President Nicolas Maduro blamed “terrorists” for a new, near-nationwide blackout that gripped Venezuela Tuesday, two weeks after a similar outage caused deaths and chaos. In a statement on Twitter, Maduro said a deliberately set “large-scale fire” on Monday hit facilities around the Guri hydroelectric plant in the south of the country that supplies power to 80 percent of Venezuela’s 30 million inhabitants. The first blackout, between March 7 and 14, resulted in more than a dozen hospital patients, including those needing dialysis or intensive care, dying, and desperate citizens turning to sewer outfalls to get water.
