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.
-
Two astronauts are waiting for their chance to blastoff aboard Boeing’s new Starliner space capsule. The trip to the International Space Station for NASA veterans Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore will be powered by an Atlas-V rocket, built by the United Launch Alliance at its factory in Decatur, just south of Huntsville. This is the first Atlas-V launch with people on board, but this model of rocket has boosted a series of unmanned spacecraft to Pluto, Mars, and the asteroid Bennu. -
The historic run on offensive players, especially quarterbacks, in the first round of the NFL draft pushed plenty of talented defenders down the board. It also pushed some first-round worthy defensive players into Round 2 on Friday. Those include Iowa cornerback Cooper DeJean, Texas A&M inside linebacker Edgerrin Cooper and Alabama cornerback Kool-Aid McKinstry. The former Crimson Tide player was picked by the New Orleans Saints. -
An Atlas-V rocket, built at the United Launch Alliance factory in Decatur, is on the launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Florida’s Atlantic coast. Its job is to carry two astronauts aboard the new Boeing Starliner spacecraft to orbit. A successful mission will add astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore to an elite group of people to have flown on three types of space vehicles. -
Employees at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, overwhelmingly voted to join the United Auto Workers union Friday in a historic first test of the UAW's renewed effort to organize nonunion factories. All eyes now turn to Alabama’s North American Mercedes Benz plant, which is set for a union vote next month. -
NASA is preparing for a planned May launch of an Atlas-V rocket, built in Alabama. The booster is set to carry the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner space capsule to the International Space Station. Once the vehicle docks with the orbiting outpost, there will be a meeting of two “penguins." -
The families of Alabama prison inmates have filed lawsuits alleging that organs were harvested from the bodies of dead inmates, often against the wishes of relatives. CNN and the Courthouse News Service report Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm and the University of Alabama Birmingham are named in the suits. -
When a deadly explosion destroyed BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, 134 million gallons of crude erupted into the sea over the next three months — and tens of thousands of ordinary people were hired to help clean up environmental devastation from the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The aftermath of exposure of chemicals called oil dispersants was at the heart of Alabama Public Radio’s national award-winning documentary “Oil and Water: 10 Years Later.” -
The Justice Department is ramping up its efforts to reduce violent crime in the U.S., launching a specialized gun intelligence center in Chicago and expanding task forces to curb carjackings. Alabama will be part of that effort. -
Alabama lawmakers on Wednesday rejected a bill that would provide new sentences for about 30 inmates who were given the death penalty despite a jury's recommendation of life imprisonment. The 2017 overturning of Alabama’s judicial override law occurred following the airing of Alabama Public Radio’s national award-winning prison investigation “…and justice for all.” -
Boeing’s new Starliner space capsule is on the launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, next door to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The vehicle, on top of an Alabama built Atlas-V rocket, is scheduled for an early May blastoff to the International Space Station.
