Local news

The U.S. Virgin Island's 911 call centers, first put in place in 2009,  has long sought more bilingual or multilingually proficient operators to help serve the territory's large Spanish and smaller French Creole speaking populations.

One day after the Limetree Bay Refinery on St. Croix announced it was shutting down, organizers conducting a community survey of the facility's health and environmental impacts released some damning preliminary findings.

The Virgin Islands Fire Service is working on a decade-old goal to merge Emergency Medical Services into its operations, out from its traditional home within the Department of Health, and cross-train firefighters in Emergency Medical Response.

Grounded Cafe on St. Croix offers a fine coffee experience in three locations – growing in just a few years from one to three outlets – and owner Reginald Perry has his sites set higher. “We would love to be the Starbucks of the Caribbean,” Perry said,

Randolph Thomas, a government retiree, is familiar with the financial challenges the territory faces, is circulating a petition asking the federal government to pay what he estimates as $7 billion it owes the territory in unpaid excise taxes.

Monday's announcement suggests that the refinery, which now owes tens of millions of dollars to contractors and faces multiple class-action lawsuits from residents, might never restart.

At 6 a.m. Monday, Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. learned that the Limetree Bay Refinery would be shut down, affecting as many as 800 jobs directly and indirectly. It did not come as a big surprise, the governor said at a news conference Monday afternoon.

At the bottom end of a six-hour meeting Monday, Public Services Commission members approved a 17.215-cent electric levelized energy adjustment clause rate, an increase of about 2.3-cents per kilowatt hour.

The COVID-19 positivity rate in the U.S. Virgin Islands dropped from 4 percent last week to 1.87 percent this week, Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. reported Monday.

Story Time Hour on Wheels was launched Friday at Fort Frederik, with local author Winifred Loving reading from her book, “My Name is Freedom.”