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In Bayonne, they take their ham very, very seriously.

This medieval fortress of a town is minutes from the French seaside ports of Barritz and St. Jean de Luz, and not far from Spain's St. Sebastian. It has reigned as a cultural and commercial center for a millennium, according to historian Mark Kurlansky in The Basque History of the World.

Its most famous item since the Middle Ages? The jambon de Bayonne. The town's celebrated ham even has its own festival on Easter weekend.

First, some background. Bayonne may be technically in France, but its people call themselves Basque and claim ancestry from four Spanish states and three French states. It is said, in this case, 4+3=1.

Above all, the Basque have a rich culinary tradition combining sea exploration, the spice trade and foods raised in the fertile valleys of the nearby Pyrenees. And since 1464, the Foire au jambon de Bayonne or Ham Fair, has celebrated this remarkable food.

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The signs came early that Abhina Aher was different.

Born a boy biologically and given the male name Abhijit, Aher grew up in a middle-class neighborhood of Mumbai, India. The son of a single mother who nurtured a love of dance, Aher would watch enthralled as she performed.

"I used to wear the clothes that my mother used to wear — her jewelry, her makeup," Aher, now 37, recalls. "That is something which used to extremely fascinate me."

Draped in a bright sari, gold earrings and painted nails, Aher is, by outward appearance, a female, preferring to be addressed as a woman.

She has undertaken a long and arduous journey, rejecting her biological sex and opting to become a hijra — a member of an ancient transgender community in India, popularly referred to as eunuchs.

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A survey of emergency contraceptives in Lima, Peru, turned up worrying results: More than a quarter were either counterfeit or defective.

Some of the morning-after pills tested contained too little of the active ingredient, or none at all. Other pills contained another drug altogether, researchers reported Friday in the journal PLOS ONE.

Swallowing these fakes can result in dangerous side effects, not to mention unwanted pregnancies.

"The biggest implication is the quality of emergency contraceptives in developing countries cannot be taken for granted," says Facundo Fernandez, a chemist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who contributed to the study.

Shots - Health News

Poll: Americans Favor Age Restrictions On Morning-After Pill

"Does Russia intercept, store or analyze in any way the communications of millions of individuals?" former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden asked Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.

"We don't have a mass system of such interception, and according to our law it cannot exist," the Russian leader responded.

Well, as NPR's Tom Gjelten tweets, the bipartisan Center for Strategic & International Studies has now provided "an actual answer" to Snowden's query.

Here are some excerpts from what the center posted today:

"Three programs, SORM-1, SORM-2, and SORM-3, provide the foundation of Russian mass communications surveillance. Russian law gives Russia's security service, the FSB, the authority to use SORM ('System for Operative Investigative Activities') to collect, analyze and store all data that [are] transmitted or received on Russian networks, including calls, email, website visits and credit card transactions. ...

"Russian law requires all Internet service providers to install an FSB monitoring device (called 'Punkt Upravlenia') on their networks that allows the direct collection of traffic without the knowledge or cooperation of the service provider. ...

"Collection requires a court order, but these are secret and not shown to the service provider. According to the data published by Russia's Supreme Court, almost 540,000 intercepts of phone and internet traffic were authorized in 2012. ...

"SORM is routinely used against political opponents and human rights activists to monitor them and to collect information to use against them in 'dirty tricks' campaigns. Russian courts have upheld the FSB's authority to surveil political opponents even if they have committed no crime. ..."