Thousands surround Merkel office in nuclear protest

Tens of thousands of Germans surrounded Chancellor Angela Merkel's office on Saturday in an anti-nuclear demonstration that organisers said was the biggest of its kind since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The protest, which organisers said drew 100,000 people, could help to mobilise growing grass-roots opposition to Merkel's ruling centre-right coalition, which has suffered a slump in popularity since taking office last October.
Near the start of the protest, police said there were close to 40,000 demonstrators. They declined to give a later estimate. In a peaceful march around Berlin's government quarter, protesters converged on Merkel's chancellery to call for a stop to her unpopular plans to extend the lifespans of Germany's nuclear power stations by an average of 12 years. Waving banners with slogans like "shut down the government now", demonstrators trudged through rain to urge Merkel to backtrack and uphold a pledge made by her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder to switch off Germany's nuclear power plants by 2021.