Mexican "drug queen" extradited to US

08/12/12: BBC News reports Mexico has extradited to the United States a woman accused of setting up some of the first drug smuggling routes up the Pacific coast into California.  Sandra Avila Beltran, dubbed Queen of the Pacific, has been handed over to the American authorities to face cocaine trafficking charges.  Mexican prosecutors accuse her of having played a major part in the build-up of the Sinaloa Cartel in the 1990’s.  Beltran, who has been in prison since 2007, denies any wrongdoing, but prosecutors she worked alongside Mexico’s most wanted man, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, to build up one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organizations.  She is the niece of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, known in the 1980’s as the “Godfather” of drug trafficking into the US.