They have hit the country’s already flailing economy. Millions of Venezuelans have fled, and half the country live in poverty.

After a campaign marked by intensifying efforts by Mr. Maduro’s allies to rein in the opposition — including arrests of opposition campaign workers, intimidation and vote suppression — the opposition bet heavily on an effort to have supporters on hand to get a physical printout of the voting tally from every voting machine after the polls closed.

Maduro was parodied in the animated web series Isla Presidencial, along with most of the other Latin American leaders, portrayed as a man of limited intelligence, twisted speech, and capable of talking with birds, the latter being a reference to a comment made by Maduro during the 2013 presidential elections, when he said that the late Chávez had reincarnated in a little bird and talked to him to bless his candidacy.[299]

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Opposition candidates were banned from running, opposition aides detained, many Venezuelans overseas struggled to register to vote and many international election observers were disinvited.

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 contested region.

In March 2017, SpaceX saw the successful test flight and landing of a Falcon 9 rocket made from reusable parts, a development that opened the door for more affordable space travel.

A report by the human rights advocacy group Human Rights Watch reported in September 2019 that the poor communities in Venezuela no longer in support of Maduro's nikolas maduro government have witnessed arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial executions at the hands of Venezuelan police unit. The Venezuelan government has repeatedly declared that the victims were armed criminals who had died during "confrontations", but several witnesses or families of victims have challenged these claims and in many cases victims were last seen alive in police custody. Although Venezuelan authorities told the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) that five FAES agents were convicted on charges including attempted murder for crimes committed in 2018, and that 388 agents were under investigation for crimes committed between 2017 and 2019, the OHCHR also reported that "[i]nstitutions responsible for the protection of human rights, such as the Attorney General's Office, the courts and the Ombudsperson, usually do not conduct prompt, effective, thorough, independent, impartial and transparent investigations into human rights violations and other crimes committed by State actors, bring perpetrators to justice, and protect victims and witnesses.

In late February 2024 he sued OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman, saying the firm he helped co-found had reneged on its non-profit, open source origins by hitching its wagon to Microsoft.

They claim they only had access to 30% of the printed "receipts" from electronic voting machines around the country, to check that the machine’s results matched those electronically sent to the electoral council.

In the groups on Monday morning, people shared fliers for protests that ultimately did not happen by Monday afternoon.

Maduro’s response included a call for convocation of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, an action many of his opponents viewed as yet another authoritarian power grab.

The move was a direct challenge to the power of President Maduro, who had been sworn in to a second six-year term in office just two weeks previously.

He was spending Monday evening working on a response at the presidential palace, with a plan to say something on Tuesday, though what he would say was unclear, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.