आज का मुख्य समाचार

जूते चलाने वाले पत्रकार की 'पिटाई'
joote chalaane vaale patrakaar kee 'piTaaee'
"Shoe-throwing journalist's 'beating'"

Notes:

1. चलाना chalaanaa is the causative of yesterday's चलना calnaa "move, go". वाला vaalaa is a very productive derivational suffix; added to infinitives, it forms compounds that answer to both English agent nouns and participial modifiers[*]. So the sense is something like "the one who made the shoe(s) go".
2. पत्रकार patrakaar "journalist" is a compound of पत्र "paper, letter" and Persian کار "action, work", a common suffix for deriving agent nouns.[**]
3. पिटाई "beating" is derived from पिटाना piTaanaa, which is the causative of पीटना peeTnaa "beat". Hindi has a very extensive system of verbal derivation including both causatives and double causatives. पिटाना could be translated as "have someone beaten" or "have X beat Y".

[*] In some cases, the latter are more fluidly translated as relative clauses, e.g. हिंदी सीखनेवाले विद्यार्थी hiMdee seekhnevaale vidyaarthee "the students who are learning Hindi".
[**] The Urdu equivalent is the Arabic-derived صحافي sahaafee (cf. Ar. صحافي ṣihāfī "idem", صحيفة ṣahīfah "newspaper", etc.).

WotD: snow shovel

1. die Schneeschaufel
2. de sneeuwschep
3. la pala de nieve
4. la pala de neu
5. la pelle à neige
6. y raw eira
7. an tsluasaid shneachta
8. 눈 치는 가래
9. 雪鏟 xǔechǎn

Leise rieselt der Schnee

Ah, the things you find out about your co-workers after a drink or two! There's a muscular young Chicago Irish who does exit control for us. He's one of those guys that I don't look at twice when clean-shaven, but put a beard on him and he magically becomes the cutest thing with two legs and red hair. I was quizzing his girlfriend (quite an attractive number in her own right) about the intermittent nature of his facial hair and it came out that he had once written a twenty-page paper on the history of mustaches. Interesting enough in its own right, but what floored me is that he had managed to work in the immortal Burt Reynolds centerfold for Playgirl. In full-colour. That is, I don't mean he managed to work in a textual reference to it, he included a colour reproduction for the enlightenment of his readers. Classic.

Today was the first day of intersession and the institution is blissfully quiet. I took the long walk to my favourite sandwich place just to admire the snowfall. It looked especially charming as I hurried over to the annual holiday party, but I was a little put out by having to stand around waiting for twenty minutes afterwards for the shuttle home to limp by. But when I finally walked in the door, I found that poor monshu had spent three-and-a-half hours just getting back from downtown. Ah, CTA, how I utterly fail to miss you!