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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It's happened only one other time in the history of Crimson Tide men's basketball, and it happened last night against North Carolina.
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Visitors to a new outdoor space near Montgomery can learn about slavery through art. The Equal Justice Initiative’s Freedom Monument Sculpture Park covers seventeen acres along the Alabama River.
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The City of Mobile’s Spring Movies in the Park gets underway tomorrow with some heroes in a half shell. The Figures Community Center will feature the film Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles to start off the series.
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A container ship struck a major bridge in Baltimore, causing it to plunge into the river below. The World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure says between 1960 to 2015, there were 35 major bridge collapses worldwide due to ship or barge collision. Those accident included a total of 342 people killed. Eighteen of those collapses happened in the United States, with one in Alabama
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Workers at Volkswagen's factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, will vote next month on possibly joining the UAW. The union said last month that a majority of workers at the Mercedes plant near Tuscaloosa had also signed union cards. The UAW announced its organizing campaign last fall after it won strong contracts with Detroit automakers.
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The Crimson Tide’s Mark Sears carried Alabama long enough for the Crimson Tide to get an unexpected contribution and reach the Sweet Sixteen.
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Wyoming Republican Governor Mark Gordon has vetoed a bill that would have allowed people to carry concealed guns in public schools and government meetings. The National Conference of State Legislatures says Alabama is among the states enabling permit holders to have concealed guns in schools.
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NASA says the new Boeing Starliner spacecraft could launch to the International Space Station as soon as May 1. The capsule will sit on top of an Atlas-5 rocket, built at the United Launch Alliance factory in Decatur. This will be the first time astronauts have been carried to orbit aboard an Atlas-5.
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Kentucky legislation shielding doctors and other health providers from criminal liability was written broadly enough to apply to in vitro fertilization services, a Republican lawmaker said Friday as the bill won final passage. Alabama passed a similar measure after the State Supreme Court generated controversy by ruling the frozen embryos are “children.”
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Jurors in 1994 recommended by a 9-3 vote that Rocky Myers be spared the death penalty and serve life in prison. A judge sentenced him to die anyway. Myers is now one of nearly three dozen inmates on Alabama's death row who were placed there under a now-abolished system that allowed judges to override a jury's recommendation in death penalty case.