State and National News

$15 million.

That's how much President Obama campaign will receive from a fund-raising event last night at George Clooney's home. The New York Times reports the A-list, Hollywood crowd paid $40,000 a person, helping to set "a record for a presidential election fund-raiser."

The Times adds:

What just happened?

JPMorgan Chase, the biggest bank in America, announced that it lost $2 billion on a massive trade placed out of its London office.

What was the trade?

In what could mark a watershed in the fight against HIV/AIDS, a panel of experts recommended that the Food and Drug Administration give a green light to a pill that can cut the risk of infections.

The daily pill, Truvada, made by Gilead Sciences, combines two medicines that inhibit the reproduction of HIV. It's already approved as a treatment for HIV, but its use could soon expand to include protection of uninfected people.

Everybody settle down.

Part 1 of the TED Radio Hour episode Food Matters. Watch Chef Dan Barber's full TEDTalk — How I Fell In Love With Fish -- on TED.com

About Dan Barber's TEDTalk

Aaron David Miller is a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His forthcoming book is titled Can America Have Another Great President?

Having spent the better part of two decades traveling the negotiator's highway, I've often thought about why some deals get made along the way and others don't. Granted, I've labored almost exclusively in the Middle East coal mines — an often bizarre, idiosyncratic, and exceptionally dysfunctional place where deals rarely, if ever, get done.

Ben Adler is a writer for The Nation.