Tag: beacon
Bomb baby Polina celebrates her first birthday with a cuddly Paddington Bear as her mum says: ‘She is a beacon of hope’
ONE year ago Anastasia Hlazenko was giving birth to her daughter in a bombed-out maternity hospital as Russian troops blitzed her home city in Ukraine.
Now little Polina is celebrating her first birthday with a cuddly Paddington Bear given to her by The Sun as her mum declared: “She is a beacon of hope.”
Little Polina is celebrating her first birthday with a cuddly Paddington Bear given to her by The Sun[/caption]
Anastasia reveals how she gave birth while Russian troops targeted the hospital[/caption]
Anastasia had recently given birth to her first daughter Polina in Izyum – but had been forced to take cover in a cellar[/caption]
Anastasia added: “Polina shows that whatever Putin throws at us, Ukraine will never die.
“Polina adores her Paddington. Everyone knows about Paddington having tea with the Queen, and now Polina will also grow up loving Paddington.
“Thank you to The Sun for this present — and thank you to the UK and everyone else who continues to support Ukraine.
“With the world behind us, we will never be defeated.”
Anastasia, 25, and her husband Andriy, 30, were busy preparing their home in the eastern city of Izyum for their first child when war broke out last February.
Anastasia said: “My biggest concern was having a baby, not war, but on my way home from a routine hospital appointment I saw queues outside shops and banks.
“Then we heard that Russia had invaded.”
A short time later her contractions began and Andriy rushed her to hospital as columns of Russian troops approached the city.
Soon after they arrived, Polina’s heart rate dropped, so medics prepared for an emergency caesarean.
Renewed attack
Polina was born fit and healthy, weighing 6lb 15oz — but within hours mum and baby were taken to the hospital basement amid a Russian bombardment.
In Anastasia’s building, windows were smashed and lights were blown out by Russian bombing raids[/caption]
Anastasia had no idea whether her partner Andriy had survived the attack as phone signal was knocked out[/caption]
Bank worker Anastasia said: “We heard a plane and saw a flash and there was an almighty bang.
“Windows were smashed and the lights went out. The staff yelled for us to go to the shelter.
“I had just had an operation so I couldn’t run and I couldn’t carry my baby.
“As we were going to the basement we heard gunfire and more explosions. It was terrifying.
“People were crying and screaming. We didn’t know where the bombs were falling or if they would hit the hospital.
“All the joy of being a new mother vanished.
“All I cared about was getting me and Polina home alive.”
With mobile phone signals down, Anastasia had no idea whether Andriy had survived the attack.
He said: “I felt useless because I should have been there to protect my wife and baby but there was nothing I could do.”
After three days he made it to the hospital where his wife and child were sheltering.
But after the hazardous journey home they had to head straight to their own basement to shelter once more from a renewed Russian assault.
Anastasia said: “Their artillery was in the city, the water and power kept going out and Polina’s bed was a cardboard box.
“We had to save fresh water for drinking, so to wash we collected ice from puddles and melted it.”
At times the fighting was so close to their home that their basement shook from explosions and a bullet slammed into one of their wooden window frames.
The living conditions became so grim they fled to her parents’ home — but reluctantly had to leave their dog Ralf behind.
The Russian bombardment intensified and 50 people died when an apartment block was destroyed.
Snipers were picking off civilians if they ventured out, and enemy jets flew overhead constantly.
The family then heard about an evacuation convoy of buses which was due to leave the city.
They stuffed clothes and important documents into a black bin bag and ventured outside to find the streets covered with huge shards of glass and piles of rubble.
They ran for a quarter of a mile to reach the convoy, fearing a sniper attack or renewed bombing from a jet every step of the way.
Anastasia said: “We ran so fast I could not breathe, and I held on to Polina so tightly.
“We did not know where the buses were going but we just hoped it would be somewhere safer.”
The family reached the convoy, and after two days of travelling by bus and train they reached the relative safety of Lviv in the west of Ukraine.
Nearly a year later they are now safe and well and living in the Polish town of Czeladz, an hour from Krakow, where Andriy has found a job at a car plant.
Their home city of Izyum — a key transport hub which made it a strategic target for Vladimir Putin — has been devastated and their own house badly damaged.
The Russians took control of the city shortly after the family fled but Ukrainian forces retook it in September.
Around 80 per cent of the infrastructure has been destroyed, 1,000 people were killed and mass graves have been discovered.
But the couple refuse to give up on their dream of one day returning.
More than anything they want to be reunited with three-year-old pet Ralf.
Incredibly he is still alive, surviving each day on food given to him by Ukrainian soldiers, and guarding the wrecked family home, waiting for his family to return.
Anastasia said: “Some people who stayed in the city checked our house for us recently and while they were there Ralf appeared.
“It was amazing to hear he is alive and well.
“We feel so guilty for leaving him but we know that Ukraine will win this war and when that happens, we hope we can go home and be with Ralf again.”
How to make a Minecraft beacon
Creating your first Minecraft beacon or just looking into the possibility of how to craft this rare and valuable item? A beacon will set you back a pretty penny in resources and time, and there are a ton of materials you’ll need to obtain, which sadly won’t be as easy as sprinting around the world and mining a couple of blocks.
Crafting a Minecraft beacon is an incredibly lengthy process, but the rewards are certainly worth it. You’ll be granted status effects such as speed, jump boost, haste, regeneration, resistance, and strength to yourself and nearby players. When you activate a beacon in the crafting game, it will emit a beam of light into the sky, which can be seen from far away, a flashy sign that you’re the new owner of this dazzling and sought-after item.
MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Minecraft seeds, Minecraft skins, Minecraft mods
Beacon Pines Is a Narrative Adventure Where Everything Can Change With a Single Word
Beacon Pines review: a cosy horror adventure game that succeeds on the strength of its characters
I’m a sucker for invention when it comes to story in video games, and Beacon Pines drew me in with what looked like a choice-driven adventure. As you explore the down-on-its-luck farming town of the title, you discover ‘charms’. Each charm is a word which can be deployed at set points to branch the story in new, severe ways. More importantly, you can flip back and forth between these pivotal moments at any time, allowing you to deploy new words in earlier chapters to see what happens.
Except, Beacon Pines is far less choice-driven than I expected. Instead, it’s something far rarer and more ambitious in video games: it is a good story, well written, with strong characters you grow to care for.
Destiny 2 Treasure Beacon Guide: How To Solve The Cryptic Quatrains Pirate Riddle
Destiny 2‘s Season of Plunder features a new style of quest that involves solving pirate riddles to hunt down buried treasure. You’ll need to rank up the Star Chart seasonal vendor a fair bit before you begin getting into these, but once you do, you’ll receive a Small Treasure Beacon, which kicks off a quest called Cryptic Quatrains I. (Completing the Small Treasure Beacon quest is one of the Week 2 seasonal challenges, giving you even more reason to complete it.) Here’s how to complete it and the following quest, Cryptic Quatrains II, which begins once you reach Rank 10 and get the Medium Treasure Beacon, and Cryptic Quatrains III, which begins at Rank 16 and you get the Large Treasure Beacon.
How pirate riddles work
For better or worse, these riddles are mostly very obvious, although a few can get tricky. Each step of the quest will present you with a riddle, but certain words in each sentence will be highlighted in yellow–those words strongly hint at where you need to go and what you need to do.
The steps will lead you from one location to another and, ultimately, the buried treasure. It’s unclear at this point if the rewards are randomized at all, but in our case, the first quest provided glimmer, a Resonant version of one of the seasonal weapons (No Reprieve), five Map Fragments, and a Crude Cipher Fragment. You’ll receive another of these Crude Cipher Fragments from the second Cryptic Quatrains quest but won’t be able to use it until you complete the third and final of these quests.
Prepare to Journey to Beacon Pines Where a Single Word Can Change Everything
Treasure Beacon and Cryptic Quatrains pirate riddle guide for Destiny 2: Season of Plunder
How to solve the small, medium, and large message in a bottle riddles
Beacon Pines’ verb-collecting storybook adventure launches September
Several of my favourite games are basically just choose-your-own-adventure books and Beacon Pines makes that connection more explicit. It’s an adventure game where you explore environments and unlock new words, which you can then deploy during pivotal story moments when the camera pulls back to reveal the whole game takes place on the pages of a book.
It looks great, and it now has a release date: September 22nd.