HARRISBURG, Pa. – Pennsylvania liquor store clerks need to be more bubbly when they’re selling Champagne. The state’s Liquor Control Board is spending more than $173,000 to try to make workers friendlier and more well-mannered at the nearly 650 stores it operates. The board says it wants to make sure …

SUITLAND, Md. – A 29-year-old homeless woman has given birth to a baby girl after, police said, she was befriended by a Maryland woman who held her captive for several days and tried to cut the baby from her womb. Officer Michelle Reedy, a spokeswoman for Prince George’s County police, …

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Putnam County investigators say they don’t think that Misty Croslin-Cummings has been straight with them as they continue to investigate the disappearance six months ago of Haleigh Cummings from her father’s home in Satsuma. In a news release marking the child’s sixth birthday Monday, investigators said the …

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan’s military sought to reassure refugees returning to the war-scarred Swat Valley that security there is under control, despite fighting between government troops and militants in the region that left up to 14 dead. Authorities have declared most of Swat cleared of Taliban fighters after a nearly three-month …

CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that Venezuela has acquired Russian-made surface-to-air missiles and announced the creation of an elite military unit trained to use the new weapons. Chavez said the missiles are for self-defense and denied that Venezuela poses a military threat to other countries. “We don’t …

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – An upstate New York woman who helped illegally remove bone and tissue from corpses in 2005 has been convicted on all 103 counts. Kirssy Medos, formerly known as Kirssy Knapp, ran the Brighton office of the now-closed Biomedical Tissue Services. The New Jersey based company harvested bone …

ATLANTA – Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL) will have to cut more costs to deal with increases in fuel prices because raising ticket fares alone will not do the job, the struggling carrier’s chief executive said Wednesday. CEO Gerald Grinstein (search) said he believes the nation’s third-largest airline can avoid …

TEANECK, N.J. – A fast-moving fire killed four children and critically injured their mother early Tuesday, hours after firefighters investigated a smell of smoke. A neighbor helped two other children escape. The Bergen County (search) prosecutor’s arson investigation unit was at the home in the New York City suburb but …

NEW YORK – IBM Monday said it had agreed to buy Ascential Software Corp. (ASCL) for $1.1 billion, seeking to narrow the gap with rival Oracle Corp. (ORCL) in the database business. International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) said the acquisition would complement its information integration business, a unit that produced …

WASHINGTON – Ten years ago, Charles Blahous (search) was a congressional staffer with a knack for numbers and a passion for baseball. He spent his free time tackling issues like the improbability of Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. These days, Blahous is more likely to be calculating the odds that …