 Also at SRNNews.com, Vietnam's long-serving leader Nguyen Phu Truong has died. Here's BBC correspondent Michael Bristow. It took many by surprise when Nguyen Phu Truong was chosen as head of the Vietnamese Communist Party in 2021. After all, he was well past the official retirement age and had already served the maximum two terms. The fact that he didn't step down shows how powerful he'd become.