Rajeev Motwani, a computer science professor who mentored Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford, was found dead in the pool of his Atherton, California home. He was 47.

David Carradine, who starred in Kung Fu and Kill Bill Vols. I and II, was found dead in his Bangkok hotel room yesterday. A Thai news report says it was a suicide, but his agent in L.A. says it was "natural causes."

Dolla, a 21 year-old Atlanta rapper signed to Akon's label, was shot and killed yesterday in the parking garage of an LA mall.

Comic actor, cook, Muppets host, and prototypical fameball Dom DeLuise has passed. He was 75.

The writer of Crash and the autobiographical Empire of the Sun had been battling prostate cancer. He was inspired by science fiction, but placed his novels outside the genre, rooting them in the modern world.

While writing Next, his last published novel, author Michael Crichton simultaneously (and unexpectedly) wrote Pirate Latitudes, about "a pirate named Hunter and the governor of Jamaica, and their plan to raid a Spanish treasure galleon."

Irving R. Levine, NBC's reserved, bow-tied business reporter during the '70s and '80s, has died, partly of old age and partly of shame at the way his former beat is being covered by tools.

John Hope Franklin, the author of From Slavery to Freedom and possibly the greatest historian of the black American experience, died Wednesday at the age of 94. He lived well.

George Weber, a longtime WABC newscaster turned ABC News freelancer and blogger, was found stabbed to death at home in Brooklyn. He was 47.

Nicholas Hughes, a marine biologist and academic, hanged himself at home 46 years after the suicide of his mother, the poet Sylvia Plath. He was 47.

Ron Silver, the actor and Democrat-turned-Republican political organizer, died this morning after a two-year-battle with esophageal cancer. He was 62.

Longtime New York Post real estate columnist Braden Keil died last night, after a battle with melanoma. He worked up until the very end, with his wife helping him write his last column.

Joining other newsmen at the Pearly Gates of Heaven is Paul Harvey, who passed away at age 90. Harvey was a broadcasting pioneer with a signature staccato speaking style that garnered him nationwide recognition.

Virgil Griffin, a North Carolina KKK boss most famous for leading a racist crowd that shot five leftists to death in 1979, has died at the age of 64. Sean Delonas commemorative cartoon TK. [NYT]

Knopf, whose parents ran the eponymous publishing house, left that company in 1959 to start Atheneum Publishers. He died yesterday at the age of 90, due to complications from a fall.

That guy who sold vegetable peelers at the Union Square Greenmarket has died. The carrot-peeling huckster Joe Ades was a beloved Manhattan character up until his death, at the age of 75, on Sunday.

You know what sucks? Dying the same week as John Updike. The obits are like Updike this and Updike that. To be overshadowed in death is the bitter fate of the wonderful journalist Malcolm MacPherson

When he interviewed celebrities, typically over lunch, longtime Parade columnist James Brady often did not take notes; he only needed three soundbites, which he memorized.

Celebrated author John Updike has died of lung cancer. He was 76 years old. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Rabbit series was also an accomplished essayist and literary critic.

Polarizing American artist Andrew Wyeth, who painted "Christina's World"—my favorite painting ever, go see it in the flesh canvas at the Museum of Modern Art—died yesterday at age 91.