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Several donor nations have each pledged tens of millions of dollars for civilians affected by Syria's civil war.

The pledges, including $500 million from Kuwait and $380 million from the U.S., came Wednesday at the start of a conference in Kuwait City to raise money for the humanitarian suffering caused by the more than two years of fighting. The U.N. wants $6.5 billion for the effort to assist Syrian refugees. It's the largest-ever appeal for a single crisis.

Other donors include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Britain, Norway, Luxembourg and Iraq.

A similar conference organized last year raised $1.5 billion.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who is attending the conference, said the world needs to find a political solution to the Syrian conflict.

"We are not looking for a policy of simply increased assistance to refugees," he said. "We're looking for a policy that saves Syria and provides them an ability to go home and rebuild their lives."

With Wednesday's contribution, the U.S. has given $1.7 billion in humanitarian aid to victims of the Syria's civil war.

NPR's Michele Kelemen is traveling with Kerry, and she spoke to Frederic Hof, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who as a diplomat worked on Syria for the Obama administration. Hof calls the effects of the Syrian civil war "the most catastrophic humanitarian disaster of the 21st century."

"You are seeing genocidal effects being produced on the ground. This terrible daily bombing, strafing, shelling by the Assad regime of populated areas — densely populated areas — in the hope that they might catch a few rebel fighters. This is what is driving this humanitarian catastrophe and the international community just hasn't come up with an answer yet."

This story begins with a lemon. It appeared not long ago on a houseboat-cum-food lab docked outside Scandinavia's temple of local food, the restaurant noma, in Copenhagen.

"Isn't that, like, the forbidden fruit?," I ask. "Are you allowed to have a lemon here?"

"I don't know why that's sitting there," says Ben Reade, the lab's head of culinary research and development, looking perplexed.

An anthropologist, Mark Emil Tholstrup Hermansen, pipes in, "We have an Italian on the boat."

Reade concurs: "He needs a lemon every so often for staff food."

Hermansen remembers the lemon had actually been requested by the boat's resident flavor chemist for an experiment.

The Salt

Nordic Cuisine: Moving Beyond The Meatballs And Pickled Fish

In a $16 billion deal this week, Japanese beverage giant Suntory announced it plans to purchase Beam Inc., the maker of Jim Beam bourbon and the owner of other popular bourbon brands like Maker's Mark.

Those and most other bourbons are made in Kentucky, and the deal has some hoping the drink's growth in the global market won't come at the expense of its uniquely Kentucky heritage.

For more than a century, Suntory has been in the beer and spirits industry in Japan, but what many Americans think of when they hear the name is the scene from the 2003 film Lost in Translation, in which Bill Murray plays an actor who goes to Tokyo to shoot a whiskey commercial.

"For relaxing times, make it Suntory time," Murray's character says coolly into the camera.

If the deal is approved by shareholders as expected, the name Suntory is likely to become more familiar in the U.S. in the months ahead.

The popularity of bourbon has exploded in recent years, especially in Japan and other Asian markets. The Kentucky Distillers Association calls the Suntory purchase of Beam exciting news, and evidence that the bourbon renaissance is strong. Carla Carlton agrees, and believes any qualms about the new owners will be put to rest.

"I know some people were talking about how, 'this is terrible, we're being taken over by a Japanese company,'" Carlton says. "I guess I see it as an investment in Kentucky."

Carlton is a contributing writer for The Bourbon Review and blogs under the name The Bourbon Babe. She predicts Suntory will embrace bourbon's colorful history and its appeal to tourists who flock to Kentucky's distilleries.

"Bourbon is very much an American product and it must be by law, so it will still be made here in Kentucky," she says. "I don't see them making huge changes. I think they're buying the product for what it is now and will try to maintain that as much as possible."

Suntory officials say they don't plan any management changes at Beam's American headquarters in Illinois.

In Kentucky, the bourbon celebration continues.

Coincidentally, on the day of the sale announcement, industry and government leaders gathered in Louisville to announce the Kentucky Bourbon Affair this spring.

It's a fantasy camp of sorts for bourbon connoisseurs to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Congress declaring bourbon "America's only native spirit."

Eight distilleries, including Jim Beam and Maker's Mark, are participating in bourbon-making demonstrations, behind-the-scenes tours, and of course, tastings.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer says an important element of bourbon's success has been the willingness of its producers to work together on events such as this.

"They're smart competitors," Fischer says. "They realize by working together we can make the whole industry a lot bigger and you can see that in the numbers right now."

Fischer predicts more heady times are ahead for the bourbon industry, and says if this were a football game, "we're in the first quarter."

Reports of white smoke from a battery compartment have temporarily grounded a Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Japan, nearly a year after all the new airliners were grounded due to a problem with batteries overheating. Today's incident happened on an airliner at Tokyo's Narita Airport that had no passengers aboard.

It was during a preflight checkout that a mechanic saw smoke emerging from the underside of a Japan Airlines Dreamliner, according to Japan's NHK TV News

From the broadcaster:

"The smoke quickly stopped. Airline officials found that an electrolytic solution had leaked from an open safety valve of one of the 8 cells in a battery box at the front.

"The carrier says the battery may have overheated for an unknown reason. It says the safety valve was activated and smoke was generated when the solution evaporated."