The Bidens' dog Champ has died: 'He was our constant, cherished companion'

The Bidens have announced their beloved German Shepherd Champ, who has been with the family since 2008, has died aged 13.

"Our hearts are heavy today as we let you all know that our beloved German Shepherd, Champ, passed away peacefully at home," President Joe Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden said.

"He was our constant, cherished companion during the last 13 years and was adored by the entire Biden family.

“He loved nothing more than curling up at our feet in front of a fire at the end of the day, joining us as a comforting presence in meetings, or sunning himself in the White House garden. In his younger days, he was happiest chasing golf balls on the front lawn of the Naval Observatory or racing to catch our grandchildren as they ran around our backyard in Delaware."

In recent months, the German Shepherd’s health had declined mostly because of old age.

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Champ joined the family in December 2008 during the presidential transition after Joe Biden had become vice president-elect. The couple got him as a promise kept by Jill Biden, who said her husband could get the dog if he and former president Barack Obama won the election.

The Bidens also have another German Shepherd named Major, a pup aged 3 they adopted from the Delaware Humane Association in November 2018. He is the first rescue dog in the White House. Biden told reporters in the past that they adopted Major in part as a companion for Champ, to keep the older dog busy and active.

The Bidens' dogs were the first to take office since Obama’s Portuguese water dogs, Bo and Sunny. Over the years, the White House has been home to dozens of dogs and other pets, but former president Donald Trump did not carry on that tradition.

While not a big part of their campaign strategy, the Biden team played to American dog lovers and promoted the idea of putting pooches back in the White House during the 2020 election.

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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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Sole survivors

Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.