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A takeaway has been closed by police after a would-be customer filmed a three hungry, huge rats chowing down on pizzas at the shop. Disgusted Evgeny Ivanov, 26, had gone to the fast-food outlet at a bus station in Nizhny Novogorad, Russia, when he spotted the helping themselves to the pizzas. Police confirmed they had ordered the outlet to be closed and the food destroyed.

Pizza Hut is letting customers play mad scientist, giving them the freedom to make pies with honey Sriracha sauce or add curry flavor to the crusts. The atypical flavors and new ingredients are part of a menu overhaul set to be announced Monday and hit stores Nov. 19. Executives are hoping the revamp — which includes an updated logo and more relaxed uniforms for workers — will be the trick that finally jumpstarts sales. Even as rivals Domino's and Papa John's have enjoyed growth, Pizza Hut has reported sales declines for eight straight quarters at established locations.

Update: This story now has a happy ending. Just around the time this article went live — about 20 hours after nurse Kaci Hickox requested a pizza — a Bangor Daily News reporter tweeted this photo of the pizza being delivered. The company apparently did indeed get the Maine police's sign off. First, it was Kaci Hickox, a nurse with Doctors Without Borders, who was held in quarantine at Newark Airport when she returned from treating Ebola patients in West Africa — even after she tested negative for the disease twice. She is now in quarantine at her house in...

Should you be so inclined as to walk up to a random man in a fast-food joint, late at night, after consuming alcohol and grab him by the hand before slapping him across the face with a slice of pizza, do not be shocked when he hits you back. This is what happened to a young man from Ontario, Canada, who wanted to play what he saw as an innocent prank on a man that had been annoying a friend of his after a night out. Al Sutcliffe was filmed playing a ‘pizza slap’ prank on a man in a...

Like thousands of his fellow Coloradans, Peyton Manning is buzzing off the state's legalization of marijuana. But it's a different kind of high for the Denver Broncos quarterback, who credits legal pot with booming sales at his Papa John's pizza franchises. Manning purchased 21 Papa John's locations statewide shortly before voters passed Colorado Amendment 64 in late 2012, and he's been raking in the money ever since.

Pizza Hut is testing out a lighter pizza in two U.S. markets as it seeks to freshen up its menu and regain its footing against competitors. The tests of the "Skinny Slice" pies began this week at several dozen restaurants in Toledo, Ohio, and West Palm Beach, Florida. The pies simply use less of the same dough used for regular pies and are lighter on the toppings, said Doug Terfehr, a Pizza Hut spokesman.

Any way you slice it, Americans are obsessed with pizza. One in eight of us are noshing it on any given day, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And the average American consumes pizza about 39 times a year, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm. The signature of a great American-style pizza is not the toppings du jour but the cheese: hot, gooey mozzarella, with big, dark splotches of caramelization. Pizzerias didn't happen upon that winning recipe by coincidence. Food scientists have been studying and finessing the low-moisture part-skim mozzarella we now put on most of...

A restaurant owner who is under fire for offering a faith-based discount to customers says he doesn’t plan to discontinue it, despite receiving a complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a secular activist group. Steven Rose, owner of Bailey’s Pizza in Searcy, Arkansas, told TheBlaze Wednesday that he posted a 10 percent discount on his restaurant’s Facebook page on July 19 for anyone who brought in a church bulletin. Not long after, he received a comment from a user named “Bong Hits for Jesus” that read, “Good luck on your discrimination lawsuit.” “I didn’t give much credence to it,”...

A pizza vending machine takes convenience food to a whole new level, delivering fresh pies to customers in just three minutes 24/7. The Let's Pizza unit invented by Claudio Torghele, an entrepreneur from Rovereto, Italy, mixes flour and water together and presses the dough flat to create a 10.5 inch base. Desired toppings are then added and the meal is flash-cooked in a high temperature infrared oven at 380 degrees Celsius. While the baking process is underway, a takeaway box is prepared. The finished pie is then placed in the cardboard container and delivered through a slot. As they wait...

Newport, DE — Back in 2010, a man named Nigel Sykes recently tried to rob Seasons Pizza restaurant in Newport, Delaware, but employees tackled him, took his gun, and beat him up. Now he is suing the restaurant for his injuries, and he’s doing it from jail. Now 23-years old, Sykes has just filed a federal civil complaint claiming that the rough treatment was “unnecessary”. He also says that because of his incurred injuries during the attempted robbery, he wants to be compensated. He also claims in his suit that after employees subdued him, two local police officers improperly...

The New Jersey Turnpike Authority has filed a lawsuit to get a Florida pizza company to stop using logos similar to Garden State Parkway signs. The suit, filed this week in federal court in Newark, claims Jersey Boardwalk Pizza is infringing on the authority's service marks with its signage online and at its Tavernier and Florida City, Fla., shops.

Send Pizza and Soda (Pepsi or Coca-Cola) to active duty Israeli Soldiers Once again our homeland is under attack. Missiles from Gaza are flying on our southern cities, and again the civilians are in the front line. We are shifting our efforts to the south making sure the soldiers know that even though the media might say one thing, they have lots of support and love from all over the world. Hundreds of pies and other treats are going out to the soldiers, and once again per request we are adding the option to send care packages with toiletries to...

Here's what he (and we) have learned from his oddball diet.As the saying goes, pizza is like sex. Even if it’s bad, it’s still pizza. And just like sex, there are people out there addicted to pizza. Meet Dan Janssen, a Maryland man who has gained a minor level of fame for eating pizza every day for 25 years. In a mini-documentary produced by Vice, Janssen talks about the repercussions of his oddball diet. Here are five key lessons. Pizza obsession is deeper than just a food preference. Janssen says his picky diet likely stems from a few traumatic experiences...

Dylan Paul, 24, said she was more than hurt when she complained that a customer mis-gendered her while she was working last Monday. “I was working the salad station near the entrance to the restaurant of Broadway Paggliacci’s. Working there, your function is greeting customers, taking and making salad orders, and bidding customers farewell. It was in the evening on a shift I’d picked up from a coworker when I was saying goodbye to one of our regular customers. He returned the gesture, misgendering me as “man,” which isn’t something too unusual in my life. I corrected him, “It’s ma’am...

Each row got its own pieAdam Ritchie, a Domino's Pizza manager in Cheyenne, Wyo., said he'd never received a call like the one he got Monday night. "I need to feed my whole plane," the caller told him. "Lucky me, I hear 160 people. It ended up being like 38 pizzas," Ritchie said. A Frontier Airlines flight from Washington to Denver was diverted to Cheyenne because of bad weather. The plane was stuck on the ground for nearly two hours. The food on board was gone, so the pilot decided to order pizzas for everyone. Each row got its own...

A pizza-delivery driver was beaten by a man with a baseball bat early Tuesday morning in the former B.W. Cooper housing projects, New Orleans Police said. The driver was taking a delivery to the 1300 block of South Prieur Street shortly before 2 a.m., and saw a man waiting outside when he arrived, said NOPD Detective Sgt. David Barnes on Tuesday afternoon at the weekly meeting of Sixth District ranking officers. The driver asked the man if he was the person who placed the order, and when the man said yes, the driver turned back to the car to get...

A pizza delivery driver was severely beaten with a baseball bat while making a delivery Tuesday morning in the former B.W. Cooper housing project, according to the NOPD. The driver got out of the car in the 1300 block of South Prieur Street around 2 a.m. After asking a man waiting outside if he placed the order, the driver was beaten with a baseball bat. Nothing was taken, which has authorities wondering if the incident was a pizza delivery version of the ‘knockout game.’ The victim had to have staples put into his head and Domino’s has said it won’t...

The food sampling operation across 20 fast food outlets in Lancashire also found ham on 10 out of 15 pizzas contained turkey DNAA trading standards department has revealed EVERY takeaway they investigated in a recent inspection has been selling customers pizzas containing “fake cheese”. Officers visited 20 outlets in Lancashire for the food sampling operation and performed tests on ingredients used in hundreds of pizzas sold to customers. Each premises failed on descriptions of the ham, cheese, or both. The report revealed 19 out of 20 samples were found to contain “analogue cheese” - an artificial cheesy substance that is...

A man was held up by a robber with scissors for his slice of pizza in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood Friday night, police said. The 31-year-old victim was walking down the street near Jasper and Green streets around 9:40 p.m. Friday when a man believed to be in his mid 30s held him up with a pair of scissors, police said. The suspect demanded that the victim hand over his slice of pizza and he complied. The victim then went home uninjured and the suspect got away with the slice, according to police.

Thousands of foreign fighters have gone to Iraq and Syria, where civil war is raging. Many have Twitter and Instagram accounts which they use to document a personal view of life on the ground as a jihadi. Many of these fighters are believed to have travelled from the UK, with others coming from European countries. The location of the following people cannot be confirmed definitely, but all claim to be in Iraq or Syria.