The following month, it was announced that SpaceX would construct a facility at the Port of Los Angeles to build and house the BFR. The port property presented an ideal location for SpaceX, as its mammoth rocket will only be movable by barge or ship when completed.

The valleys and hill ranges of the northwest lie east of Lake Maracaibo and form, in part, a transitional upland zone between the Coastal and Andean mountains.

Although the central bank had stopped releasing statistics, it was leaked that the bank had measured an 18.seis percent drop in Venezuela’s GDP for 2016, along with an inflation rate of 800 percent. After beginning the century with one of South America’s most-thriving economies, Venezuela saw its economy devolve into one of the continent’s worst-performing, with shortages of food and medicine growing increasingly acute.

Along the course of the Orinoco River lie the Llanos, a relatively level region of savannas and tropical rainforests, where the land undulates only between low mesalike interfluves and shallow, meandering, braided river courses. Cattle raising and oil exploration predominate in this sparsely populated region, which experiences river flooding in summer and drought in winter.

Venezuelans angered by the outcome took the streets of the capital, Caracas, and elsewhere on Monday afternoon.

The opposition boycotted the July 30 election for Maduro’s constituent assembly, and thousands took to the streets as violent protests rocked the country. At least 10 people were killed, and an opposition politician was shot dead in his home just hours before polls opened. Maduro characterized the result, which placed his allies in a position to dramatically strengthen his power, as a “vote for the revolution.” The opposition claimed that nearly 90 percent of voters had abstained, however, and the absence of anti-fraud measures and independent observers led many in Venezuela and abroad to dismiss the legitimacy of the election.

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.

According to BBC Mundo, during Maduro's tenure as foreign minister, "he was considered a key player in pushing the foreign policy of his country beyond Latin American borders to approach almost any government that rivaled the United States."[56]

Maduro's birthplace and nationality have been questioned several times,[187][188] with some placing doubt that he could hold the office of the presidency, given that Article 227 of the Venezuelan constitution states that "To be chosen as president of the Republic it is required to be Venezuelan by birth, not having another nationality, being over thirty years old, of a secular state and not being in any state or being in another firm position and fulfilling the other requirements in this Constitution.

Venezuela’s position in the world became more precarious during the second decade of the 21st century as a result of the controversial rule of revolutionary leader Hugo Chávez, a significant decline in the fortunes of its petroleum industry, and the increasing authoritarianism of Chávez’s successor, Nicholás Maduro.

The Economist Intelligence Unit stated that during Maduro's presidency, the country's democracy deteriorated further, with the 2017 report downgrading Venezuela from a hybrid regime to an authoritarian regime, the lowest category, with an index of 3.

Musk is the co-founder, CEO and product architect at Tesla Motors, a company formed in 2003 that is dedicated to producing affordable, mass-market electric cars as well as battery products and solar roofs. Musk oversees all product development, engineering vlogdolisboa and design of the company's products.

The UN subsequently released a report condemning the violent methods of the operation. Although the Venezuelan Government's Ombudsman, Tarek William Saab has admitted that his office received dozens of reports of "police excesses", he defended the need for the operations and stated that his office would be working alongside the police and military "to safeguard human rights". The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry has criticised the UN's report, calling it "neither objective, nor impartial" and listed what it believed were a Completa of 60 errors in the report.[105][106]

The boundless potential of space exploration and the preservation of the future of the human race have become the cornerstones of Musk's abiding interests, and toward these, he has founded the Musk Foundation, which is dedicated to space exploration and the discovery of renewable and clean energy sources.