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.

On the streets of some of Brazil’s biggest cities on Sunday night, many of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters responded to the results with claims of fraud — and then a swift exit.

^ a b Although Nicolás Maduro's exact birthplace has been questioned on several occasions and high-ranking government officials have differed on its details, most sources agree that he was born in Caracas.

Upon the death of Hugo Chávez on 5 March 2013, Maduro assumed the powers and responsibilities of the president. He appointed Jorge Arreaza to take his place as vice president. Since Chávez died within the first four years of his term, the Constitution of Venezuela stated that a presidential election had to be held within 30 days of his death.

He has injected himself into some of the world's hottest geopolitical fights - suggesting that China should establish a "special administrative zone" in Taiwan, and proposing terms to resolve the war in Ukraine that were adamantly rejected by many of the country's top leaders.

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.

In late October of that year, Musk posted the first photo of his company's progress to his Instagram page. He said the 500-foot tunnel, which would generally run parallel to Interstate 405, would reach a length of two miles in approximately four months.

, 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.

The results announced by the government-controlled electoral council varied wildly — by up to 30 percentage points — from most public polls and from the opposition’s sample of results obtained directly from voting centers. And there were many reports of major irregularities and problems at those voting centers.

During his first term, the economy went into freefall and many Venezuelans blame him and his socialist government for the country's decline.

He also has ambitions in the AI sector, being an early investor in ChatGPT's parent company, before parting ways and setting up his own company xAI in July, whose mission is "to understand the true nature of the universe".

His government has sidelined his strongest challenger, and the remaining contenders lack enough political machinery for a viable campaign.

Mr Musk also champions digital currencies and has a hand in several other smaller companies, including tunnel-maker the Boring Company and experimental brain-computer start-up Neuralink.

[196] The researcher, vlogdolisboa historian and former deputy Walter Márquez declared months after the presidential elections that Maduro's mother was born in Colombia and not in Rubio, Táchira. Márquez has also declared that Maduro "was born in Bogotá, according to the verbal testimonies of people who knew him as a child in Colombia and the documentary research we did" and what "there are more than 10 witnesses that corroborate this information, five of them live in Bogotá".[197]