We introduce a novel multilingual hierarchical corpus annotated for entity framing and role portrayal in news articles. The dataset uses a unique taxonomy inspired by storytelling elements, comprising 22 fine-grained roles, or archetypes, nested within three main categories: protagonist, antagonist, and innocent. Each archetype is carefully defined, capturing nuanced portrayals of entities such as guardian, martyr, and underdog for protagonists; tyrant, deceiver, and bigot for antagonists; and victim, scapegoat, and exploited for innocents. The dataset includes 1,378 recent news articles in five languages (Bulgarian, English, Hindi, European Portuguese, and Russian) focusing on two critical domains of global significance: the Ukraine-Russia War and Climate Change. Over 5,800 entity mentions have been annotated with role labels. This dataset serves as a valuable resource for research into role portrayal and has broader implications for news analysis. We describe the characteristics of the dataset and the annotation process, and we report evaluation results on fine-tuned state-of-the-art multilingual transformers and hierarchical zero-shot learning using LLMs at the level of a document, a paragraph, and a sentence.

A postal drone in Russia crashed into a wall and smashed into pieces during its maiden flight. The unmanned aerial vehicle took off to deliver a small package to a village near Ulan-Ude, a city in Siberia, but hit a three-storey building shortly after lifting off from a mini launch pad in front of a crowd of spectators. The drone had been touted as a new way to deliver post in the rural Buryatia region, located more than 2,700 miles from the Russian capital Moscow. Video footage of the crash showed the vehicle taking off before veering into the apartment building and showering onlookers with debris. No one was harmed in the incident.

A Russian-made drone on its way to making its first parcel delivery has crashed into a wall just moments after taking off. The smash shocked local residents and regional officials who had gathered in the Siberian city of Ulan-Ude on Monday to watch the drone's maiden flight. The drone was sent to deliver a small package to a neighbouring village in the sparsely populated Buryatia region, more than 4,400km east of Moscow. Video footage showed the drone lifting off from a miniature launch pad bearing Russian Post's blue and white logo. A small crowd of spectators, present for the ceremony intended to showcase a new way to deliver mail in the region, were heard uttering expletives after the crash.

Want to know why mail drones aren't ready for prime time? The Siberian town of Ulan-Ude was expecting to beam with pride as organizer Rudron/Expeditor 3M tested a postal drone in the area for the first time, but they left red-faced after the inaugural flight went spectacularly wrong. The hexacopter courier went haywire moments after takeoff, smacking into the side of a building at high speed -- as you can see in the video below, it went from technological triumph to an embarrassing pile of scrap metal in a matter of seconds. It was a costly crash, too, as the drone reportedly cost about $20,000. It's not certain what went wrong, although regional leader Alexei Tsydenov speculated to Reuters that the 100-plus WiFi signals in the area might have played a part.

Russia's test launch of mail delivery service by drone ends in spectacular failure in the Siberian city Ulan-Ude.