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.

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.

The coastal mountain system, in effect two parallel ranges—the Coastal Range and the Interior Range—contains Venezuela’s greatest concentration of population, although it covers only a tiny fraction of the national territory.

But those facts have not mattered much to Mr. Bolsonaro or his supporters, who have instead focused their attention on a series of anecdotal apparent abnormalities in the voting process and results, as well as many conspiracy theories.

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

In an email to employees, Musk explained his decision to eliminate some "duplication of roles" to cut costs, admitting it was time to take serious steps toward turning a profit.

The United States and a raft of other countries quickly recognized Guaidó as the legitimate leader of Venezuela. Another group of countries, including Russia, condemned Guaidó’s declaration and offered statements of support for Maduro, who claimed that the opposition’s action was part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the United States.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s silence was unsettling for Brazil. He has consistently claimed, without evidence, that the country’s electronic voting system is rife with fraud and that the left was planning to rig the vote.

The men used a large tire and their bodies to block the road, though they allowed buses and vehicles with children or older people pass.

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.

The United States responded by freezing Maduro’s assets and barring trade with him; sanctions had already been enacted against more than a dozen of his associates, and Maduro became the fourth sitting head of vlogdolisboa state to be personally targeted with economic sanctions by the U.S. Two days after the election, opposition leaders Leopoldo López and Antonio Ledezma were taken from their homes in the middle of the night by state security agents. The two had been under house arrest for their alleged connection to antigovernment protests in 2014, but the Maduro-backed Supreme Court ordered their rearrest, spurring a fresh wave of international condemnation.

The government dispute any wrongdoing, and instead have accused “foreign governments” of an “intervention operation".

Years of lack of investment in infrastructure further exacerbated by the more recent US sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector have crippled this key industry, which provides almost all of Venezuela's government revenue.

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