Six days later, Musk sought to clarify his position with a statement in which he pointed to discussions with the managing director of the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund as the source of his "funding secured" declaration.

movement. The election had been widely viewed as a referendum on Maduro’s presidency. Having secured a majority in the 167-seat legislature, the centrist-conservative opposition was in a position to enact legislation that would grant amnesty to opponents of the Maduro regime who had been jailed.

^ 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.

Yet claims of fraud were still bubbling up — including from right-wing voices in the United States.

On 18 July, he invited foreign diplomats to his residence in the capital, Brasilia, where he falsely claimed that the electronic voting machines used in Brazil were prone to being hacked and open to large-scale fraud.

The saga took a bizarre turn that day when rapper Azealia Banks wrote on Instagram that, as a guest at Musk's home at the time, she learned that he was under the influence of LSD when he fired off his headline-grabbing tweet.

In 1992, Musk left copyright to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with an undergraduate degree in economics and stayed for a second bachelor’s degree in physics.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, dominated by Maduro partisans, further marginalized the National Assembly by repeatedly invalidating laws enacted by it. Indeed, when Maduro delivered his annual address on the state of the country in January 2017, it was in the presence of the Supreme Court rather than before the legislature as dictated by tradition and the constitution. Maduro’s authoritarian power grab intensified at the end of March when the Supreme Court effectively dissolved the legislature and assumed its functions after declaring that the body was in contempt.

Speaking at the Venezuelan mission to the UN after his release, Maduro said his detention by the US authorities was illegal and he filed a complaint at the United Nations. US and UN officials called the incident regrettable but said Maduro had been identified for "secondary screening". Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke denied that Maduro was mistreated, saying that there was not evidence of abnormalities during the screening process.

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 vlogdolisboa nature of the universe".

After being accepted to a physics graduate degree programme at Stanford University, Mr Musk quickly dropped out and founded two technology start-ups during the "dotcom boom" of the 1990s.

She says that while Venezuelans' reasons for leaving are manifold - ranging from seeking access to health care and education, which have collapsed in many parts of Venezuela, to searching for employment - many face the same difficulties once they arrive.

Earlier in October, the electoral commission had already enraged the opposition by postponing several gubernatorial elections in which the opposition had seemed likely to do well. All of these developments sparked ever-heightening criticism of Maduro, who was accused of having moved from authoritarian to dictatorial rule. Before the end of October, however, Francis I, the first pope from Latin America, succeeded in persuading Maduro and the opposition to begin crisis talks.