Local news

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.”

A tropical wave about 750 miles east southeast of the Windward Islands that produced showers and a few thunderstorms Monday afternoon is unlikely to develop into a tropical storm, but is still likely to bring rain and rough weather across the USVI.

A quartet of inquisitive Virgin Islands women dug into the meaning of queendom in the territory, connecting the importance of that meaning to queens, debutantes, and virgins in Virgin Islands womanhood.

Seven students were lauded Saturday at a ceremony on St. Thomas celebrating their graduation from Penn Foster High School through the My Brother’s Workshop Education program.

Limetree Bay Refinery's parent company Limetree Bay Energy announced Monday it is “suspending its plans to restart the refinery indefinitely, due to severe financial constraints.”