Thursday briefing: Inside the lifesaving work on an RNLI lifeboat

In today’s newsletter: Ahead of a new report on the government response to Channel crossings, today’s newsletter looks at the growing challenges the Royal National Lifeboat Institution faces

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Good morning. Last Sunday was a bright and scorching day in southern England; it was also the busiest day of the year so far for people arriving in small boats across the Channel, with 616 men, women and children making the crossing to the Kent coast, according to the Home Office.

The journey – often in poor-quality inflatable dinghies supplied by organised criminals – is always perilous, and frequently leads to tragedy. All of which makes the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and its volunteers more important than ever.

Science | Researchers have created synthetic human embryos using stem cells, in a groundbreaking advance that sidesteps the need for eggs or sperm. The structures do not have a beating heart or the beginnings of a brain, but include cells that would typically go on to form the placenta, yolk sac and the embryo itself. It is not clear whether they could develop fully, and it would be illegal to do so. The work raises serious ethical and legal issues.

Greece | At least 79 people have died and scores more are missing in the deadliest migrant shipwreck off Greece this year. The victims, almost all men from Afghanistan and Pakistan, drowned when the boat they were travelling in capsized. The vessel, thought to have been carrying several hundred people, had set out from eastern Libya for Italy.

Economy | Jeremy Hunt has said the UK has no alternative but to raise interest rates to bring down inflation, as households brace for the Bank of England to increase borrowing costs further next week.

Media | ITV’s chief executive Carolyn McCall has denied that management may have been motivated to cover up Phillip Schofield’s affair with a younger member of staff to avoid potential commercial harm to its flagship This Morning programme.

Telecoms | Vodafone and the owner of Three have agreed to merge their British telecoms networks, in a move that will create the UK’s largest mobile phone operator. The newly combined company will, if the merger is completed, have more than 27 million subscribers.