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Tamio Hayashi, 77, doubted he could ever navigate the internet systems set up to register for COVID-19 vaccines across most of Japan.

He hated the idea of using the "troublesome" systems that have broken down and befuddled other older residents, hobbling Japan's inoculation push.

Luckily, local officials in his small, northeastern town helped him through the red tape and he got his shots - a rarity in Japan, where the authorities are racing to inoculate the vulnerable elderly population before the start of the Summer Olympics in just six weeks.

"This way is great," Hayashi told Reuters after he and his wife got their second doses at a local gymnasium. "You just get a notice that says come on such-and-such a day."

Soma, a rural city 240 kilometres (150 miles) north of Tokyo that was devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, has surged ahead of most of the country in vaccinations by heeding lessons learned from the catastrophe of a decade ago.

Japan lags far behind other advanced economies in vaccinating its people - 12% have received at least one shot, according to a Reuters tracker, compared to France, the next lowest in the Group of Seven industrial powers at 42%, and the most advanced, Canada, at 63%.

Soma's nimble, homegrown approach eschews the reservation systems and fragmented efforts common across Japan. The city has inoculated 84% of its elderly - versus about 28% nationwide - is now injecting younger generations and aims to reach people as young as 16 by the end of July, just as the Olympics are getting underway.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga wants to have Japan's elderly population fully vaccinated by July and all adults by November. But that will require boosting shots to a million a day from the peak so far of around 700,000. read more

Part of Soma's success is due to its small population of 35,000, making it easier to reach people in the city on the Pacific coast in Fukushima prefecture than for stretched medical staff in the giant urban areas.

But the city is also succeeding where much of Japan has not because of the painful lessons of the tsunami that killed 450 of the city's people as it swept 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) inland.

'PEOPLE COMING TOGETHER'

That disaster taught Soma the importance of laying out and communicating clear plans, working closely with local medical professionals, gathering affected people in concentrated places - and not waiting for a plan to come down from Tokyo - said Vice Mayor Katsuhiro Abe.

"I don't know if you would say that we couldn't have done this had it not been for the earthquake disaster," Abe said. "But this inoculation programme comes in conjunction with the experience of the city government and the people coming together to deal with that for these 10 years."

Japan has avoided the enormous COVID-19 case loads and death tolls seen in many nations, but the mid-February start of its vaccine rollout was later than most and was initially stymied by scarce supplies of imported vaccines. read more

Distribution was then uneven, while reservation systems broke down or confused the elderly prioritised for shots.

Soma's leaders and doctors, drawing on 2011 lessons, began drafting plans and running inoculation drills in December, months before vaccines were approved.

The city set up a central vaccination centre, conserving medical manpower. Residents were called by city block, no reservation necessary, and the city sent busses for those who could not travel on their own.

After the previous disaster, Soma's neighbours know to look out for each other, while city officials are used to shifting gears from office work to crisis management, said Abe, a lifelong Soma resident.

Townspeople are shuttled briskly to waiting areas and screenings, then to a partitioned area for their shots.

When some older patients got flustered being asked to turn left or right for their shots, staff improvised with cartoon posters on the walls: face the bunny for an injection in your right arm, turn to the doggy to get it in the left arm.

"The strategy needs to be tailored to each local culture and context," said Kenji Shibuya, who this spring resigned as director of the Institute for Population Health at King's College London to help run Soma's COVID-19 vaccination push.

"It's a war," said Shibuya, a persistent critic of Japan's handling of the pandemic.

He said the best thing the government can do is provide a steady supply of vaccines and supplies to municipalities - and leave the rest to the people on the ground. (Reuters)

In 2017 the president of the United States shocked Washington’s Western allies during his first European trip, scolding them for failing to pay their “fair share” on defense, physically shoving aside one prime minister, and white-knuckling another leader in a public handshake.

After four tumultuous years for the transatlantic relationship under Donald Trump, his Democratic successor Joe Biden's words of friendship and promise that "America is back" as he meets Western allies this week and next are a welcome relief.

But they're not enough, diplomats and foreign policy experts say.

Biden faces lingering doubts about America's reliability as a partner. Leaders from the Group of Seven advanced economies, NATO and the European Union are worried about the pendulum of U.S. politics swinging yet again, and are looking for concrete action, not words after the shock of the Trump years.

"Is this a an interregnum between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0? Nobody knows," said David O'Sullivan, a former European Union ambassador to Washington. "I think most people are of the view that we should seize the opportunity with this administration to strengthen the relationship and hope that this can survive beyond the midterms and 2024."

European leaders have been upbeat publicly, hailing the survival of multilateralism - but their doubts go beyond the scarring of the Trump years. The Biden administration's foreign policy has been sending mixed signals, marked by some missteps and uncertainty over key policy areas such as China, thanks to lengthy reviews, former U.S. officials and diplomatic sources said.

"America's partners are still reeling from what happened under Trump," said Harry Broadman, a former senior U.S. official and managing director at Berkeley Research Group. "But some of Biden's messaging has also been disjointed."

FOREIGN POLICY FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS

Just a handful of concrete international policies have emerged almost five months since taking office, while Biden's decisions to push for 'Buy America' provisions, back a waiver of intellectual property rights at the World Trade Organization with little consultation with other members, and set an aggressive schedule for withdrawal from Afghanistan have unnerved allies.

Biden said all U.S. troops would be leaving Afghanistan by Sept. 11, a key date marking the start of America's longest war two decades ago. U.S. officials have said they will complete the withdrawal before then.

The timeline sent allies scrambling to keep up, several Western diplomats said, adding that they saw the move as designed for domestic consumption.

Both Biden and his top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have repeatedly said U.S. foreign policy first and foremost should benefit America's middle class.

For many European governments, that sounds like a euphemism for Trump's isolationist "America First" motto. "America first will remain, no doubt," one Western diplomatic source said.

A senior European diplomat said the most important factor was again having someone to work with in Washington: "After the past four years, that really matters."

A LESS DEMOCRATIC AMERICA?

A major underlying concern for many foreign allies is a fundamental one, many experts say - their faith in American democracy is shaken.

Trump for months peddled false claims that he won the Nov. 3 election and on Jan. 6 encouraged his supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol while lawmakers were certifying Biden’s victory.

The riot, which led to the evacuation of the building and five deaths, stunned world leaders.

Jamie Shea, a former senior NATO official now at the Friends of Europe think tank in Brussels, told Reuters he was concerned that the next U.S. president could be another Trump-style leader. (Reuters)

Former Mongolian Prime Minister Ukhnaa Khurelsukh became the country's sixth democratically elected president on Wednesday, further consolidating the power of the ruling Mongolian People's Party (MPP) with a landslide victory.

Khurelsukh, who was forced to resign as prime minister after protests earlier this year, comfortably defeated Sodnomzundui Erdene of the opposition Democratic Party and Dangaasuren Enkhbat of the Right Person Electorate Coalition in a national vote, the General Election Committee said.

With 99.7% of votes counted overnight, Khurelsukh's tally had reached 821,136, or 68% of the total, the largest share of the vote since the democratic era began in 1990. Enkhbat came second with 242,805 votes, or 20.1%, while Erdene trailed in third place, with 72,569 votes, 6% of the total.

Despite the scale of Khurelsukh's victory, there were few signs of celebration in the capital Ulaanbaatar overnight, and the winning candidate said in a speech that the presidency was a "huge responsibility".

"I understand that all of the Mongolian people who voted in this election are expressing hope that we will complete the work we have started ... and that we will do more for our country," Khurelsukh said.

Khurelsukh will replace incumbent Khaltmaa Battulga, who was denied an opportunity to seek re-election following controversial changes to Mongolia's constitution that restricted presidents to one term in office.

His victory follows a low-key campaign marred by COVID-19 restrictions. Most outdoor events were cancelled on Saturday after the outsider candidate Enkhbat of the National Labor Party tested positive for the coronavirus.

Mongolia's hybrid political system gives its elected parliament the right to appoint governments and decide policy, but the president has the power to veto legislation, and until recent constitutional changes could also hire and fire judges.

With the presidency often controlled by the opposition party, the division of power has created political deadlock that some believe has held back Mongolia's development.

Khurelsukh's election is expected to give the MPP more control over the levers of power, though he is obliged to relinquish his party affiliation as soon as he takes office.

The Democratic Party campaigned under the slogan "Mongolia without Dictatorship," and Erdene warned that the country was sliding towards a one-party state. read more

It remains unclear what the MPP's consolidation of power will mean for Mongolia’s biggest foreign investment project, the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine run by Rio Tinto (RIO.AX), (RIO.L), which the government in Ulaanbaatar has sought to renegotiate as construction costs surge. (Reuters)

The Indonesian, South African and Mexican finance ministers expressed support on Thursday for an overhaul of international tax rules to make companies pay their fair share in a more globalised and digitalised business world.

In a joint article with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, Indonesia's Sri Mulyani Indrawati, South Africa' Tito Mboweni and Mexico's Arturo Herrera Gutierrez endorsed changes proposed by the Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies.

G7 finance ministers agreed on Saturday on a system to make multinational companies pay more tax in countries where they operate, alongside a minimum global corporate tax rate of at least 15%. read more

"This year, nations have a historic opportunity to end the race to the bottom in corporate taxation, restoring government resources at a time when they are most needed," the five ministers said in the article, published in newspapers including the Washington Post and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

"To pave the way to that goal, we endorse an initial understanding that the global minimum tax rate must be at least 15 percent, as agreed upon by the Group of Seven countries last week," they wrote, adding that they were confident the minimum rate could "ultimately be pushed higher".

The current international tax system had eroded national sovereignty and put the working class at a disadvantage, they said.

"Together, we can ensure that global capitalism is compatible with fair tax systems and that governments are able to tax multinational corporations," they added.

They urged all other countries involved in negotiations to work together and reach an agreement before finance ministers from the Group of 20 major economies meet in July. A G20 sign-off would in effect give the deal a worldwide reach.

G20 member China is among countries that have voiced objections to a global minimum corporate tax rate of at least 15%, people familiar with the negotiations said. (Reuters)