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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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. -
Tropical Storm Bertha strengthened in the Gulf of Mexico and was moving slowly toward the Florida Panhandle, causing a tropical storm warning and storm surge watches around the state line between Florida and Alabama, forecasters said. The storm was about 125 miles south of Panama City, Florida, and 200 miles southeast of Mobile. -
The Food and Drug Administration is apologizing for a false positive test result that linked Taylor Farms to the current outbreak of Cyclospora. The agricultural company recalled lettuce and prepackaged salad kits in twenty seven states, including Alabama, after the FDA announced its original test results. The State Department of Health says one case of Cyclospora is confirmed in Mobile County and one in the Tuscaloosa area. -
The National Hurricane Center in Miami reported the development of a tropical depression. The system appeared just west of Florida’s Tampa Bay. The current forecast has the depression becoming a Tropical Storm by Monday and moving west across the Gulf of Mexico. The system may brush by Mobile Bay on Tuesday and Wednesday before making landfall on Texas by the end of the week. Even as a rainmaker, the system could complicate things for Uvalde, Texas where heavy rains have already prompted flooding near Camp Mystic where an Alabama girl drowned in 2025. -
Taylor Farms has expanded a voluntary recall of its iceberg lettuce products sourced from central Mexico because of a potential link to the multistate Cyclospora outbreak that has sickened people across the U.S. The total number of states in the recalled is reportedly twenty seven and Alabama is one of them. -
The Alabama Department of Public Health confirms eleven cases of the parasite infection cyclospora in the state. The agency says these patients are confined mostly to the north part of Alabama. ADPH is working to see if any of these cases are interconnected. Symptoms of the illnesses include diarrhea, nausea, and stomach cramps. -
Attorneys for the family of a Black teenager who went missing during a July Fourth boat trip to an island off the Mississippi coast, near the Alabama, said they will work with a local prosecutor's office to inspect the contents of his cellphone as the investigation into his death continues. -
A federal judge has awarded $314 million in damages to three Americans who were jailed and allegedly tortured by what he called a “criminal enterprise” led by former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro before the men were freed in a swap for a close Maduro ally imprisoned in the U.S. Jason Saad is a native of Alabama. -
APR News reported last week on how philanthropist Melinda French Gates invested $5 million dollars in a Tuscaloosa women’s health center that features mental health treatment. A new study by CNBC ranks Alabama as one of the worst places to live in the U.S., and a lack of mental health treatment is one reason. The network said Alabama ranks dead last for mental health providers per capita, even though nearly a quarter of residents have been told by a health professional that they have a depressive disorder. -
Members of Congress in Alabama are remembering the late U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham. The South Carolina lawmaker was one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress, who traveled the globe to advocate for a more aggressive U.S. foreign policy, died after a tear in his aorta, according to a preliminary medical examiner finding shared by his office.
