Episode

A 93 year old president gets a deputy

Podcast
Documentaries
Published
May 9, 2026
Duration seconds
1589
Processing state
not_requested
Canonical source
https://iono.fm/e/1674191
Audio
https://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/6/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download-rss-low/proto/https/vpid/p0nk3yjk.mp3?p=rss
JSON
/v1/public/podcasts/documentaries-2495126/episodes/a-93-year-old-president-gets-a-deputy
Markdown
/podcast/documentaries-2495126/a-93-year-old-president-gets-a-deputy.md

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Summary

At 93, Paul Biya is the oldest head of state in the world. In June he will have been the leader of Cameroon for 44 years and is currently serving his eighth consecutive term. It was announced in April that for the first time in Biya's leadership, the position of vice-president would be created in the country. This new post has drawn attention to the lack of certainty within Cameroon over who will take over from Paul Biya once he is no longer in office. BBC Africa's Paul Njie is from Cameroon himself and has been looking into the story. A Thai drag performer has won the latest series of the television show RuPaul's Drag Race: UK versus The World. Gawdland is the first Thai winner of the all-star series and also the first non-native English speaker to take the title. Her triumph took some by surprise, but for fans of Drag Race, she's seen as a trailblazer for East Asian drag queens. Panisa Aemocha of BBC Thai explains what makes Gawdland such a stand-out performer. Like anyone forced to leave their home country against their will, Russians who've sought asylum abroad face a variety of painful realities. Besides homesickness and the challenges of adapting to a new country, they also cannot safely return home to visit loved ones. For many years, exiled Russians could reunite with Russian family and friends in a wide variety of European and other countries, including the Baltic states. But as the rift between Russia and the rest of Europe deepend in the wake of the war in Ukraine, visa restrictions changed, leaving Russians with only a small handful of countries in which they could meet people from home. Recently, an exiled Russian man in his twenties, Sasha, planned and filmed a unique reunion with Russian friends. BBC Russian's Tatiana Kovtun tells Sasha's story and discu…