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Despite a $7 billion effort to eradicating opium production in Afghanistan, poppy cultivation there is at its highest level since the U.S. invasion more than a decade ago, sparking corruption, criminal gangs and providing the insurgency with hard cash, says John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.

In testimony before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, he warns Wednesday that Afghanistan could degenerate into a narco-criminal state.

"The situation in Afghanistan is dire with little prospect for improvement in 2014 or beyond," Sopko says. "Afghan farmer are growing more opium poppies today than at any time in their modern history."

His assessment largely mirrors a United Nations report released in November that about 209,000 hectares (515,000 acres) of land was being used to cultivate poppies last year – with the highest concentration in southern Helmand province. That compares with just 8,000 hectares in 2001 and 74,000 in 2002, when U.S.-led international forces toppled the Taliban.

As NPR's Sean Carberry reported from Helmand late last year, many Afghan farmers in the province, who say they have few other options, see poppy cultivation as the lifeblood of an otherwise arid region.

"The narcotics trade is poisoning the Afghan financial sector and fueling a growing illicit economy," Sopko says. "This, in turn, is undermining the Afghan state's legitimacy by stoking corruption, nourishing criminal networks, and providing significant financial support to the Taliban and other insurgent groups."

The value of the heroin produced is worth $3 billion annually, or roughly 15 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product. As much as 90 percent of the world's heroin is produced there, and some of it is now reaching the United States and Canada, Sopko says.

"It is widely thought that every drug organization supports or works with insurgents in Afghanistan," he says. "I have been told that these same groups are closely linked with corrupt government officials."

The special inspector-general complains that counter-narcotics has been a low priority for both the U.S. and Afghan governments and that robust law enforcement is needed.

He says that many U.S. and international donor officials and experts have advised him that "one of the greatest risks facing Afghanistan is that the narcotics traffickers and other criminal networks will expand their influence, filling a power vacuum in the areas where the Afghan government is weak."

It's just me now, I thought this morning. All alone. I could almost hear the desert wind. I could almost see the tumbleweeds.

I once had a whole posse of sometimes bashful American Idol-viewing friends. We followed along, we had favorites, we lamented terrible decisions. I had a special touch for powerfully disliking from their first on-screen appearances everyone who would eventually finish second. My best friend and I bonded powerfully over wanting to punch Constantine Maroulis' voice in the mouth. (And now he's a Broadway star, which I consider a cosmic joke of some sort.) I once lost an American Idol pool and actually resented it. (Only briefly.)

But my pals are mostly gone now. Somewhere along the line, as Steven Tyler prattled on and Mariah Carey was too cool for the room and Randy Jackson had the staying power of your last rattling cough of winter and it seemed like 26 identical dudes in a row emerged victorious, they all gave up. The last one only told me so this week. So now, with the new season starting, I knew that if I persevered, I'd be like the guy in that episode of Cheers who wants his old war buddies to show up and winds up singing "hinky dinky parlez-vous" with the barflies.

This morning, I sat down with a screener of the 13th season, having extraordinarily low expectations, despite the fact that they changed judges again. After all, that's what they always do when the show is boring, and it never works, and it's usually worse than when they started. Even people who seem like decent ideas often aren't (Ellen DeGeneres, a lovely person and amiable TV presence, didn't have the right temperament at all, given that she couldn't deliver anything except compliments without cringing.) This time around, they've brought back Jennifer Lopez, kept Keith Urban, thrown out Carey and Nicki Minaj and Randy Jackson (finally!), and introduced Harry Connick, Jr., who's been a hoot when appearing on the show as a guest.

Perhaps, I thought, I can go too. I will leave the tumbleweeds behind, I will abandon this franchise in the dust, and I will go to figurative saloon after figurative saloon until I find the one to which my friends have decamped.

But something terrible has happened. There are new producers on board, and they have a few dangerous ideas.

They seem to believe that it's depressing to bring attention-starved, socially awkward people in front of wealthy celebrities to have their dreams brutally mocked. They seem to believe that people who are obviously auditioning as a prank are boring — that people who are not trying are less interesting than people who are trying. They seem to believe we want to hear about musicianship from the judges, just because they're musicians. They seem to believe humor should be participatory, a conspiracy between judges and willing, preferably talented contestants, rather than a slushie in the face from a bully.

They seem to believe it's okay for the judges to have different opinions about things, and for Connick to (non-jokingly) call out J.Lo and Urban for being overly infatuated with what Randy Jackson rapturously spoke of as runs, or as Connick more skeptically calls them, "licks." They seem to believe it's cool to have Harry Connick, Jr., a jazz musician, explain what he thinks sounds good using scales. Musical scales. Freaking music theory.

There's not a single person who auditions in a hilarious costume, unless you count a Patriots cheerleader who auditions wearing her Patriots cheerleader uniform. Almost everyone who doesn't make it walks in the door sincerely believing, not without cause, that he or she was a good singer.

The advice is solid, and sometimes surprising. Connick looks at people who have probably been told by everyone they know — not just blinder-wearing parents — that they have great voices, and he tells them, "I don't think you're a good enough singer." He points out to a 16-year-old that it's hard for her to convincingly deliver overtly dirty lyrics like "If I was a blade I'd shave you smooth" without crossing some sort of age-appropriateness threshold that he thinks is probably a bad idea. Not shameful, just weird. Others on the panel don't agree.

This has gone, in one episode, from a show where people walked in the door and could be instantly tagged as Joke Auditions or Successful Auditions to a show where a lot of people either barely get through or barely don't.

Hey, show. Nobody asked you to become fun again.

Stupid show.

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.

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