– Wife of Mexican drug lord gives birth in US (AP, Sep. 27, 2011):
The young wife of Mexico’s most wanted drug lord has given birth to twin girls at a hospital in northern Los Angeles County, according to a newspaper report.
Emma Coronel, the 22-year-old wife of Joaquin Guzman, crossed the border in mid-July and delivered her daughters at Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster on Aug. 15, the Los Angeles Times reported on its website Monday.
Coronel, a former beauty queen who holds U.S. citizenship, returned to Mexico after they were born.
Birth certificates listed Coronel as the mother of the girls, but the spaces for the father’s name are blank. U.S. law enforcement officials, who tracked her movements even before she traveled to Lancaster, told the Times that Coronel was not arrested because there are no charges against her.
Coronel is believed to be the third or fourth wife of Guzman, the 54-year-old multibillionaire head of Mexico’s most powerful drug-trafficking gang, the Sinaloa cartel. The couple married the day she turned 18 at a lavish wedding in the highlands of central Mexico in 2007.
U.S. authorities have placed a $5-million bounty on Guzman’s head and allege that he and the Sinaloa cartel control the majority of cocaine and marijuana trafficking into the U.S. from Mexico and Colombia.
Guzman reached a new level of fame _ or infamy _ two years ago when he made Forbes magazine’s list of the 67 “World’s Most Powerful People.” At No. 41, he was just below Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei while topping Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez _ No. 67 _ and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy _ No. 56.