Devon and Cornwall Police have urged people to avoid coastal swimming after two men, aged in their 40s and 60s, went missing in the water off a beach in Devon on Christmas morning.
The search for them was called off on Thursday evening.
Police were called at 10.25am following concerns for people in the water, and an extensive search for the pair was called off in the evening.
"Today, emergency services have been responding to a truly tragic incident in Budleigh Salterton," said Detective Superintendent Hayley Costar from Devon and Cornwall Police on Thursday evening.
"There have been weather warnings in place this week and a number of official and unofficial swims have already been cancelled," she added.
"We urge anyone with plans to go swimming in the sea on Boxing Day not to."
It come as the UK Health Security Agency's (UKHSA) yellow alert for the south west of England, issued from 6pm on 25 December, will continue until midday on 27 December.
The alert warns of a "greater risk to life of vulnerable people", as well as an "increased use of healthcare services" among that group.
Boxing Day set to be milder than Christmas
While there were yellow weather warnings in place for strong winds on Christmas Day, the Met Office said Boxing Day would ultimately be milder, albeit frosty in the morning and continuing to be chilly.
"Boxing Day we're going to see some good spells of sunshine, we will see a little in the way of cloud for the South and North West, some light rain, but for the vast majority it's going to be dry," Met Office meteorologist Zoe Hutin said.
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"While it will still be breezy, it won't be as windy as Christmas Day.
"It's still going to feel chilly, top temperatures between 6-7C, in the south it's going to feel closer to 4-5C.
"A low chance of snow, it's not expected at all."
She said to expect similar conditions over the weekend, with temperatures at between 6-7C.
There could be drizzle where the cloud is thicker, and it will stay quite breezy, Ms Hutin added.
Our bodies are built for gravity; take it away and there are profound changes to our biology.
Muscles and bones that keep us upright on Earth become weak.
Body fluid that's normally pooled in our legs floods into our upper body, changing the shape of the heart and damaging the eyes.
And genes that are inactive on Earth suddenly switch on.
Others go silent.
These are some of the lessons learned from 25 years of studying astronauts living and working on the International Space Station (ISS).
And they are challenges that scientists must do their best to overcome as humans embark on a new era of space exploration, venturing beyond the relative safety of Earth's orbit for the first time in more than half a century.
Overcoming the bodily challenges of space
Four astronauts will launch on a test flight around the moon within weeks.
They will pave the way for future missions that will land on the surface and ultimately build a long-term presence, searching for ice and minerals.
British astronaut Tim Peake knows all about the rigours of microgravity. He spent 186 days in orbit.
"Effectively, you're taking relatively fit, healthy individuals and you're putting them through a 20-year aging process in a period of about two months," he told me.
"Then you're watching that reverse when they come back to Earth again."
The University of Northumbria has an aerospace medicine laboratory, where scientists are trying to find ways of helping humans adapt to space travel.
In one corner there is a scaffolding rig - what the team calls a "variable gravity suspension system".
Once attached to its strings, you dangle like a puppet, lying almost horizontally with feet resting on a treadmill that's fixed in an upright position, as if on a wall.
And it is the closest thing on Earth there is to walking on the moon.
You immediately realised why astronauts in those old Apollo-era movies bounce or lope across the lunar surface.
The moon's gravity is one-sixth of the Earth's and if feels natural to take giant strides. It's exhilarating.
The scientists use the suspension system to study how the muscles and skeleton move without gravity - and then develop exercises that could prepare astronauts for a mission and rehabilitate them on their return.
How quickly is the human body affected?
According to Professor Nick Caplan, head of the laboratory, astronauts on the space shuttle missions of the 1990s began to lose muscle mass and strength in as little as 14 days.
"On longer duration missions, the amount of muscle loss if somebody wasn't doing any exercise can be anywhere between 5% and 18%," he said.
And bones in the lower half of the body also get weaker if they don't have to bear weight.
The effect can be profound, said Prof Caplan.
"For a six-month mission in space, on average we see a similar amount of bone loss as we see across 10 years as part of a normal ageing process in someone down here on Earth," he said.
The musculoskeletal impacts of microgravity are why astronauts on the ISS exercise for two hours a day. There are weights for strength training and a treadmill for a cardio workout.
Running in space isn't comfortable. It requires a shoulder harness to hold astronauts down on the treadmill. Yet somehow Tim Peake managed to run a distance equivalent to the London Marathon in 3 hours 35 minutes.
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The exercise is a huge time commitment. Scientists at the University of Northumbria are trying to reduce the amount that astronauts need to do.
One strategy is to use an inflatable cuff that is wrapped around the arms or legs. It acts as a tourniquet, restricting the flow of blood and oxygen to the muscles.
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Luke Hughes, the lab's exercise physiologist, sets me up with the cuff and hands me a 2kg weight to do some bicep curls.
It's far less than I would normally lift, but it quickly pushes my muscle to exhaustion.
Dr Hughes said the system was tested by astronauts on the SpaceX Fram2 mission earlier this year and is being optimised for further testing in future.
"It could make exercise more efficient in space.
"As we move on from the International Space Station to Lunar Gateway (a planned future space station orbiting the Moon), lunar habitats, and then eventually on to Mars, we can't take all the big, heavy, bulky exercise equipment that's currently used on the ISS," he said.
"We need ways to make exercise efficient and optimise it, and this arguably is a leading candidate to do so."
There is perhaps an even bigger issue that still needs to be solved.
Another invisible danger
When astronauts leave the protective bubble of the Earth's magnetic field, they will be vulnerable to cosmic and solar radiation.
High energy particles from the sun or from outside our solar system can raise radiation levels by as much as 150 times above those on Earth, damaging DNA and increasing the lifetime risk of cancer.
If there is a solar flare while the Artemis astronauts are travelling to the Moon, they will shelter in an area of the Orion capsule that's protected by the heatshield as well as containing water tanks and food stores.
But there's still some exposure.
"It's only three to five days to get to the Moon, so those missions won't present a significant risk," said Professor Caplan.
"But if we think more into the future when we're sending humans to Mars, we're looking at a six to nine, maybe 12-month transit time.
"That amount of time will present a significant health risk to those astronauts.
"There are notions about having a metre thick layer of water around the spaceship, which would provide shielding from the radiation.
"But another way that is being looked at is through nutritional factors. Can we reduce the risk of radiation exposure through specific diets?
"There's a huge amount that is still left to be understood."
There's no doubt the Artemis astronauts heading to the Moon are better prepared and better protected than those in the Apollo era.
The ISS has been a big part in that. But there are still huge gaps in our knowledge of how to survive in space.
Our Sky News correspondents have been on the ground all through 2025, bringing you the full story first.
Here's what they have seen - and why it's important to them.
Adam Parsons, Middle East correspondent, on his time in Gaza
I will always remember the first time I went into Gaza.
The Israeli military took a group of journalists to a place called Tel el-Hawa, a suburb of Gaza City, where the war was raging.
The army controlled where we went, what we saw, and when we arrived and left, but even allowing for those restrictions, it was still an extraordinary experience.
It was a long journey to get there, starting in Hummers and moving into armoured personnel carriers.
When we arrived, the door slid open and reality smacked you. The booms of explosions and the chatter of gunfire were nearby, echoing on the walls of bombed-out houses.
There were warnings to look out for snipers, and people's abandoned possessions were strewn on the ground.
But what will stick with me are two things - the utter devastation all around us, with a landscape of grey dust, rubble and shattered buildings, and secondly, the simple lack of life.
Not only were there no civilians, but also no animals, no flowers, no grass and not even a bird in the sky.
Stuart Ramsay, chief correspondent, on a year of free Syria
Reporting on the evolution of Syria from a country at war with Bashar al Assad as president, to a country rid of him and trying to rebuild itself, has provided me with some of the most memorable moments of my year of reporting.
My relationship with Syria goes back to 2011. During the Arab Spring, I was one of a handful of journalists who reported from inside rebel areas of Syria, meeting the thousands of ordinary people attempting to bring about political change in their country.
They finally did get their change, and I could not believe that I was standing in the middle of a square in Damascus as they celebrated.
Since then, the stories I have covered from Syria have been far from easy - outbreaks of horrendous sectarian violence on the country’s Mediterranean coast, investigations into the former regime’s bloody campaign of torture and murder against its own citizens and witnessing the pain of people trying to find their missing loved ones were a constant theme.
But there have been moments of happiness, even euphoria, as the Syrian people slowly began to realise that the 50 years of the Assad dynasty’s dictatorship were over, never to return.
I was wanted by the Assad regime - an arrest warrant was issued because of my reporting from opposition areas, but this year I could, for the first time, walk freely in Damascus, eat in restaurants, drive north along roads in normal traffic, free from the threat of Assad’s security forces that throttled this country.
That was liberating for me. Imagine how much more liberating it is for Syrians to be free?
There is not a clearly defined happy ending, of course, the country still faces many problems both internally, with a government trying to find its way, and externally, with the international community watching like hawks, making sure Syria will not once again fall back into violence.
But a friend in Syria sent me a text on the anniversary of the fall of Assad: “We are living our best days in Syria, and celebrate the anniversary of liberation,” he wrote.
“We will rebuild our country, come witness it.”
“I will,” I replied. And I plan to do that.
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Tom Parmenter, national correspondent, on the immigration debate
The UK’s battlelines over immigration deepened even further in 2025.
The sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in Epping in July triggered furious and at times violent protests.
At first, it was outside the Bell Hotel in Epping where the man responsible was being housed - Ethiopian Hadush Kebatu had only arrived on a small boat days earlier.
Then we saw demonstrations at other asylum hotels. People mobilised - some organising counter-protests. Others put union flags up across the nation.
For some, it was an expression of national solidarity - for others, it exacerbated the idea they were living in a hostile environment.
Racist incidents spiked. People also felt unsafe not knowing who was living in their communities. Politicians who dismissed the protests as simply “far right” were not seeing the full story.
Fury felt over a chaotic immigration system, then turned to farce.
The sex offender who triggered the protests in Epping was released by mistake from prison.
We followed a fast-moving manhunt around London before he was caught and promptly deported to Ethiopia.
Remarkably, it wasn't a one-off - it turned out the underfunded prison service has been losing inmates at an alarming rate.
At one point in November, we were following two further manhunts - one inmate did the decent thing and handed himself back in.
The other, an Algerian sex offender, was on the run for two weeks. Sky News caught up with him shortly before the police arrested him.
“It’s not my f****** fault!” he yelled at me.
It was surreal, and yet another story 2025 where you come away asking: "What is going on in our country?"
Martha Kelner, US correspondent, on her viral encounter with Marjorie Taylor Greene
My most remarkable moment of the year was an encounter I had with Marjorie Taylor Greene, a house representative from Georgia.
I'm not sure I will ever forget standing in the Capitol building, inside the US government's corridors of power and being told by a sitting member of Congress to "go back to [my] own country".
I was berated by MTG, as she's known here, for asking very reasonable questions about Signalgate.
It was a scandal about leading members of the administration, including defence secretary Pete Hegseth and vice president JD Vance, using Signal, a less secure communication platform, to discuss military strikes on the Houthis in Yemen, a matter of international interest.
I knew Taylor Greene had a reputation for being feisty, but I didn't expect such a vicious outburst.
The exchange soon went viral, I think because it demonstrates how much things have changed in the second Trump term, where normal codes of conduct don't apply.
MTG and US President Donald Trump may have fallen out now, after the congresswoman went up against him on big issues, but she was just taking her cues from her old friend.
Because the president is also disdainful towards certain journalists, calling them "Piggy" and "stupid" and "nasty" when they ask questions he doesn't like.
Yousra Elbagir, Africa correspondent, on the war in Sudan
In September, we finally made it into North Darfur after two years of trying to cross over into Sudan's western region from Chad.
Two decades on from the genocide of the early 2000s, Darfur is being ravaged by armed violence at the hands of the same Janjaweed militias - now with more power and sophisticated weapons than ever before as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
We met people with incredible bravery and commitment to helping the vulnerable, starved and displaced populations that were fleeing the regional capital, Al Fashir, as the RSF tightened their 18-month siege.
They all warned us that Al Fashir's fall to the RSF would be catastrophic - one man who fled the city and had the scars to prove it looked me dead in the eye and said "if Al Fashir falls, the whole of Sudan will fall".
Weeks later, we were reporting on the capture of Al Fashir by the RSF and the mass atrocities they were committing as people attempted to flee.
Civilians were shot dead in killing fields around the city in trophy videos shared by RSF fighters, and others were rounded up in a school in a nearby town, and they said they were forced to bury the captives who were executed by the RSF based on ethnicity.
This was the catastrophe we were warned about - the horror of massacres so bloody and brutal that corpses and red stains were seen from space.
As this all unfolded, our deployment to Darfur stayed at the forefront of my mind.
The voice of Dr Afaf, a volunteer from Al Fashir helping thousands of people through the Emergency Response Rooms, kept ringing out: "I direct my blame to the international community - where is the humanity?"
The Storm Shadow missiles caused multiple explosions at the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in Rostov, according to the Ukrainian General Staff.
"Multiple explosions were recorded. The target was hit," the General Staff said on the Telegram app on Thursday.
The refinery was one of southern Russia's biggest suppliers of oil products and was supplying diesel and jet fuel to Russian troops fighting in Ukraine, according to the officials.
The UK gave Ukraine permission to use its Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia last year, with the first known strikes happening in November that year.
Ukrainian-made long-range drones hit oil product tanks in Russia's Temryuk port in the Krasnodar region and a gas processing plant in Orenburg.
The Orenburg plant is the largest facility of its kind and is around 1,400km (870 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
Russian officials in Krasnodar said two oil product tanks caught fire at the southern port of Temryuk after the drone attack.
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Flames covered about 2,000 square metres, authorities at the Krasnodar operational headquarters said on Telegram.
Both Kyiv and Moscow have stepped up their attacks on energy facilities in recent months.
Kyiv has increased its strikes on Russia's oil refineries and other energy infrastructure since August as it seeks to cut
Moscow's oil revenues, a key source of funding for its war effort.
The chart shows oil refineries struck by Ukraine in the months leading up to December.
Elsewhere in the conflict, Russian officials said there had been "slow but steady progress" in peace negotiations with the United States.
"In the negotiation process on a settlement of the Ukraine conflict, I mean in the negotiation process with the United States, there is slow but steady progress," said Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Thursday.
She added, however, that western European powers were trying to torpedo the progress of peace talks and the United States should counter such moves.
Ukraine's President Zelenskyy posted on Telegram to say he had spoken to the US's Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner "for nearly an hour".
"It was truly a good conversation: many details, good ideas, and we discussed them," he said. "We have some new ideas on how to bring real peace closer, and this concerns formats, meetings, and of course, timing."
It comes after the US permanent resident sued officials over an entry ban for the part he played in what the US government argues is online censorship.
Washington issued visa bans on Tuesday on Mr Ahmed, 47, and four Europeans, including French former EU commissioner Thierry Breton.
It accuses them of working to censor freedom of speech or unfairly hitting US tech giants with regulation.
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Mr Ahmed is CEO of the US-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, which aims to protect human rights and civil liberties online.
He is a New York resident and is believed to be the only one of the five targeted by the visa ban currently in the country.
The move angered European governments, who argue regulations and the work of monitoring groups made the internet safer by highlighting false information and pushing tech giants to do more to tackle illegal content, including child sexual abuse material and hate speech.
For Mr Ahmed, it also sparked fears of imminent deportation that would separate him from his wife and child, both US citizens, according to a lawsuit he filed on Wednesday in the Southern District of New York.
When announcing the visa restrictions, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had determined the presence of the five people in the US had potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the nation, which meant they could be deported.
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Mr Ahmed named Mr Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump officials in his lawsuit.
He argued officials were violating his rights to free speech and due process by threatening deportation.
US District Judge Vernon Broderick issued a temporary restraining order on Thursday, instructing officials not to arrest, detain or transfer Mr Ahmed before he has an opportunity for his case to be heard, and scheduled a conference between the parties for 29 December.
Mr Ahmed praised the US legal system's checks and balances in a statement provided by a representative and said he was proud to call the country his home.
"I will not be bullied away from my life's work of fighting to keep children safe from social media's harm and stopping antisemitism online," he said.
In response to questions about the case, a State Department spokesperson said: "The Supreme Court and Congress have repeatedly made clear: the United States is under no obligation to allow foreign aliens to come to our country or reside here."
The Department of Homeland Security has been contacted for comment.
Legal permanent residents, known as green card holders, do not require a visa to stay in the US, but the Trump administration has tried to deport at least one already this year.
Mahmoud Khalil was detained in March after his prominent involvement in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University.
He was released by a judge who argued punishing someone over a civil immigration matter was unconstitutional.
A US immigration judge in September ordered Mr Khalil to be deported over claims he left out information from his green card application, but he appealed that ruling and separate orders blocking his deportation are still in place.