This week: the president of Vietnam and the woman who inspired the Buddy Holly song Peggy Sue

TRAN Dai Quang, who has died aged 61, was the president of Vietnam known for his hard-line approach to dissent. Many dissidents were jailed under his leadership and he was seen as a loyal and committed communist party member.

He was sworn into office in the communist country in 2016, after serving time as public security minister. The role of president is one of four top posts in the country, along with the prime minister, the National Assembly chairman and the head of the communist party. Mr Quang was also a member of the party's politburo.

Born in northern Ninh Binh province, he attended a police college and rose through the ranks at the powerful Ministry of Public Security before being appointed as a minister in 2011.

A career security officer and four-star general, he was elected president in April 2016 by the Communist Party-dominated National Assembly, effectively becoming the second most powerful man in the country after General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

Phil Roberston, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said Mr Quang would be remembered for "a multi-year crackdown on human rights and putting more political prisoners behind bars in Vietnam than any time in recent memory". Some 97 activists had been jailed as of April this year, according to Amnesty International.

Mr Quang hosted Donald Trump during his first state visit to the communist country last year, when the US president attended a summit of Pacific Rim leaders.

His last public appearance was at a Politburo meeting of the ruling Communist Party and a reception for a Chinese delegation. He looked frail on the state-run Vietnam Television broadcast.

Mr Quang did not appear in public for more than a month last year, raising speculation about his health.

He died at a military hospital in Hanoi. The state-run online newspaper VnExpress quoted a former health minister and the head of a national committee in charge of leaders' health, Nguyen Quoc Trieu, as saying Mr Quang had contracted a rare and toxic virus in July last year and had travelled to Japan six times for treatment.

Mr Trieu said the president lapsed into a deep coma hours after being admitted to hospital.

"Japanese professors and doctors treated him and helped consolidate the president's health for about a year," Mr Trieu said. "However, there are no medicines in the world that can cure the illness completely, instead it only could prevent and push it back for some time."

PEGGY Sue Gerron Rackham, who has died aged 78, was the woman who inspired the 1958 Buddy Holly song Peggy Sue. In 2008 she released her autobiography Whatever Happened to Peggy Sue?: A Memoir by Buddy Holly’s Peggy Sue to mark the 50th anniversary of the song.

While promoting her autobiography, she said material for the memoir came from about 150 diary entries she made during the time she knew Holly. Gerron was born in Olton, Texas, but moved to Lubbock where she attended high school and met Holly and his friends.

“I wanted to give him (Holly) his voice. It’s my book, my memoirs,” she said. “We were very, very good friends. He was probably one of the best friends I ever had.”

Holly wrote several other popular songs, including That’ll Be The Day and Maybe Baby. He also penned the sequel song Peggy Sue Got Married. He died in a 1959 plane crash in Iowa that also killed Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson.

A 1986 movie called Peggy Sue Got Married featured actress Kathleen Turner as a character also named Peggy Sue who faints during her 25th high school reunion, then believes she’s gone back in time and reconsiders how her life turned out.