A ship carrying humanitarian aid and activists to Gaza has been bombed by drones and disabled while in international waters off Malta as it headed towards the Palestinian territory, its organisers have said.

“At 00:23 Maltese time, the Conscience, a Freedom Flotilla Coalition ship came under direct attack in international waters,” the group said in a statement.

“Armed drones attacked the front of an unarmed civilian vessel twice, causing a fire and a substantial breach in the hull,” it added, blaming Israel.

Israel has not commented on the allegation.

The strike appeared to target the boat’s generator early on Friday, leaving the boat without power and at risk of sinking, the activists said. Images posted to social media by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition showed a fierce blaze on board the ship and explosions.

Twelve crew members and four civilians were “confirmed safe”, the Maltese government said in a statement on Friday. “The vessel had 12 crew members on board and four civilian passengers; no casualties were reported,” the statement said, adding that a nearby tug had been directed to aid the vessel.

The group said activists from 21 countries were on board on a “mission to challenge Israel’s illegal and deadly siege of Gaza and to deliver desperately needed, life-saving aid”.

The statement read: “Israeli ambassadors must be summoned and answer to violations of international law, including the ongoing blockade and the bombing of our civilian vessel in international waters.”

Israel imposed a tight blockade on Gaza two months ago, allowing no food, fuel, medicine or other item into the territory, and resumed intense military operations in Gaza in mid-March after a fragile ceasefire collapsed.

Humanitarian organisations in Gaza have distributed the last of their stocks of flour and other foodstuffs. Officials in the devastated Palestinian territory said on Friday that the kitchens that serve basic meals to those with no other option would be forced to close within a week to 10 days.

Israeli officials justify the blockade with claims that Hamas routinely steals aid, distributing it to its fighters or selling it. Aid officials in Gaza deny any widespread theft of aid in recent months.

A previous Freedom Flotilla launched from southern Turkey in 2010 ended in bloodshed when Israeli forces stormed the Mavi Marmara vessel, killing 10 people and wounding 28.

The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel in October 2023, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday at least 2,326 people had been killed since Israel resumed strikes, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,418, also mostly civilians.

Civil rights campaigners have hailed a “huge victory for democracy” after the court of appeal upheld the quashing of a key anti-protest regulation they said was introduced unlawfully.

The government had appealed against a high court ruling that the previous Tory home secretary, Suella Braverman, did not have the power to redefine “serious disruption” as “more than minor” in the law concerning when police could impose limits on protests.

It was a change in law that seriously limited the kinds of actions protesters could take, and which campaigners said had given police almost unlimited discretionary power over which protests to allow and which to halt.

Akiko Hart, the director of the human rights organisation Liberty, which brought the initial challenge, said: “Today’s judgment is clear, just as it was last year, that these laws should never have been made.

“They were a flagrant abuse of power from a government determined to shut down protesters they did not personally agree with.

“Five different judges over two separate hearings have now ruled that ‘serious’ simply cannot mean ‘more than minor’. It’s therefore even more surprising that the current government chose to continue the appeal into this case and argue that wasn’t the case. As a result, even more people have been needlessly funnelled into the criminal system over the past 12 months through a law that should never have existed in the first place.

“This ruling is a huge victory for democracy, and sets an important precedent that government ministers must respect the law, and cannot simply step outside it to do whatever they want. The next step for the government is simple: they must accept this ruling and agree to scrap this unlawful legislation once and for all.”

The case centred around a statutory instrument, a type of legislation that can pass with minimal parliamentary scrutiny, introduced by Braverman to clarify the definition of “serious disruption” under the Public Order Act 1986, after lords had voted down similar provisions just months earlier.

A cross-party parliamentary committee said it was the first time a government had ever sought to make changes to a law through so-called Henry VIII powers which had already been rejected by parliament in primary legislation. One peer described it in parliament as a “constitutional outrage”.

Liberty challenged the redefinition with a judicial review, arguing that Braverman had overreached by introducing the change under secondary legislation which requires less parliamentary oversight.

But even as that challenge was under way, hundreds of campaigners were arrested under the new power, including the climate activist Greta Thunberg at a protest in London. She was acquitted of all charges in a hearing in February 2024.

Finally, in May last year, the high court agreed with the campaigners’ arguments, but judges suspended the reversal of the measures after the Home Office began an appeal that was continued after government changed hands in 2024.

Upholding the high court’s ruling on Friday morning, Lord Justice Underhill, Lord Justice Dingemans and Lord Justice Edis said: “The term ‘serious’ inherently connotes a high threshold … [and] cannot reasonably encompass anything that is merely ‘more than minor’.”

Liberty, despite claiming victory, warned that the section 14 power which has now been softened is just one plank of extensive legislation that has drastically circumscribed people’s ability to protest in the UK. It has issued a warning about new powers building on previous acts currently under consideration by lawmakers as part of a crime and policing bill.

“It’s especially worrying that even more measures are going through parliament, including bans on face coverings at protests that would make it unsafe for disabled activists and political dissidents to protest,” said Katy Watts, a Liberty lawyer.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The court has ruled that specific regulations made by the previous government were unlawful. However, the central powers currently used by policing to manage protests and ensure that they remain peaceful are not affected by this judgment.

“The right to peaceful protest is a cornerstone of our democracy but the law remains clear that it does not extend to intentional intimidation or serious disruption to the life of the community.

“We are already bringing forward new measures in legislation to prevent intimidatory protests outside places of worship. We will ensure that the police and the public have clarity on existing powers to manage protests that cause serious disruption, including where that disruption is cumulative, and undertake further work where required.”

Germany’s domestic intelligence service has designated the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the biggest opposition party, as a “confirmed rightwing extremist” force, meaning authorities can step up their surveillance as critics call for it to be legally banned.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) had since 2021 considered the anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin party a “suspected” threat to Germany’s democratic order, with regional chapters in three eastern states classed as confirmed extremist.

The AfD came second in the February general election with just over 20% of the vote.

The Cologne-based BfV said it had concluded that the “ethnic-ancestry-based understanding” of German identity held in the AfD was “incompatible with the free democratic basic order” set out in the constitution.

The party “aims to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society, to subject them to unconstitutional unequal treatment and thus to assign them a legally devalued status”, the spy agency said.

The decision will lift restrictions on measures to monitor the party for suspected illegal activities, including tapping telephone communications, observing its meetings and recruiting secret informants.

The AfD has faced growing calls from opponents for it to be outlawed on the grounds that it seeks to undermine democratic values, including protection of minority rights. Such a ban can be sought by either house of parliament – the Bundestag or the Bundesrat – or the government itself.

Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democratic Union leader, is due to be sworn in as Germany’s next chancellor at the Bundestag on Tuesday after his conservative bloc won the February snap election. However, his party has lost ground since the vote, with several recent polls showing the AfD in first place.

Merz will lead a centre-right government with the Social Democrats. Their coalition agreement bars any explicit or tacit cooperation with the AfD, a policy that all the mainstream parties have deemed a critical “firewall” to protect German democracy.

The AfD won a record number of seats in the election, which theoretically entitles it to chair several key parliamentary committees, although it would still need the support of other parties.

Analysts say the new government will have a limited window to win back voter trust or risk the AfD, which has about 51,000 members, winning outright at the next general election, planned for 2029.

The party has made strong gains over the last year on the back of voter frustration with immigration policy and an ailing economy.

It came first in Thuringia’s regional election in September, marking the first time since the Nazi period that a far-right party had won a state poll, and it performed well the same month in two other former communist regions.

After active endorsement by Donald Trump’s adviser Elon Musk during the campaign, the AfD turned in the best national result for a hard-right party in Germany since the second world war.

The BfV had worked for several months to compile a case against the AfD. The news magazine Der Spiegel said the file presented to the interior ministry this week weighed in at 1,100 pages outlining the party’s efforts to erode German democracy.

This included viewing German citizens “with a background of migration from predominantly Muslim countries” as inferior while inciting hostility toward asylum seekers and migrants.

Political analysts and security authorities say the AfD, which was founded 12 years ago by a group of Eurosceptic professors, has radicalised further with each change in leadership as it ousted more moderate figures.

It is now led by Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, who during the recent campaigns openly called for the “remigration” of people they deemed to be “poorly integrated”, including German citizens with roots abroad.

The AfD also calls for a break with Germany’s sacrosanct culture of historical remembrance of the Holocaust, repeatedly using thinly veiled Nazi slogans, which are outlawed in Germany.

In an online chat with Musk in January, Weidel referred to Adolf Hitler as a communist.

Buddhist academics and monastic leaders have condemned an auction of ancient Indian gem relics which they said were widely considered to be imbued with the presence of the Buddha.

The auction of the Piprahwa gems will take place in Hong Kong next week. Sotheby’s listing describes them as being “of unparalleled religious, archaeological and historical importance” and many Buddhists considered them to be corporeal remains, which had been desecrated by a British colonial landowner.

Prof Ashley Thompson, of Soas University of London, and the curator Conan Cheong, both experts in south-east Asian art, also claimed the auction raised ethical concerns about the ownership of treasures “wrongfully acquired during the colonial era”.

The gems, which are expected to sell for about HK$100m (£9.7m), are being sold by three descendants of the British engineer William Claxton Peppé, who in 1898 excavated them on his estate in northern India. They include amethysts, coral, garnets, pearls, rock crystals, shells and gold, either worked into pendants, beads, and other ornaments, or in their natural form.

The gems were originally buried in a dome-shaped funerary monument, called a stupa, in Piprahwa, in present-day Uttar Pradesh, India, about 240-200BC, when they were mixed with some of the cremated remains of the Buddha, who died about 480BC.

The British crown claimed Peppé’s find under the 1878 Indian Treasure Trove Act, with the bones and ash gifted to the Buddhist monarch King Chulalongkorn of Siam. Most of the 1,800 gems went to the colonial museum in Kolkata, while Peppé was permitted to retain approximately a fifth of them.

Thomson said: “For the vast majority of devotees, these gem relics are not inanimate objects – they are imbued with the presence of the Buddha.

“The relics – bones, ash and gems – were all found together inside the funerary monument, and were meant by those who deposited them to be together in perpetuity. When excavated they were categorised as human remains on the one hand and gems on the other. This sale perpetuates the colonial violence of that separation.”

Venerable Dr Yon Seng Yeath, the abbot of Wat Unnalom, the headquarters of Cambodia’s Mahanikaya Buddhist order, said the auction “disrespects a global spiritual tradition and ignores the growing consensus that sacred heritage should belong to the communities that value it most”.

Mahinda Deegalle, a Buddhist monastic leader and emeritus professor at Bath Spa University, said the sale was “appalling” and a “humiliation of one of the greatest thinkers in the world”.

Chris Peppé, a great-grandson of William Claxton Peppé who owns the gems along with two other relatives, said none of the Buddhist temples or experts he had consulted over the past 10 years regarded them as corporeal remains.

“[These] arguments don’t represent Buddhist popular opinion,” said Peppé, a film editor and director based in Los Angeles. “They belong to Buddhist scholarship and don’t help us find a way to get the gems into Buddhist hands. The Piprahwa gems were relic offerings made at the time of the reinterment of the Buddha’s ashes over 200 years after his passing.”

The film-maker, who wrote a piece for Sotheby’s about his family’s custodianship of the gems, said they had considered donating them to temples and museums but this proved to be problematic. “An auction [in Hong Kong] seems the fairest and most transparent way to transfer these relics to Buddhists and we are confident that Sotheby’s will achieve that,” he added.

One of the experts Chris Peppé consulted, John Strong, a professor emeritus of religious studies at Bates College, Maine, said the gems could be regarded in several ways. He said some experts and devotees saw them as special offerings intended to honour the bodily remains of the Buddha, while others viewed them as a special kind of relic, symbolising “the ongoing incorruptibility of the quality of Buddhahood”.

A Sotheby’s spokesperson said: “We conducted requisite due diligence, including in relation to authenticity and provenance, legality and other considerations in line with our policies and industry standards for artworks and treasures.”

Fourteen national LGBTQ+ charities have written to Keir Starmer seeking an urgent meeting to discuss what they describe as “a genuine crisis for the rights, dignity and inclusion of trans people in the UK” after the supreme court’s ruling on biological sex.

The UK supreme court ruled last month that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 referred only to “a biological woman” and to “biological sex”, with subsequent advice from the equality watchdog amounting to a blanket ban on trans people using toilets and other services of the gender they identify as.

The letter to the prime minister, signed by the leaders of Stonewall, Scottish Trans, the LGBT Consortium, TransActual and others, said the judgment had created “confusion and a significant lack of clarity about what this means for businesses, services and civil society and most importantly the impact on trans people”.

The text, seen by the Guardian, suggests the judgment turns previous understanding of the Equality Act “completely on its head”, creating “a legal framework that simply cannot uphold the dignity, protection and respect of trans people”.

It is particularly critical of the interim update issued by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) last Friday, which said transgender people “should not be permitted” to use facilities of the gender they identify with. The letter suggests this amounts to “significant overreach” that is inconsistent with the UK’s obligations under the Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights.

But the chair of the EHRC, Kishwer Falkner, hit back at critics in an opinion piece in the House magazine, saying “it is unacceptable to question the integrity of the judiciary, or indeed the regulator, as some have done”.

Acknowledging that “the public discourse on this topic continues to be polarised”, Lady Falkner called on “every legislator to read the judgment in full”, saying she regretted “any uncertainty among duty bearers and the public that has been fuelled by misunderstanding and distortion, particularly across social media”.

Praising the judgment as “a model of clarity”, she underlined that “the law it sets out is effective immediately. Those with duties under the Equality Act should be following it and taking specialist legal advice where necessary”.

Falkner also dismissed claims that trans people were not being listened to as “simply incorrect”, pointing to the commission’s plans to open a two-week public consultation in May to understand how the practical implications of the judgment can be reflected in an updated code of practice.

The nonprofit legal organisation Good Law Project (GLP), which has raised more than £284,000 to challenge the supreme court’s judgment, said it was working on about 20 related legal initiatives, including one case already before the courts. In an update to donors, GLP added it had instructed an expert team to produce legal advice on what the court’s decision meant and would produce guidance for the trans community on what to do if they are challenged for using the spaces that align with their gender.

Fourteen national LGBTQ+ charities have written to Keir Starmer seeking an urgent meeting to discuss what they describe as “a genuine crisis for the rights, dignity and inclusion of trans people in the UK” after the supreme court’s ruling on biological sex.

The UK supreme court ruled last month that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 referred only to “a biological woman” and to “biological sex”, with subsequent advice from the equality watchdog amounting to a blanket ban on trans people using toilets and other services of the gender they identify as.

The letter to the prime minister, signed by the leaders of Stonewall, Scottish Trans, the LGBT Consortium, TransActual and others, said the judgment had created “confusion and a significant lack of clarity about what this means for businesses, services and civil society and most importantly the impact on trans people”.

The text, seen by the Guardian, suggests the judgment turns previous understanding of the Equality Act “completely on its head”, creating “a legal framework that simply cannot uphold the dignity, protection and respect of trans people”.

It is particularly critical of the interim update issued by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) last Friday, which said transgender people “should not be permitted” to use facilities of the gender they identify with. The letter suggests this amounts to “significant overreach” that is inconsistent with the UK’s obligations under the Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights.

But the chair of the EHRC, Kishwer Falkner, hit back at critics in an opinion piece in the House magazine, saying “it is unacceptable to question the integrity of the judiciary, or indeed the regulator, as some have done”.

Acknowledging that “the public discourse on this topic continues to be polarised”, Lady Falkner called on “every legislator to read the judgment in full”, saying she regretted “any uncertainty among duty bearers and the public that has been fuelled by misunderstanding and distortion, particularly across social media”.

Praising the judgment as “a model of clarity”, she underlined that “the law it sets out is effective immediately. Those with duties under the Equality Act should be following it and taking specialist legal advice where necessary”.

Falkner also dismissed claims that trans people were not being listened to as “simply incorrect”, pointing to the commission’s plans to open a two-week public consultation in May to understand how the practical implications of the judgment can be reflected in an updated code of practice.

The nonprofit legal organisation Good Law Project (GLP), which has raised more than £284,000 to challenge the supreme court’s judgment, said it was working on about 20 related legal initiatives, including one case already before the courts. In an update to donors, GLP added it had instructed an expert team to produce legal advice on what the court’s decision meant and would produce guidance for the trans community on what to do if they are challenged for using the spaces that align with their gender.

The boss of Marks & Spencer has urged customers to come into its stores to shop in person this bank holiday weekend as the retailer works “day and night” to tackle the cyber-attack that has crippled its online operation.

The retailer’s IT systems were hit by a major ransomware attack almost two weeks ago. It is still not taking online orders, and the availability of some products in its stores has been affected after it took some of its systems offline in response.

“We are really sorry that we’ve not been able to offer you the service you expect from M&S over the last week,’ said the chief executive, Stuart Machin, in a post to customers on LinkedIn. “We are working day and night to manage the current cyber incident and get things back to normal for you as quickly as possible.

“Our teams are doing the very best they can, and are ready to welcome you into our stores – whether you are shopping for food or for fashion, home and beauty this bank holiday weekend.”

M&S first reported problems over the Easter weekend, when it stopped taking click-and-collect orders and its contactless payments were affected. Contactless payments have since restarted.

The Metropolitan police have confirmed they are investigating a cyber-attack, with a hacking collective known as Scattered Spider linked to the hack.

A spate of cyber incidents have hit retailers over the past week, including the Co-op, which shut off parts of its IT systems after an attempted hack, and the luxury department store Harrods, which said on Thursday that it had also had to power off some systems.

The National Cyber Security Centre said it was working with the affected companies but told all UK businesses that the incidents “should act as a wake-up call” on the importance of having measures in place to protect against and respond to attacks.

More than £650m has been wiped off the market value of M&S since the cyber-attack. On Thursday it emerged that M&S has been forced to pause hiring new workers while tech experts dealt with the consequences of the hack.

The company said it had pulled all online job postings from its website and put its recruitment systems on hold.

M&S, which employs about 65,000 people in its stores and London head office, had no jobs listed anywhere across its UK business on Thursday despite having more than 200 openings the previous week.

Helen Dickinson, the chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, echoed Machin’s comments, saying the public should continue to support the three retailers that were hit.

“All of the businesses that have been affected are all still open,” Dickinson said in an interview with the BBC. “You can still go into the shop and buy whatever you need and I think it is really important for us as people, as customers, to support businesses when you know they are working hard to mitigate something that is completely out of their control.”

She said many retailers were concerned about the cyber-attacks, particularly given it is not yet known whether they are linked to the same group, raising fears of more attacks.

“They are obviously high profile businesses, we all interact with retailers each and every day,” Dickinson said. “Retailers need to be vigilant, but from a cyber-attacker point of view these attacks are becoming more sophisticated and they are very good at finding a weakness in any system.”

Transgender women will no longer be able to play in competitive women’s and girl’s cricket in England and Wales after a change of policy from the sport’s governing body.

Trans women have been banned from the top two tiers of elite women’s cricket since the start of this year, but had been permitted to compete in the women’s game up to and including tier three of the domestic game and throughout recreational cricket. However, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has now extended its policy in light of a UK supreme court ruling handed down last month. The change was officially approved at a board meeting on Friday.

The ECB said in a statement: “With immediate effect, only those whose biological sex is female will be eligible to play in women’s cricket and girls’ cricket matches. Transgender women and girls can continue playing in open and mixed cricket.”

The Football Association announced new policies planning to ban trans women from female competition on Thursday and the indication at the time was that the ECB would follow suit after taking legal advice.

On 16 April the UK supreme court issued clarification regarding terms used in the 2010 Equality Act. Within that clarification, it said that Section 195 of the Act, which permits the lawful exclusion of athletes from gender-affected sports based on sex, was “plainly predicated on biological sex”. Pool was the first UK sport to change policy following the ruling. England Netball announced a new policy on Thursday, but has stressed those changes had nothing to do with the supreme court ruling.

The ECB added in its statement: “Our regulations for recreational cricket have always aimed at ensuring that cricket remains as inclusive a sport as possible. These included measures to manage disparities, irrespective of someone’s gender, and safeguard the enjoyment of all players. However, given the new advice received about the impact of the Supreme Court ruling, we believe the changes announced today are necessary.

“We acknowledge that this decision will have a significant impact on transgender women and girls. We will work with Recreational Cricket Boards to support people impacted by this change in our regulations. We await updated guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and will study this carefully. We maintain that abuse or discrimination has no place in our sport and are committed to ensuring that cricket is played in a spirit of respect and inclusivity.”

A glut of early strawberries, aubergines and tomatoes has hit Britain with the dry, warm weather eliminating the usual “hungry gap”, growers say.

It has been a sunny, very dry spring, with the warmest start to May on record and temperatures predicted to reach up to 30C at the earliest point on record, forecasters have said.

Nick Haigh, a grower at the Community Farm south of Bristol, said many of their Mediterranean vegetables had come weeks earlier than expected.

“It feels like it’s the middle of May already,” he said, “We have loads and loads of crops right now, tomatoes, aubergines, cucumbers, peppers, they are all ready two or three weeks early. We are crazy busy already. We are feeling the push right now.”

Usually this time of year is known as the “hungry gap”, when winter vegetables have run out and consumers are waiting for the summer crops to arrive. However, the sunny, dry weather has eliminated this, he said.

“A few months ago we thought it would be the worst hungry gap ever, now we are saying there is not going to be a hungry gap. We got really poor harvests last year – we didn’t get very much squash, for example – so we didn’t have the storage vegetables that would usually get us through the hungry gap. Last year was awful, it was completely wet.”

The extremes of weather, made more acute by climate breakdown, are catching farmers by surprise as they never know whether they will have to deal with floods or drought.

“You just can’t predict the climate any more. What might be your predictable dates you might plant things by just don’t work any more,” he said. “We are having to try to be more adaptable to different techniques based on the climate. It’s keeping us on our toes for sure. Some rain would be great, though, we are looking at the weather waiting for the rain.”

Kew Gardens, in south-west London, has noticed a glut of berries coming up early.

Hélèna Dove, the head of the kitchen garden at Kew, said: “The recent warm weather is really showing how much our growing seasons are shifting. Traditionally, a good kitchen gardener would be proud to have ripe strawberries by Wimbledon as it would demonstrate their skill and expertise. We already have ripe strawberries in the kitchen garden at Kew Gardens, and it’s only April.”

She said gardeners were experimenting with stone and tropical fruits, which do not usually fare well in the UK’s traditionally mild climate: “The warm spring means crops like citrus, kiwi, and tropical plants are thriving earlier, with longer seasons and better yields. We’re even growing peaches, apricots, and nectarines outside currently, something that would have been unthinkable in previous years due to the risk of late frosts and lack of early pollinators.

“This time of year is also known as the hungry gap for these early pollinators, once the winter crops have ended but the new season’s plantings are not yet ready to harvest, but with plants such as calendula flowering early, there is a reliable food source this year. While some traditional fruits, such as apples, are struggling, this is an opportunity to rethink what we plant, working with the climate to save energy, water, and potentially even reduce imports.”

Farmers are, on the whole, enjoying the sunny growing season. Dale Robinson, supply chain head at the organic vegetable box company Riverford, said: “This spring has been one of the warmest many of us can remember, bringing a real sense of joy and hope to our fields. Crops like purple sprouting broccoli and wild garlic have thrived, and the early warmth has allowed for timely planting of main crops. It’s a welcome change from the delays caused by last year’s wet winter – the wettest on record.

“While we celebrate these favourable conditions, our growers remain mindful of the increasing unpredictability brought about by climate change. The real challenge lies not in the gradual shifts, but in the erratic weather extremes – sudden frosts, hailstorms, droughts – all of which can undo months of hard work in a single day.”

A warm and sunny May bank holiday weekend is expected to bring a million more drivers out on the roads than last year, with the part-closure of Great Britain’s main rail line on Sunday and Monday likely to aggravate the situation.

Congestion is set to peak with the temperatures on Friday afternoon, when getaway drives and commuter traffic coincide.

About 17m leisure journeys by car are expected between Friday and Monday, a million more than the same bank holiday in 2024, according to the RAC motoring organisation, despite Easter weekend falling only two weeks ago this year.

Its research found most drivers were planning to hit the roads on Friday afternoon and Saturday.

According to Met Office forecasts, the hottest start to May is set to cool as the weekend goes on but stay generally dry over most of Britain, with plenty of sun on Saturday.

Rod Dennis, an RAC spokesperson, said: “When the sun makes a welcome appearance and the heat hangs on, that is likely to boost the number of people on the road. Even if the temperature dips, the days are long and it’s not a bank holiday washout.”

Fuel prices have also dropped to a near-four-year low, with the average price of a litre of petrol at UK forecourts just over 134p – the cheapest price since July 2021.

The transport analytics company Inrix forecast that the worst traffic would be during late afternoon and early evening on Friday, with congestion peaking between 11am and 3pm on other days.

The M5 southbound on the popular holiday route between Bristol and the south-west is expected to experience delays of up to 40 minutes from 7pm. Similar hold-ups will come earlier on the M25.

Rail passengers may have a smoother getaway – but could struggle to get back later in the weekend with the closure of the west coast main line.

Reduced services will run on Saturday on the route used by Avanti and others for intercity trains from the capital to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow – and no trains at all will run in or out of London Euston on the line on Sunday and Monday.

The track will be closed south of Milton Keynes for renewal, embankment repairs and drainage works. Buses will also replace trains on the line north of Carlisle to Glasgow, and between Crewe and Preston.

Elsewhere, Southeastern trains will not reach London Victoria on Saturday or Sunday, with services stopping and starting at London Bridge or Cannon Street.

There will also be no services between Cambridge and Audley End between Saturday and Monday.

Brian Paynter, Network Rail’s capital delivery head of track, said: “We know some of this will be disruptive, but bank holidays remain the least busy time for carrying out complex upgrades.”

He said people should plan ahead and recommended that those who would normally used Euston should travel either side of the bank holiday weekend if possible.

Airports are set to be busier than the Easter weekend, with 11,746 flights scheduled to depart from UK airports, carrying potentially more than 2 million passengers. The numbers continue to climb but are still lower than before the coronavirus pandemic, according to the analytics company Cirium, with the most flights heading to Dublin, Amsterdam, Palma, Málaga and Alicante.

Labelling a win as “seismic” has become a lazy and overused term. But not in the case of Liverpool FC’s title-clinching win over Tottenham Hotspur when scientists recorded genuine Earth-shaking seismic activity triggered by celebrations at Anfield.

Researchers from the University of Liverpool’s department of Earth, ocean and environmental sciences were on site on Sunday to measure ground movement from the crowd throughout the match when the home team won 5–1 and claimed the Premier League title for the 2024-25 season.

Using state-of-the-art seismic equipment, the same type of instrumentation used to monitor earthquake-prone regions such as Chile and Italy, the scientists captured ground motions triggered by celebrations inside the ground.

The data revealed that the 60,415-strong crowd generated real seismic activity, particularly in response to the six goals scored during the game.

The most significant tremor was caused by Alexis Mac Allister’s strike in the 24th minute, which put Liverpool 2-1 ahead. It registered a peak magnitude of 1.74 on the Richter scale.

The second-largest tremor, measuring 1.60, followed Mohamed Salah’s goal in front of the Kop in the second half. Cody Gakpo’s effort measured 1.03, the own goal from Destiny Udogie 1.35 and Luis Díaz’s initially disallowed equaliser 0.64.

The study was conducted by Dr Antoine Septier, Dr Farnaz Kamranzad, and Prof Ben Edwards.

Kamranzad said: “Who knew that football fans could generate seismic energy? This experiment shows us that science is everywhere, even hidden beneath the roar of a goal at Anfield. It is a great reminder that geoscience can capture the energy of human emotion in powerful and surprising ways.

“Incredibly, we recorded six seismic events with equivalent Richter magnitudes from 0.7 to 1.75. These were small tremors, not strong enough to be felt in the stands, but powerful enough to leave a clear and lasting mark at Anfield. Every cheer, every celebration, leaves a trace beneath our feet, a seismic fingerprint of collective joy, written into the Earth’s memory long after the final whistle.”

Septier added: “The experiment was an exciting experience, demonstrating that science can be both engaging and accessible to the public. I hope that our work inspires a new generation of seismologists and fosters a broader appreciation for the scientific process. Moreover, I hope that showing this data will spark innovative ideas for potential applications, perhaps even to enhance the stadium experience.”