Monday 9/26/11

Human Interest News   —   Posted on September 26, 2011

Zany hair-line security check
Isis Brantley said she had already been screened at Hartsfield-Jackson International Air-port in Atlanta and left the security area Monday, when a TSA guard chased after her and demanded to inspect her locks.  “I just heard these voices saying, ‘Hey, you! Hey, you! Ma’am, stop! Stop! The lady with the hair! You!’ ” Brantley said in an interview with Dallas’ KXAS-TV.

Brantley — who travels the country working as a hairstylist — said she quickly told the aggressive officer that her hair had not been searched, and tried to continue to her flight.  But the TSA wouldn’t let it end there. The agent chased her as she was heading down an escalator, she told the station.  The agent demanded to give Brantley’s hair a good groping.  “And so she started patting my hair, and I was in tears at that point,” Brantley said. “They’ve never done that to me, ever — never, never.”

Just add people
Japan’s Nissin Foods has opened a cup noodle museum, charting the history of the speedy snack where visitors even get the chance to create their own tasty version.  “We opened this place… as a factory that gives children experience and a museum for corporate activities,” Nissin Foods Holdings president Koki Ando said.  Ando, whose late father Momofuku Ando invented instant noodles more than half a century ago, said visitors could knead flour, roll out noodles, steam and fry them to make chicken ramen which is then put into bags.

Momofuku Ando, the man credited with inventing instant noodles, born in 1910 in Taiwan under Japanese occupation, entered the food business when Japan was hungry after World War II and invented the world’s first instant noodles, chicken ramen noodles sold in bags, in 1958.  He launched the cupped version in 1971 with a pre-cooked slab of noodles in a waterproof styrofoam container.

Ando saw his invention stocked on the shelves of convenience stores around the world.  As the products were widely replicated, more than 95 billion servings were consumed around the globe in 2010, according to the Japanese instant noodles manufacturers’ association.

In Somalia, the prizes for a radio contest are explosive
A radio station run by Somalia’s al-Shabab Islamist group is giving out guns and bombs to children who call in and answer questions about the Koran.  First prize is a $700 AK-47; second prize is two rifles; and third is two hand grenades.

Al-Shabab, linked to al-Qaeda, controls much of southern and central Somalia.  “Youths should use one hand for education and the other for a gun to defend Islam,” senior al-Shabab official Mukhtar Robow told the prize-giving ceremony in Elasha, 12 miles from Mogadishu.

The BBC’s Mohamed Moalimu in Mogadishu says this is the third year the contest has been held.  In previous years, when the competition was organized in the southern port of Kismayo, the first prize included an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade launcher).

DJ Hello Kitty thrills teenagers in Japan store
Japanese teenagers descended on a new Hello Kitty themed store in one of Tokyo’s hippest areas as the mouthless cat turned global icon of cuteness entertained them with her music-mixing skills.

“I’ve been looking forward to the opening as I’m a fan of Kitty. She is so cute,” said 19-year-old student Manami Kubo.  “Kitty goods are not just for small children these days and many of my friends also like them.”

The new store, CLUB KT Shibuya, will sell all things Kitty from clothing, accessories, stationery and cosmetics, and is in the heart of one of Tokyo’s main nightlife areas, where youngsters parade the capital’s far-out fashions.

Hello Kitty, which started in 1974 in Japan as a moon-faced cartoon cat on a coin purse, has developed into a global phenomenon. Sanrio says it now has around 50,000 different products on sale in 109 nations and territories.

From The NY Daily News, The NY Post and BBC News.