MADRID (Reuters) – International humanitarian groups are finding pockets of suffering in northern Japan, but say most victims of the earthquake, tsunami, and snow blizzards are keeping warm and getting food, water and medical attention.

A week after the devastating quake and massive ocean wave wiped out towns on the northeast coast, international search and rescue teams are abandoning the search for survivors in below-freezing temperatures.

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is seen as unlikely to seek a third term as his popularity sinks due to high unemployment, tax increases and wage cuts.

Polls show the opposition Popular Party has a wide lead before a March 2012 general election and officials in the centre-right party have promised to deepen public spending cuts and fiscal austerity measures if they win.

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is seen as unlikely to seek a third term as his popularity sinks due to high unemployment, tax increases and wage cuts.

Polls show the opposition Popular Party has a wide lead before a March 2012 general election and officials in the center-right party have promised to deepen public spending cuts and fiscal austerity measures if they win.

MADRID/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Spain is confident euro zone leaders will agree to strengthen their multi-billion euro rescue fund at a summit next month, but European Central Bank member Axel Weber cast doubt on whether that should happen.

In an interview with Reuters, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said he was making headway in convincing financial markets Spain was getting its economy in order, and said he was confident Germany would support a stronger euro zone fund despite Chancellor Angela Merkel’s domestic problems.

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain is winning the struggle to restore financial market confidence and is convinced Germany will back a stronger euro zone rescue fund despite Chancellor Angela Merkel’s domestic troubles, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said.

“We are winning the battle, but I still have my guard up because we have to implement all the reforms that have generated more confidence,” Zapatero told Reuters Insider in an interview.

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is seen as unlikely to seek a third term as his popularity sinks due to high unemployment, tax increases and wage cuts.

Polls show the opposition Popular Party has a wide lead before a March 2012 general election and officials in the center-right party have promised to deepen public spending cuts and fiscal austerity measures if they win.

MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero applauded the birth of new democracies in the Middle East and North Africa on Monday, and urged Europe to give them economic and political support.

He also condemned violence after dozens died in escalating conflict in Libya.

In an interview with Reuters, Zapatero said the European Union should consider creating a bank to help emerging new democracies in the region rebuild, as it had for eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

MADRID/PARIS (Reuters) – France and Germany will present joint proposals to improve economic competitiveness in the euro zone at an EU summit on Friday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday.

But decisions will only be taken in March along with a strengthening of the currency bloc’s rescue fund, on which much work remains to be done, EU officials said.

MADRID, Feb 3 (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel
said on Thursday Spain was on the right road with its crisis
measures and pledged the euro zone would take crucial steps by
March to strengthen economic stability.

“Spain has really done its homework now and therefore I
believe Spain is now on a good path,” Merkel said at a joint
news conference with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez
Zapatero in Madrid after a summit between the two leaders.

MADRID (Reuters) – The Spanish government rejected a permanent cease-fire declared by the Basque separatist group ETA on Monday, saying it did not go far enough and warning that the search for peace was a process that would take time.

ETA, which has killed more than 850 people in its half-century armed struggle for an independent state in northern Spain and southwest France, has been crippled by arrests and Basques’ rising support for more peaceful methods.