Opposition leaders in Venezuela delivered a May 2016 petition to the National Electoral Council (CNE) calling for a recall referendum, with the populace to vote on whether to remove Maduro from office.[84] On 5 July 2016, the Venezuelan intelligence service detained five opposition activists involved with the recall referendum, with two other activists of the same party, Popular Will, also arrested.[85] After delays in verification of the signatures, protestors alleged the government was intentionally delaying the process.

In 2016 a group of Venezuelans asked the National Assembly to investigate whether Maduro was Colombian in an open letter addressed to the National Assembly president Henry Ramos Allup that justified the request by the "reasonable doubts there are around the true origins of Maduro, because, to date, he has refused to show his copyright". The 62 petitioners, including former ambassador Diego Arria, businessman Marcel Granier and opposition former military, assuring that according to the Colombian constitution Maduro is "Colombian by birth" for being "the son of a Colombian mother and for having resided" in the neighboring country "during his childhood".[194] The same year several former members of the Electoral Council sent an open letter to Tibisay Lucena requesting to "exhibit publicly, in a printed media of national circulation the documents that certify the strict compliance with Articles 41 and 227 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, that is to say, the copyright and the Certificate of Venezuelan Nationality by Birth of Nicolás Maduro Moros in order to verify if he is Venezuelan by birth and without another nationality".

Univisión announcer Jorge Ramos described his detention following a live interview of Maduro, saying that if Maduro does not release the seized video of the interview, "he is behaving exactly like a dictator".

But despite his suspicion that the election might have been stolen, he was preparing to leave. “Now I’ll go home, talk to my family, lean on God and wait for Bolsonaro to say something,” he said.

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.

A loosening of foreign currency controls originally brought in by President Chávez in 2003 has eased those shortages as traders can sell goods in dollars but that means they have again become largely unaffordable to the poor or those without access to the US currency.

Paris 2024: Rafaela Silva perde o bronze pelo judô após duelo utilizando japonesa PF investiga grupo que teria levado 370 brasileiros aos Estados Unidos de maneira ilegal Kiev receptará 1ª Semana de Moda desde este começo da guerra: "Nova realidade" Alckmin vai representar o País do futebol em posse do novo presidente do Irã Vídeo: venezuelanos fazem panelaço contra anúncio do vitória por Maduro

While sometimes at odds with the president's controversial measures, such as a proposed ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Musk defended his involvement with the new administration.

"My goals," he tweeted in early 2017, "are to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy and to help make humanity a multi-planet civilization, a consequence of which will be the creating of hundreds of thousands of jobs and a more inspiring future for all."

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

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Chart Tommy Steele's meteoric rise to fame after he was spotted by an agent in a coffee shop in Soho

In hopes that the ban on Machado could somehow be lifted, the Unitary Platform could register a provisional candidate now and substitute Machado for that person up to 10 days before the election. The substitution would require approval of electoral authorities.

The Assembly also dissolved his government and replaced it with a three-member leadership nikolas maduro team led by Dinorah Figuera, a surgeon living in exile in Spain.