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.

A new leaked document reveals the exact layout and plans for the next Formula One circuit, the Grand Prix of America in New Jersey. The map explains some of the many challenges in bringing F1 to the New York metro area.

You can view the master plan in full here.

The track runs clockwise, starting along the Port Imperial Ferry Terminal on the Hudson in what will be the pit straight. The cars make a 90 degree left for Turn One, then quickly transition into the right-handed Turn Two. The cars then turn up to the great feature of the track: thePalisades.

The Hudson is banked on New Jersey by this massive rock formation — up past the George Washington Bridge, it forms a sheer cliff of exposed rock looking down on the river. Down at the track, it accounts for 150 feet of elevation change. Elevation change, traditionally, is what makes a track great and it has been seriously lacking from Formula One circuits built in the past fifteen years.

CONTINUED at Jalopnik. More photos at link.

Because what fun is sitting back and enjoying a game, Korean gamer Yoshichan beat Diablo 3 in 12 hours and 29 minutes with “368 Lifetime Kills, 412 Elite Kills and 168,481 gold as a Barbarian on normal difficulty”. Since then, at least two other groups of Korean and Chinese gamers have done it in 7. Wow, this is NOT how you get your money’s worth. Just saying, I’m 52 hours into Skyrim and haven’t even made it to Whiterun yet. Are there really even dragons in this game?

Source: Geekologie.

Manchester City are officially the blue moon of British football, now that they’ve finished alone atop the English Premier League table.

The Sky Blues secured their first Premiership crown and first title in the top flight of English football since 1968 with a 3-2 win over QPR. They ended their fixtures with as many points as Manchester United, but earned the silverware in spectacular fashion on goal differential.

All looked to be lost when a 10-man QPR side went up 2-1, but the Blues stormed back in stoppage time, culminating with an unbelievable winner from Sergio Aguero to give the club a long-awaited league crown.

City came into the 2011-12 season as a contender after bringing in Aguero, Samir Nasri and Gael Clichy to bolster a squad that finished in third last spring. They spent the vast majority of the campaign in the top two, and regained control of their domestic destiny with a 1-0 win over arch rival Manchester United at the end of April.

It also marked the first time since the 2007-08 season that City swept the Manchester derby in EPL competition from United.

Roberto Mancini’s side fell behind Sir Alex Ferguson’s by as many as eight points in the standings in April after a 1-0 loss to Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium.

City did not drop a single point after that, while United went on to lose to Wigan and draw with Everton before losing to the “noisy neighbors.”

Man City’s run to the title was not without turmoil, though. An early-season spat between Mancini and Carlos Tevez led to the Argentine striker’s banishment from the club for four-and-a-half months. His absence opened up more opportunities for the mercurial Mario Balotelli, whose brilliance was often offset by fits of mischief, both on and off the pitch.

But, in the end, it was Tevez who wound up back in the starting XI, and City who will hoist Premiership hardware.

Source: Bleacher Report.

It’s true, superhero movies are generally not known for their adherence to strict reality. No surprise there, though I’d say it could be argued that Marvel has actually done a passable job of finding real-world ways and reasons for its heroes to possibly exist (Thor obviously excluded).

But in an angle that I freely admit I would never have anticipated, when the Pentagon chose to withdraw its support for Marvel’s THE AVENGERS due to its “unreality” they were actually referring to SHIELD any not any of the super-powered beings found therein.  “We couldn’t reconcile the unreality of this international organization and our place in it,” said Phil Straub, the Defense Department’s Hollywood liaison.  “To whom did S.H.I.E.L.D. answer? Did we work for S.H.I.E.L.D.? We hit that roadblock and decided we couldn’t do anything with the film.”

As an example: while the humvees which show up at the end (driven by members of the National Guard) were used in cooperation with the Defense Department, any of the military planes seen on or around the Helicarrier (“F-22 Raptors and what looked like F-35 Joint Strike Fighters”) were all inserted digitally as the military refused to provide real ones.

To be fair, Marvel has been suitably murky as to just what SHIELD is in the world of the movies – not that they have to explain everything away by any means, but is it an American governmental agency that has authority over America’s military, or is it a more international organization created via a sort of ”United Nations Security Council resolution” uses American military equipment on loan? Without answers to these questions, all Straub could do was decide “It just got to the point where it didn’t make any sense.”

Source: JoBlo.

The estranged wife of former football star Deion Sanders was arrested on domestic violence-related charges Monday night, hours after Sanders sent a series of bizarre tweets saying she assaulted him.

In one of the messages posted on his verified Twitter account, Sanders even posted a picture of what he said were his children filling out complaints to give to police in Texas.

“Pray for me and my kids now! They just witnessed their mother and a friend jump me in my room,” the first tweet posted at 6:15 p.m. read. “She’s going to jail n I’m pressing charges!”

Two minutes later, Sanders tweeted again.

CONTINUED at CNN.

It looks like the only dictator on the red carpet at Sunday’s Oscars ceremony will be the Academy itself.

After rumors circulated that comedian Sacha Baron Cohen — of “Borat” and “Bruno” fame — planned to attend the awards show dressed as his latest outrageous character, Admiral General Alladeen from the upcoming “The Dictator,” the Academy pulled Cohen’s invitation from the show.

The comedian was expected to attend since a film he acts in, the Martin Scorsese-directed “Hugo,” was nominated for 11 awards, including best picture. Cohen is also a voting member of the Academy.

“Unless they’re assured that nothing entertaining is going to happen on the red carpet, the Academy is not admitting Sacha Baron Cohen to the show,” a representative from Paramount Pictures, the company that produced “Hugo,” told Deadline.

The stuffy suits were none too pleased that the serious occasion could be marred by Cohen’s appearance as his Sadaam Hussein-meets-Gadhafi character.

Cohen is known for his extremely crude — and often nude — characters, who parody current events.

It’s a shame, since the consistently bland, three-hour ceremony could have used a little comic relief.

Source: The Daily Caller.

Adele, who captured the world’s heart with an album about a broken romance, emerged as the top winner at Sunday’s Grammy Awards, winning six trophies including the prestigious trifecta of record, song and album of the year.

The singer, who also made a triumphant comeback from vocal cord surgery on the Grammy stage, sobbed as she won the night’s final award, album of the year, for “21.” It was last year’s top-selling album with more than six million copies sold and remains lodged at the No. 1 spot on this year’s charts.

Her victories tied her with Beyonce as the most wins by a woman in one evening.

“Mom, gold is good!” Adele shouted as she took the album of the year trophy.

The celebration of Adele, a big-voiced, soulful singer, came on a night where the Grammys marked the loss of one of music’s great female voices – and one of its most prized talents overall. Whitney Houston died the night before the Grammys, casting a shadow over music’s biggest night.

But while her death lent a somber overtone to the evening’s show, it did not overwhelm it, perhaps best proved by the show’s closing number, a rollicking jam session featuring Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Dave Grohl among others.

The night’s other big winners were Grohl’s Foo Fighters, who won five Grammys. They noted that they made their album “Wasting Light” in a garage.

“To me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of making music is what’s most important. Singing into a microphone, learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that’s the most important thing for people to do,” Grohl said as the band accepted their best rock performance trophy for “Walk.”"It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about sounding absolutely correct. It’s not about what goes on in a computer. It’s about what goes on in here (your heart) and what goes on here (your head). … Long live rock ‘n’ roll!”

Among the evening’s performances was a dance-heavy number by Chris Brown, and performances by McCartney and Springsteen, who kicked off the show by performing his new song “We Take Care of Our Own,” a rousing song that references the troubles of the nation.

But the evening’s most moving moment came as Jennifer Hudson – who has called Houston an inspiration and one of her biggest idols – emerged to sing one of Houston’s signature songs, “I Will Always Love You.” Dressed in black, with only the accompaniment of a piano, Hudson appeared to fight back tears as she sang the song, ending with the line, “Whitney, we will always love you.”

CONTINUED at My Way.