PARIS — Swedish teen climate change activist Greta Thunberg has received the first Freedom Prize awarded by France’s Normandy region, which last month commemorated the 75th D-Day anniversary.

Thunberg, 16, received the award in Caen on Sunday, posing alongside D-Day veterans Charles Norman Shay and Léon Gautier.

Thunberg said that “I think the least we can do to honor them is to stop destroying that same world that Charles, Leon and their friends and colleagues fought so hard to save.”

She sent out a warning that “we are currently on track for a world that could displace billions of people from their homes, taking away even the most basic living conditions … making areas of the world uninhabitable for parts of the year.” But she added, “We can still fix this.”

CARACAS — The lights went out across much of Venezuela Monday, reviving fears of the blackouts that plunged the country into chaos a few months ago as the government once again accused opponents of sabotaging the nation’s hydroelectric power system.

The power in the capital went out after 4 p.m. (2000 GMT) and immediately backed up traffic as stop lights and the subway stopped working during rush hour.

“This is horrible, a disaster,” Reni Blanco, a 48-year-old teacher, said as she joined a crush of people who flooded into the streets of the capital trying to make it home before nightfall.

Almost three hours into the blackout authorities broke their silence and blamed an “electromagnetic attack” on a series of dams located in southern Venezuela — the same culprit it attributed an almost week-long outage in March that left millions of Venezuelans without water or the ability to communicate with loved ones.

“Those who’ve systematically attacked the noble people of Venezuela in all kinds of ways will once again be confronted with the mettle and courage that we, the children of our liberator Simón Bolívar, have demonstrated in the face of difficulties,” Communications Minister Jorge Rodríguez said in a statement read on state TV.

Rodíguez said authorities were working to restore electricity as quickly as possible. He said security forces had been deployed, and contingency plans activated, to guarantee basic medical services and keep streets safe.

But as night fell on Caracas many were wondering how long they would be left in the dark.

“Without light we have nothing,” said María Teresa González, fretting over the meat she had in her freezer if the outage wore on as she walked her dog in the last rays of the evening sun.

Reports on social media said that 19 of 24 Venezuelan states were also affected. Netblocks, a group monitoring internet activity, said network data showed most of Venezuela was knocked offline with national connectivity at just 6% after the latest cuts. Normally non-stop state TV, a key way for the government to keep people informed, was also off the air for a while, adding to frustrations.

President Nicolás Maduro blamed the March outage on a U.S.-sponsored attack against the nation’s biggest hydroelectric dam. More recently, as power service in the politically turbulent capital has improved amid widespread rationing in the interior, officials have even taken to downplaying the outages as similar to a nationwide blackout in Argentina and even one that knocked off the power for several thousand residents of Manhattan for a few hours amid the summer heat.

But his opponents said the outage laid bare years of underinvestment in the nation’s grid by corrupt officials who mismanaged an oil bonanza in the nation sitting atop the world’s largest crude reserves.

“They tried to hide the tragedy by rationing supplies across the country, but their failure is evident: they destroyed the system and they don’t have answers,” opposition leader Juan Guaidó said on Twitter.

Guaidó, who the U.S. and more than 50 other nations recognize as Venezuela’s rightful leader, reiterated an earlier call for nationwide protests on Tuesday.

“We Venezuelans won’t grow accustomed to this,” he said.

Much of the government’s focus since the March blackouts has been on repairing transmission lines near the Guri Dam, which provides about 80 percent of Venezuela’s electricity.

José Aguilar, a U.S.-based power expert who hails from Venezuela, said that alternative power plants running on diesel fuel and gas are unable to make up the difference.

He estimates that since the March outages the country has lost about 1,200 Megawatts of thermal power, or about 40% of its thermal generating capacity at the start of the year, as the government overburdens the fragile system in a desperate attempt to keep the lights on in Caracas and other cities.

“Even in the best-run grids equipment is going to fail,” Aguilar, who is an informal adviser to Guaidó on electricity issues, told The Associated Press. “But when you operate on a limb, outside of safe limits, you expose yourself to these types of domino events. It’s like Russian Roulette.”

Despite the risks of another extended collapse, some Venezuelans were taking the blackout in stride.

Cristian Sandoval, a 37-year-old owner of a motorcycle repair business, said he is more prepared for a prolonged outage having equipped his home with a water tank and a generator for his workshop. As Venezuela’s crisis deepens, the sale of electric generators is one of the few growth industries in a country ravaged by six-digit inflation and cratering public services.

“If the blackout continues we’ll have another round of dessert,” he chuckled while sharing a piece of chocolate cake with a friend at a cafeteria growing dark as the night began to fall.

“But it’s very difficult for the people,” he conceded. “This creates a lot of discomfort.”

Story: Fabiola Sánchez and Joshua Goodman. Christopher Torchia, Scott Smith and Christine Armario contributed to this report.

MANILA — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Monday there was no way to stop Chinese from fishing in his country’s exclusive economic zone and he would not risk losing Filipino forces in a clash in the disputed South China Sea.

“When Xi says ‘I will fish,’ who can prevent him?” Duterte said as he defended his nonconfrontational approach to China over the territorial disputes in his annual state of the nation address before a joint session of Congress. He was referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“If I send my marines to drive away the Chinese fishermen, I guarantee you not one of them will come home alive,” Duterte said, adding that diplomatic talks with Beijing have allowed the return of Filipinos to disputed fishing grounds where Chinese forces previously shooed them away.

Critics have repeatedly criticized Duterte, who has nurtured friendly ties with Beijing, for not standing up to China’s aggressive behavior in the disputed waters and deciding not to immediately seek Chinese compliance with an international arbitration ruling that invalidated Beijing historic claims to virtually the entire sea. China has refused to recognize the 2016 ruling.

The decision also found that China had breached its duty to respect the traditional fishing rights of Filipinos when Chinese forces blocked them from the Scarborough Shoal off the northwestern Philippines in 2012. The Philippines, however, could also not deny Chinese fishermen access to Scarborough, according to the ruling. But the decision did not specify any traditional fishing areas within the Philippines’ exclusive zone where the Chinese could be allowed to fish.

An exclusive economic zone is a 200-nautical-mile (370-kilometer) stretch of water where a coastal state has exclusive rights to fish and exploit other resources as well as undersea gas and oil based on the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

On his battle against illegal drugs and corruption, Duterte asked Congress to reinstate the death penalty for drug-related heinous crimes and economic plunder. He said the drug menace, which he called a “social monster,” could not be crushed unless corruption is eliminated.

The Philippines’ long-simmering territorial rifts with China and Duterte’s centerpiece campaign against illegal drugs and corruption were spotlighted in his speech. But he also asked for Congress’s help in dealing with diverse social ills and governance issues ranging from slow internet services and delays in releases of government clearances to traffic jams.

Duterte outlined problems he had resolved, sometimes through scare tactics, like the easing of a water shortage last summer in Manila, the capital, after he threatened to fire officials.

Although the annual speech is traditionally replete in protocol and formality, he injected sexual jokes, curses and threats that have been the trademark of his often-rambling speeches. During the Manila water crisis, for example, he said he did not want to travel to the city. “What if my girlfriend will not be able to take a bath, she will smell like hell,” he said.

When he asked Congress to pass new tax reforms that would further raise excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol, Duterte asked if there were any smokers in the audience, which included foreign diplomats: “Who smokes here? They should be exterminated from the face of the earth.”

Duterte, 74, took office in June 2016 and has remained hugely popular in opinion polls despite drug war deaths that have sparked international alarm and other controversial policies.

More of his allies captured congressional seats in midterm elections in May, giving them a tighter grip on the legislature, especially in the 24-member Senate, which opposed some of his key legislative proposals last year, including reinstating the death penalty and amending the pro-democracy constitution.

More than 5,200 demonstrators rallied despite a downpour outside the House complex to call for Duterte’s removal, while a smaller number of pro-Duterte supporters protested separately. Left wing protesters burned a mock Chinese flag and a giant mural with images of Duterte, Chinese President Xi and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Military and police were placed on full alert and authorities declared a no-fly zone over the venue and outlying areas to ensure security.

“We have had enough of this government’s ‘kill, kill, kill’ policy,” said Danilo Ramos, a left wing leader of a farmers’ group. “The Duterte presidency is killing its constituents in so many ways.”

Story: Jim Gomez.