliciting sex. The group reportedly includes former sports writer Robert Aaron Suttles, who left journalism to become the content director for “Yea Alabama,” the name, image, and likeness operation for Crimson Tide athletics. The arrests occurred during a human trafficking sting operation. -
The family of Nolan Wells is still searching for answers about what exactly led to the 18-year-old athlete's death during a July 4 boat trip with friends off Mississippi's Gulf Coast, near the border with Alabama. Though Wells traveled by boat with his friends to Horn Island, he didn't return with the group that afternoon as planned. His body was found two days later off the island's coast. -
Tropical Storm Bertha made landfall in Louisiana and was southwest of New Orleans while moving west toward Texas early Thursday morning, after closing beaches on the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle to Mississippi. -
Before Arnold Schwarzenegger was “The Terminator,” and before Lou Ferrigno was the “Incredible Hulk,” there was Charles Gaines. The Alabama native and author whose book and documentary “Pumping Iron” helped bring professional bodybuilding into the mainstream and introduce Schwarzenegger to the world, has died. He was 84. -
Communities on the U.S. Gulf Coast distributed sandbags and closed beaches as Tropical Storm Bertha threatened to bring flooding and strong winds Wednesday from the Florida Panhandle to Louisiana. -
The Trump administration may approve a controversial plan to allow state oversight of coal ash ponds throughout Alabama. The website of Inside Climate News reports the proposal would allow millions of tons of toxic coal ash to remain buried in place alongside the state’s rivers. Critics say much of that material is sitting in groundwater where it can leach into the environment. -
Defaults on student loans have surged across the United States, reaching record levels as borrowers struggle to keep up with payments. Many of the states with the highest concentrations of defaulted borrowers are in the South, an AP analysis found. Mississippi has the nation’s highest default rate at 28.3%, and others near the top include Louisiana, Alabama, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas.
