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The Brazilian state oil company has a new chief executive and her name is Maria das Gracas Foster. Petrobras is the world's fifth-largest oil producer, and Foster becomes the first woman to run a top-five oil company. This comes as the firm looks to double its production by 2020. The company's stocks surged on news of the appointment.

While the financial world keeps grappling with losses, the industry's leaders have raked in annual pay raises averaging nearly 12 percent. The Financial Times found JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was among the top earners, with a pay package of more than $23 million last year. That's an 11 percent increase over the previous year.

Cumberland Farms put giant photo cutouts of David Hasselhoff in front of their stores across New England and Florida. The 60-year-old star of Baywatch and Knight Rider is shown smiling, wearing a tank top and promoting iced coffee. Of 570 photos, roughly 550 have been stolen.

The offer from Dollar General tops an earlier bid from another dollar store, Dollar Tree, for the same company last month.

In Erie, Pa., firefighters rescued a cat and the woman who tired to get it out of a tree. Stuck in the top branches was Tara Dennis, according to the Erie Times-News.

The Global Language Monitor's Top Word of 2014 is not a word, it's an emoji of a heart. The company says the spread of pictures in place of words reflects a broader transformation of English.

A top Japanese diplomat says indirect negotiations to free a captive journalist from the militant Islamic State group have reached a "state of deadlock."

Gambling houses have placed odds on who might become the next leader of the Catholic world. At the top of the list of frontrunners are men not from Europe.

NPR's Jim Zarroli reports that the Justice Department is trumpeting its $100 million dollar settlement with the Archer Daniels Midland company as the largest penalty ever paid for an antitrust violation. ADM pled guilty to antitrust charges today and said the plea and fine put an end to the government's investigation of the company. Conspicuously absent from the company press release though, was any mention of two top ADM executives. A Justice Department official says the two executives "remain available for prosecution."

Dozens of members of Congress up for re-election are attending the Republican National Convention this week, and many of them are hoping that the top of the ticket will help out their own campaigns. Many have been fearful that presidential candidate Bob Dole, who has been doing poorly in the polls, might hurt their own re-election chances or the chances of Republicans to retain control of Congress. But the selection of Jack Kemp, a former member of Congress, to be Dole's running mate has given some of these Republicans a boost. NPR's Brian Naylor reports.