I have learned that Florida election officials are set to announce that the secretary of state has discovered and purged up to 53,000 dead voters from the voter rolls in Florida.

How could 53,000 dead voters have sat on the polls for so long?  Simple. Because Florida hadn’t been using the best available data revealing which voters have died.  Florida is now using the nationwide Social Security Death Index for determining which voters should be purged because they have died.

Here is the bad news.  Most states aren’t using the same database that Florida is.  In fact, I have heard reports that some election officials won’t even remove voters even when they are presented with a death certificate.  That means that voter rolls across the nation still are filled with dead voters, even if Florida is leading the way in detecting and removing them.

CONTINUED at PJ Media.

Donna Summer – the Queen of Disco — died this morning after a battle with cancer … TMZ has learned.

We’re told Summer was in Florida at the time of her death. She was 63 years old.

Sources close to Summer tell us … the singer was trying to keep the extent of her illness under wraps. We spoke to someone who was with Summer a couple of weeks ago … who says she didn’t seem too bad.

In fact, we’re told she was focused on trying to finish up an album she had been working on.

Summer was a 5-time Grammy winner who shot to superstardom in the ’70s with iconic hits like “Last Dance,” “Hot Stuff” and “Bad Girls.”

She continued her dominance in the ’80s with “She Works Hard for the Money” and “This Time I Know It’s for Real.”

Summer and her producer Giorgio Moroder defined the dance music era of the ’70s and influenced acts like Duran Duran and David Bowie to enter the genre.

Summer married Brooklyn Dreams singer Bruce Sudano back in 1980. They had two daughters together.

Source: TMZ.

Two suicide blasts ripped through the Syrian capital today, killing 55 people and leaving scenes of carnage in the streets in the deadliest bombing attack since the country’s uprising began 14 months ago, the Interior Ministry said.

A self-portrait of Amy Winehouse that was made out of her own blood will be auctioned off by friend and former rumored lover Pete Doherty .

Multiple sources are reporting that the former lead singer of Libertines will sell the painting, a small piece entitled “Ladylike,” alongside items such as instruments, diaries and articles of clothing.

The auction will be held at the Cob Gallery in London on Friday, as part of an exhibition of Doherty’s blood-infused works called “On Blood: A Portrait of the Artist”.”

CONTINUED at CBS Las Vegas.

UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan said his peace plan could be the last chance to avoid civil war in Syria, where a truce has failed to end 14 months of bloodshed that monitors say has killed nearly 12,000 people.

Annan told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the priority in Syria was “to stop the killing” and expressed concern that torture, mass arrests and other human rights violations were intensifying.

Regime forces “continue to press against the population,” despite a putative truce that started on April 12, but attacks are more discreet because of the presence of UN military observers, diplomats quoted him as saying.

“The biggest priority, first of all we need to stop the killing,” Annan told reporters in Geneva, adding that his six-point peace plan is “the only remaining chance to stabilize the country.”

Annan briefed the council on his efforts to get Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to implement the plan, which he said was possibly “the last chance to avoid civil war.”

CONTINUED at Taipei Times.

Noted hairstylist Vidal Sassoon, known for creating the modern “bob,” has died at age 84.

At 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, police were dispatched to Sassoon’s Los Angeles home on Mulholland Drive, where he had died of apparent natural causes, LAPD spokesman Kevin Mailberger confirmed to NBC News.

The British style icon opened his first eponymous hair salon in 1954, and it grew into a worldwide chain with locations in New York and Los Angeles.

Sassoon’s popularity grew as he promoted his low-maintenance, “wash and wear” hair philosophy, changing the constricting, structured styles of the 1950s to the more free-flowing, creative cuts of the ’60s – taking a cue from the women’s liberation movement. Sassoon grabbed headlines when he created Mia Farrow’s iconic pixie cut for the 1968 movie, “Rosemary’s Baby” – at a reported cost of $5,000.

CONTINUED at MSNBC.

This column is about politics. Today, it’s not. Still, there’s Watergate, Paul Revere, Edward R. Murrow, fighting for your right, so, kinda still.

Adam Nathaniel Yauch died Friday. If you’re age 16-66 — maybe 106 — you know him as MCA, one-third of the Beastie Boys. He was 47. Way too young. But gone.

Now, half-white Barack Obama (exactly my age) didn’t say a word, even though he was talking to college kids that day, but make no mistake, MCA was no Jay-Z orKanye West. This guy was the real deal, groundbreaker, up from his bootstraps, Brooklyn boy made good. Funny the “coolest president ever” doesn’t say a word about the passing of MCA. Weird and kinda sad, actually.

“Yauch was born an only child in Brooklyn, New York, the son ofFrances, a social worker, and Noel Yauch, a painter and architect,” Wikipedia says. “His father was Catholic and his mother was Jewish.” Kinda like Barack, all over the place, half this, half that, and a tough life ahead from the outset. But nothing from the first half-white, half-black president (MSM has made him black — he’s not; he’s half-and-half. No, Trayvon Martin wouldn’t have looked like his son.)

The boys, the Beastie Boys, started out as a thrash hard-core punk band in ‘79, at the tail end of the movement. The Sex Pistols, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, 999, were lighting up America, banging CBGB, 930 Club, every stop on the scene. But the Boys were on the tail end of the punk movement and were looking for a new sound (they definitely weren’t going new wave).

CONTINUED at the Washington Times.

The late Ayrton Senna was an almost mystical figure in the Formula 1 world, crediting much of his transcendent focus and nearly unconscious driving ability to his Catholic faith. But when discussing his spirituality in 1989, he said, “Just because I believe in God, just because I have faith in God, it doesn’t mean that I’m immune. It doesn’t mean that I’m immortal.”

Millions of fans would disagree to this day.

Eighteen years ago today, one of the worst weekends in Formula 1 history ended when Senna passed away in an accident during the San Marino Grand Prix. His incident came two days after a then-young Rubens Barrichello suffered serious injuries in practice, and one day after Austrian Roland Ratzenberger perished in a crash during qualifying. In an eerily foreboding move, on the morning of his death, Senna set into motion the re-establishment of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association to push for greater driver safety in the wake of these accidents.

While many of his records have been surpassed, Senna’s name remains a staple of the Formula 1 record book. At the time of his death, his 41 wins ranked him second all time, and his 65 poles were one short of doubling second place in the category before Michael Schumacher surpassed him in 2006. He won four consecutive races on two separate occasions, three championships (in 1988, 1990, and 1991), and six Monaco Grands Prix.

Senna was a throwback, one of the last remaining drivers who asserted himself as a leader in the sport with businesslike efficiency and surgical precision. Beating his opponents was nothing personal; it was just his job.

And like any effective mercenary, jarring emotions would not compromise his set of skills, especially not a hostile work environment.

While Alain Prost purposely signed contracts to block Senna from joining the same team and Nigel Mansell took a two-year detour into CART while still holding his Drivers’ Championship, Senna was out there to race and nothing more.

The closest that Senna came to that level of F1 prima donna was in 1993, when an engine snafu landed his McLaren team with an underpowered Ford engine. Senna began the year running on a race-by-race basis, then eventually agreed to stick with the team for the full year.

He still finished second in the championship.

But what truly set Senna apart was his humility and integrity, especially in comparison to other drivers. His rivalry with Prost will always be one of the most legendary in the sport, not only because of their on-track accomplishments but also due to their disparate personalities. Started by a 1988 incident in Portugal in which Senna nearly forced Prost, then his teammate at McLaren, into the pit wall at full speed, the next few years were marred by various misjudgments by Prost and FIA president Jean-Marie Balestre, who, prompted by a Prost protest, temporarily suspended Senna’s license in 1989.

At Suzuka, in 1990, the penultimate round of the championship, Senna led Prost, now with Ferrari, by nine points for the championship. While Senna beat Prost for the pole, Balestre himself elected to place Prost on the left-hand side of the track, the traditional pole side, which would have given him an advantageous line into the first corner. Senna protested by refusing to yield the racing line, plowing into the back of the Ferrari, eliminating both cars, and thus guaranteeing that he would win the championship.

Senna explained a year later that he would not stand for Balestre’s unfair decision-making, dating back to the license suspension.

If you tried to compromise the integrity of a race, Ayrton Senna would make your world a living hell.

That integrity didn’t always frustrate his opponents or teammates, however. During that 1993 season at McLaren, Senna’s teammate was Michael Andretti, still in the prime of his career after winning the 1991 CART title. But McLaren had also signed Mika Hakkinen as a reserve in case Senna were to leave, and the future world champion was ready to race.

In fact, son Marco Andretti has alleged that McLaren intentionally sabotaged Andretti’s car to drive him away—until Senna spoke up.

“I think my dad’s biggest supporter over there was Ayrton Senna,” the younger Andretti told the Associated Press in 2008. “Because he was one of the few who knew what was really happening in the team, and I think he believed in my father. It was at Monza that he really said, ‘Give him my car. Give him exactly what I had.’” Andretti finished third in that race, scoring his only Formula 1 podium.

An intensely focused competitor, Senna also had a lighter side, as he frequently played practical jokes on McLaren teammate Gerhard Berger. When Erik Comas crashed heavily in qualifying for the 1992 Belgian Grand Prix, Senna ran across the active track to become the first respondent on the scene, and later visited Comas in hospital.

He also felt a great responsibility to help eradicate poverty in his native Brazil, having donated a large portion of his wealth to aid poor children shortly before his death.

Ayrton Senna has been gone for 18 years now, but his legacy will always carry on. His nephew, Bruno, carries on the family legacy, driving for the same Williams team with which his uncle ran his last race; meanwhile, a 2010 documentary bearing his name won awards at film festivals worldwide before finally receiving its United States release this March.

But for those longtime fans of the sport who were lucky enough to see Ayrton Senna race, no driver and no documentary will ever come close to replacing him. Not Schumacher, not Vettel, not even his own bloodline.

He may have denied his own immortality, but the rest of us never will.

Source: Bleacher Report.

Taliban bombers attacked a heavily fortified guesthouse used by Westerners in Kabul on Wednesday, announcing the start of their annual “spring offensive” in defiance of calls from visiting US President Barack Obama that the war was ending.

Seven people were killed after attackers in burqas detonated a suicide car bomb and clashed with guards at the “Green Village” complex of guesthouses used by the European Union, the United Nations and aid groups, officials said.

The assault raises fresh concern about the resilience of the insurgency on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death as NATOwinds down its combat presence in the next two years and hands over responsibility for security to Afghan forces.

The Taliban said the assault was a riposte to Obama, who just hours earlier signed a new partnership pact in Kabul to govern Afghan-US relations after 2014 — a deal the insurgents dismissed as “illegitimate”.

In an election-year address, Obama presented himself as a commander-in-chief capable of ending two long wars, following the US withdrawal from Iraq, and crushing Al-Qaeda, and tried to conjure up a new dawn for a US public exhausted by conflict and recession.

CONTINUED at Yahoo News.