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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2026 has been a busy year for NASA. Four astronauts flew to the moon for the first trip there by human beings there since Apollo 17 in 1972. The flight of Artemis two also highlights Alabama's role in the US space program. The Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville designed, built, tested, and manages the big Space Launch System rocket that sends Artemis missions to Earth orbit. Huntsville has its claim to fame when it comes to NASA, but Opelika does too. One of its favorite sons is retired astronaut Jim Voss. He flew four times on the space shuttle and served on the second full-time crew aboard the International Space Station. A conversation that's out of this world, is next on APR Notebook.
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U.S. News and World Report named hospitals nationally for a list of specialties as well as those that were high performing on a state by state basis. One Alabama is ranked number eleven in the U.S. for rheumatology and number forty eight for obstetrics and gynecology. It was the only facility in the state to gain national recognition, and also ranked as the best hospital in Alabama
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The latest number of cyclospora cases, from the Alabama Department of Public Health, is 85 (updated) plus two hospitalizations. This new data was followed by news of two fatalities in Michigan, state health officials announced Monday.
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2026 has been a busy year for NASA. Four astronauts flew to the moon for the first trip by human beings there since Apollo 17 in 1972 The flight of Artemis two also highlights Alabama's role in the US space program. The Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville designed, built, tested, and manages the big Space Launch System rocket that sends Artemis missions to Earth orbit. Huntsville has its claim to fame when it comes to NASA, but Opelika does too. One of its favorite sons is retired astronaut Jim Voss. He flew four times on the space shuttle and served on the second full-time crew aboard the International Space Station, a conversation that's out of this world, is next on APR Notebook.
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A TSA agent discovered a set of stolen Civil War-era cannonballs in a passenger's suitcase during a routine security screening at an Alabama airport earlier this month,
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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.
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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.
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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
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“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.
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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.