APATZINGAN, Mexico — As the leader of one of Mexico’s most ruthless criminal gangs, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez is the mastermind of hair-raising brutality in his native Michoacan state. He also would like the world to know that he has a pious, loving and huggy-kissy side, and so he’s penned a booklet entitled “Thoughts.”

“If you want to say ‘I love you!’ to those who surround you and to your friends, say it today,” the drug lord exhorts his readers.

In the 104-page booklet, which was published earlier this year, he offers advice on personal empowerment, Christian living and proper deportment.

“Manners are a way of showing respect for others,” he writes. “If you don’t have them, don’t expect to be respected.”

If it’s bizarre for the leader of a drug gang that beheads or quarters its enemies to offer advice on Christian living, well, it may be. However, the criminal gang known as La Familia Michoacana is a pseudo-Christian posse that mixes zeal and inspiring slogans in its pronouncements. Its members are ordered to study the Bible and pray the rosary, even as they gun down police, dismember their opponents and manufacture highly addictive crystal methamphetamine.

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ABOARD THE CARLSKRONA – Drops of sweat trickled down the faces of the pirate hunters on the Swedish warship. They conferred in low voices, finally reaching a consensus: Yes, throw another pitcher of water onto the sauna heater.

Pirate-hunting has come a long way since the Knights of Malta battled the Barbary Corsairs four centuries ago.

Floggings, weevils and scurvy are out. Saunas, fresh bread and massages are in — at least aboard the Swedish warship Carlskrona, the flagship of the European Union’s force to hunt down Somali pirates, who have hijacked 23 ships this year.

Building an international alliance to fight the pirates means navies have to try to harmonize their cultures alongside their weapons and communications systems. Some of the adjustments are serious, like agreeing to common rules of engagement and having lawyers advise warships on how to gather evidence and treat captives.

A handbook produced by the Swedes and given to other European nations not only has such phrases in English and Somali as “No talking” and “Put your weapon down,” but also includes “Calm down” and “We are here to help you” — for use when boarding teams search Somali fishing vessels or boatloads of refugees.

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While American women celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Pill this month, women in India are embracing a different method of personal contraception. By the end of today, over 100 million will have taken a birth control pill, but it’s acceptance in the world’s second most populous nation has been dismally low. According to the 2005-2006 National Family Health Survey, only 49% of Indian women use modern contraceptives, and of these, only 3% are on the Pill.

Instead, among urban India’s increasingly educated and independent women, it’s emergency contraception that has taken over the market. The ‘morning after pill‘ brands, which include i-pill, Unwanted 72, and Preventol, are readily accessible over the-counter drugs throughout India, as they are in at least 40 other countries including the U.S., U.K., and Australia. “There’s an alarmingly high utilization of emergency contraception, which has almost become synonymous with the ‘i-pill’,” says Dr. Rishma Dhillon Pai, a consultant gynecologist at the Jaslok and Lilavati hospitals in Mumbai, and the Vice President of the Federation of Obstetric and Gynecological Societies of India (FOGSI). (Watch a video about the birth control pill’s influence.)

Cipla, an Indian pharmaceutical giant which sells the morning after pill for $1.60, has sold an average of 200,000 units of the drug each month since 2007, according to local media reports. The i-pill alone outsells both condoms and other oral contraceptive pills. For the year ending June 2009, American research firm ACNielsen valued India’s emergency contraceptive segment at over $16,850,000 – a 245% growth in sales since the drug’s release. Last month, India’s Piramal Healthcare bought the rights to the i-pill from Cipla for some $20,800,000 in an all-cash transaction.

New Delhi has promoted emergency contraception as an option for women since 2002 and made it available over the counter in 2005. But it wasn’t until Cipla came out with the i- pill in 2007, marketing it to modern young women through television and magazine advertising, that women took to it. Pai says when asked about their primary method of contraception, many of her young female patients say they use the i-pill. “Sometimes, they’re using the pill three or four times a month,” she says.

In 1966, two Yale University researchers, gynecologist John McLean Morris and endocrinologist Gertrude van Wagenen first discovered the morning after pill, but it took years before the first prescription- only version of the drug became available in 1984 in the U.K. In the US, after much politically charged debate, the FDA approved over-the- counter sales for Plan B, manufactured by Duramed Pharmaceuticals, to women and men 18 and older. It had been available by prescription since 1999. (See a brief history of birth control.)

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