Wife of Mexican drug lord gives birth in Calif.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — 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 (http://lat.ms/nyfqmn).

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 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.

Michael Jackson's doctor on trial in singer's death

More than two years after Michael Jackson went into cardiac arrest at his mansion, the doctor who was treating the "Thriller" singer will come before a jury on Tuesday charged with responsibility for his death.

Dr. Conrad Murray's trial is expected to give the public a glimpse into the King of Pop's final days as he rehearsed for a series of concerts aimed at restoring a career shattered by a 2005 child molestation trial, despite his acquittal.

Jackson's parents, his sisters Janet and La Toya, and other family members are expected to attend the trial, which could run until late October and is being televised live.

Medical examiners have determined Jackson's death on June 25, 2009, at his rented Los Angeles mansion was due to an overdose of the powerful anesthetic propofol and sedatives.

Prosecutors say Murray caused Jackson's death by giving him propofol as a sleep aid, and failing to monitor him properly.

Murray denies the charge of involuntary manslaughter but faces a prison sentence of up to four years if convicted.

His defense team is expected to argue that Jackson was addicted to various painkillers and sedatives and gave himself the fatal dose of propofol, possibly by swallowing it.

Ed Chernoff, the lead attorney for Murray, said in closed-door arguments on Monday that Jackson, 50, was "desperate" around the time of his death.

"We think that Michael Jackson was involved in certain acts that ended his own life," Chernoff said, according to a court transcript.

WILL DAUGHTER PARIS TESTIFY?

The trial is expected to hear testimony from the paramedics who transported Jackson to the hospital, medical experts, Jackson's choreographer and Murray's girlfriends.

Celebrity attorney Mark Geragos, who once represented Jackson and has closely watched the criminal case against Murray, said that Jackson's 13-year-old daughter Paris might also be called to testify, in what would likely be one of the most dramatic moments of the trial.

"She not only has things to say, but she can say it in a compelling way," Geragos told Reuters. Paris Jackson was at the house when the singer stopped breathing.

The case is one of a small but growing number of U.S. criminal prosecutions of doctors for alleged malpractice.

Geragos said he believes prosecutors could have a difficult time winning a conviction -- and that a hung jury with no conviction or acquittal is more likely.

"Jurors are loathe to convict doctors in this type of a situation," Geragos said, adding that many times jurors don't want to second-guess doctors.

The responses of the 12-person jury to written questionnaires made public last week shows that none of them reported having a negative experience with doctors.

At the time of his death, Jackson was readying himself for 50 planned shows in London called "This Is It."

The first prosecution witness is expected to be Kenny Ortega, the choreographer and film director who was hired to stage the London shows and who was conducting rehearsals with Jackson in Los Angeles.

Lawyer: Knox is like Jessica Rabbit

PERUGIA, Italy (AP) — A defense lawyer told an Italian court Tuesday that Amanda Knox, the American student convicted of killing her roommate, isn't a manipulating, sex-obsessed "femme fatale" as her accusers charge, but is rather like Jessica Rabbit — just drawn that way.
In closing arguments before an appeals court, lawyer Giulia Bongiorno compared Knox to the cartoon character, contending that Knox had been unfairly portrayed over the course of the media-hyped, four-year case. She said the 24-year-old American is instead a loving young woman who simply displayed immaturity and naivete at the time of the 2007 slaying.
Knox was convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering Meredith Kercher, a British student in Perugia, and sentenced to 26 years in prison. Co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian who was Knox's boyfriend at the time of the crime, was convicted of the same charges and sentenced to 25 years.
They both deny wrongdoing and have appealed their 2009 convictions. A verdict in the appeals case is expected in early October.
On Tuesday, Bongiorno likened Knox to the voluptuous character in the "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" film.
"Jessica Rabbit looks like a man-eater, but she is a faithful and loving woman," Bongiorno said. Paraphrasing a famous line from the movie, Bongiorno said Knox "is not bad, she's just drawn that way."
Bongiorno is Sollecito's lawyer, but, with the fates of the two defendants intertwined, she discussed Knox's role in the case at length.
By the media as well as in court, Knox has either been described either as a manipulative "she-devil" or as an innocent girl caught in a judicial inferno in a foreign land. Bongiorno said she was really an immature girl who had just started dating Sollecito.
"One should not mistake tenderness for sexual obsession," Bongiorno said, adding the two liked making faces at each other.
"How do you reconcile that with the 'Venus in Furs' image?" — another reference Bongiorno threw in to a literary character who enslaved her lover. Bongiorno told reporters after the session that she had given a copy of the book — a 19th-century Austrian novella — to Knox, who reads avidly in prison, according to her family and supporters.
Kercher, 21, was stabbed to death in the apartment she shared with Knox, in what prosecutors say had begun like a sexual assault.
Knox and Sollecito insist they spent the night at his house the night of the murder, watching a movie, smoking pot and having sex. The movie they said they were watching, "Amelie," led Bongiorno in the original trial to compare Knox to the title character, an innocent girl intent on doing good.
Bongiorno also looked at DNA evidence linking her client to the crime, most notably an alleged trace on the bra clasp of the victim.

Prosecutors maintain that Sollecito's DNA was on the clasp of Kercher's bra as part of a mix of evidence that also included the victim's genetic profile. They also say Knox's DNA was found on the handle of a kitchen knife believed to be the murder weapon, and Kercher's DNA was found on the blade.

A court-ordered review of evidence, carried out by independent experts, said much of that evidence was unreliable. It highlighted the risk of contamination, especially on the clasp, which was collected from the crime scene 46 days after the murder.

The review significantly weakened the prosecution case, giving the defendants hope that they might be freed after four years behind bars.

Speaking of the clasp, Bongiorno said "that piece of evidence must be considered unusable."

Also convicted in separate proceedings was Rudy Hermann Guede from Ivory Coast. Italy's highest criminal court has upheld Guede's conviction and his 16-year prison sentence. Guede also denies wrongdoing.