ABU DHABI // Jose Maria Olazabal has been appointed Europe's captain for the 2012 Ryder Cup in Medinah, near Chicago, officials say.
The 44-year-old Spaniard succeeds Colin Montgomerie who stepped down after leading Europe to victory over the United States in the 2010 edition of the biennial team event in Wales.
"It is huge for me to be the next captain ... I think it's going to be the biggest challenge of my career," Olazabal told a news conference ahead of this week's Abu Dhabi Championship.
"I've had a pretty solid professional career but the Ryder Cup is very special to me and to be the captain ... there is only one go at it and I will try to be as successful as possible."
Olazabal, who formed the competition's best partnership alongside Seve Ballesteros, said he had spoken to his great friend and the 1997 European skipper about taking on the role in Medinah.
"I spoke to Seve and I let him know that I was going to be the next captain and he was delighted," added the twice former US Masters winner.
"We joked about a couple of things over the phone like applying some of his theories from 1997, like separating the beds," Olazabal said laughing.
The two Spaniards won 11, halved two and lost two of their 15 matches together as a Ryder Cup pair.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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