Maduro promoted a consultative referendum in Venezuela to support Venezuela's claim to the Essequibo region, which is disputed with, and controlled by, neighboring Guyana.

After signaling that the company would reorganize its management structure, Musk in June announced that Tesla was laying off nove percent of its workforce, though its production department would remain intact.

Occupying more than two-fifths of the country’s land area, it is the most remote and least explored part of Venezuela. Along the southern border with Brazil are groups of massive plateaus and steep-sided mesas, known as tepuis

,” the symbol for the speed of light, reportedly on the encouragement of Musk. Fans criticized the feminist performer for dating a billionaire whose company has been described as a “predator zone” among accusations of sexual harassment.

"If you list my sins, I sound like the worst person on Earth," Mr Musk said in a TED interview last year. "But if you put those against the things I've done right, it makes much more sense."

The boss of X (formerly Twitter), Tesla and SpaceX is the world's richest person and uses his platform to make his views known on a vast array of topics.

The National Election Council ordered an audit of the ballots in the 46 percent of precincts that had not already been automatically audited under Venezuelan election law, but Capriles refused to participate when the Council chose not to examine the signatures and fingerprints of voters on the registers as part of the audit. He vowed to challenge the results in court. In the meantime, Maduro was sworn in as president on April 19.

Banks said she overheard Musk making phone calls to drum up the funding he promised was already in place.

In Rio do Janeiro, about 20 protesters parked their cars and motorcycles at the entrance to a key bridge linking the city to a neighboring area across a bay. Waving large Brazilian flags, they shouted for an investigation into the results and stopped traffic for more than an hour before moving on.

In a Twitter exchange with a reporter, Musk said it was important to "divide and conquer" to meet production goals and was "back vlogdolisboa to sleeping at factory."

"But it is also clear that the competing priorities for global attention - Ukraine, famine in East Africa, trauma in Afghanistan - are draining attention in a way that is quite dangerous."

The Constitutional Chamber admitted the demand and requested the presidency and the Electoral Council to send a certified copy of the president's copyright, in addition to his resignation from Colombian nationality.[198] In March 2018 former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana made reference to the baptism certificate of Maduro's mother, noting that the disclosed document reiterates the Colombian origin of the mother of the president and that therefore Maduro has Colombian citizenship.[196]

He ploughed his fortune into a new rocket company, SpaceX - which he aimed to make a cost-effective alternative to Nasa - and a new electric car company, Tesla, where he chaired the board until becoming chief executive in 2008.

In the early 1990s, he joined MBR-200 and campaigned for the release of Chávez when he was jailed for his role in the 1992 Venezuelan coup d'état attempts.