Pizza Man Fired Because He Didn’t Deliver the Dough

--A pizza deliverer stood his ground and saved his employer’s money from two men who tried to rob him at knifepoint--but that violated a company safety policy to hand over the cash, and he was fired. John Gilson, 18, who works as a draftsman by day in Catonsville, Md., said he’ll try to get his job back. “What we’re trying to do is prevent anyone in any circumstance of getting hurt,” said Phil Bressler, director of operations for Domino’s six stores in the Baltimore area. “We, under no circumstance, don’t want people to get hurt. Money can be replaced. People cannot.” On Feb. 22, a delivery man for Rapid Pizza was killed when he struggled with his assailants over $43. Gilson said that when he finished his last delivery of the night he was approached by two men. One man put a knife to his shoulder and said: “Give me everything you have.” Gilson said he responded by knocking the knife out of the man’s hand and breaking his nose. When the other man approached, Gilson said, he kicked him in the stomach, and both men ran away. “If I had given them everything, there’s no guarantee that they’re going to walk away,” Gilson said. “I could identify them.”

--The first relief shipment from the British-made smash-hit record “Don’t They Know It’s Christmas” arrived in Ethiopia to aid the country’s estimated 8 million famine victims. The record has earned millions of dollars in sales worldwide, and Midge Ure of the group Ultravox, who helped make the disc, accompanied the shipment. He told reporters at Addis Ababa airport that the first shipment was worth $70,000 and included two Land Rovers, 20 tons of powdered milk, three water tanks and 2 1/2 tons of medical equipment. “There’ll be a lot more on the way,” he added.

--More than six tons of rattlers were bagged during the 27th annual Rattlesnake Round-Up in Sweetwater, Tex., but it didn’t put a dent in the state’s western diamondback population, said veteran snake handler Bill Ransberger. A total of 572 hunters from as far away as Canada and Spain journeyed to West Texas for the hunt, and top prizes went to a man who brought in a 69 1/2-inch snake and a group that gathered more than 1,000 pounds of the snakes. Some of the diamondbacks were chicken-fried for the rattlesnake meat-eating contest, but no snakebites were reported during the three-day event, said Terry Hartman, contest spokesman.