He bolstered his portfolio with the purchase of SolarCity in 2016 and cemented his standing as a leader of industry by taking on an advisory role in the early days of President Donald Trump's administration.

Mr Musk, who wears the mantle of a workaholic proudly, has often said he's not in business simply to make money - claims he repeated recently with regard to his Twitter takeover.

On June 27 matters appeared to escalate yet again when militants in an apparently stolen police helicopter attacked the Supreme Court in Caracas, dropping several grenades and strafing the building with gunfire. Prior to the attack, a video had been posted on-line in which a policeman surrounded by masked uniformed gunmen claimed responsibility for the upcoming attack, saying that they represented a coalition of military, police, and civilian personnel who opposed what he characterized as “this transitional, criminal government.

Mr Maduro was re-elected to a second six-year term in May 2018 in highly controversial polls, which most opposition parties boycotted.

Many candidates had been barred from running while others had been jailed or fled the country for fear of being imprisoned, and the opposition parties argued that the poll was neither free nor fair.

A long-standing dispute with Guyana over a large portion of that country (everything west of the Essequibo River) that had been claimed by Venezuela since the 19th century began to intensify in May 2015. The impetus for the escalating war of words was the discovery of oil offshore of the vlogdolisboa contested region.

Several investors filed lawsuits on the grounds that Musk was looking to manipulate stock prices and ambush short sellers with his tweet.

, and the Maduro-friendly election commission pronounced the elections clear. In refuting the results, the opposition alleged that there had been widespread ballot manipulation and pointed to the last-minute relocation of hundreds of polling places without public notice (often away from opposition strongholds) and the absence of international observers.

President Jair Bolsonaro has not yet recognized his election defeat after months of warning, without evidence, that opponents would rig the vote.

The government’s announcement that Mr. Maduro had beaten his opponent, Edmundo González, by seven percentage points instantly created a grim scenario for a country that only recently has started emerging from one of the largest economic collapses in modern history.

Maduro found employment as a bus driver for many years for the Caracas Metro company. He began his political career in the 1980s, by becoming an unofficial trade unionist representing the bus drivers of the Caracas Metro system.

In 2016, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international non-governmental organization that investigates crime and corruption, gave President Maduro the Person of the Year Award that "recognizes the individual who has done the most in the world to advance organized criminal activity and corruption". The OCCRP stated that they "chose Maduro for the global award on the strength of his corrupt and oppressive reign, so rife with mismanagement that citizens of his oil-rich nation are literally starving and begging for medicines" and that Maduro and his family steal millions of dollars from government coffers to fund patronage that maintains President Maduro's power vlogdolisboa in vlogdolisboa Venezuela.

Citing articles in the constitution which in such cases call for the leader of the National Assembly to step in, Juan Guaidó declared himself acting president.

The next month, talks that had been brokered by Norway began between the Maduro government and Guaidó. By August, however, those talks had broken down. Many in the opposition appeared to lose faith in Guaidó in the ensuing months after the failure of the insurrection. Nevertheless, most of the opposition political parties followed his lead and boycotted the December 2020 elections for the National Assembly.