Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said Thursday that getting rid of Terrell Owens was necessary to save his team. “In the aftermath of the season, we talked about change,” Jones said in a statement. “Some of what is changing involves the process and some of it involves people. This is a decision that was made based upon consideration for an entire team. We will move on now with a new team – a new attitude – and into a new stadium. The evaluation process and the prospect for change will continue at every level of the organization.” Even though there have been rumblings about waiving Owens for some time, the outspoken, controversial wideout told teammate and fellow wide receiver Sam Hurd that he was “more shocked than angry” when he heard of Jones’ decision. “He didn’t give me an explanation. He just said, ‘Wow,’” Hurd said Thursday. “I really didn’t believe that he seen that coming. … He said it’s tough, but it’s a business.” Few receivers have more catches, yards and touchdowns than Owens. His 38 touchdowns over the past three years are tops. But in the end, it was the dissention that he generated among his teammates at each of his three NFL squads that was his undoing.

There’s an Obama baby-naming boom in Kenya. Ever since President-elect Barack Obama won the election over his Republican rival last week, little baby “Obamas” have been popping up all over the world, reports United Press International. This is especially the case at a hospital in Kisumu, Kenya. Officials at Nyanza Provincial Hospital say that 43 babies, between Nov. 4 and Nov. 8, were named after Obama or some of his family members. Twenty-three boys were given “Barack Obama” as their first and middle names and 20 girls were named after his wife, Michelle Obama. One mother, Pamela Odhiambo, says she gave birth to little “Michelle Obama” during Obama’s victory speech. “It’s a new start, a new beginning,” said Odhiambo.

The U.N. is forced to cut food aid to Zimbabwe. The United Nations’ food charity has to cut back on food distribution in Zimbabwe because the international aid agency is running low on money. Although the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP) has fed 2 million people in October, a number they expect to grow to 4 million this month and rise to more than 5 million by early 2009, it lacks the funds to keep it going in 2009. “There is currently no food in the pipeline for distributions in January and February – just when the crisis is reaching its peak,” said the agency in a statement. The U.N. also asked for $140 million in more funding so it will be able to keep distributing aid in the nation until at least the end of March. A “disastrous” harvest in the country has resulted in millions of Zimbabweans being hungry; the demand was such that the WFP had to reduce cereal and pulse rations. The country has had a rough time with food shortages for the past seven years. Critics of longtime leader Robert Mugabe say that the country’s food problems were made worse when he enforced his policy of kicking White farmers off their land to redistribute to Blacks. Black Zimbabweans gained their independence from White rule in 1980.

Orlando Commissioner gets a noose delivery

The Orlando commissioner who railed against the 1930’s-era photo of a barefoot Black caddy at an exclusive city golf course found out just how angry she made some folks when she showed up for work last week. By the time Commissioner Daisy Lynum arrived at her City Hall office, someone had delivered her a rope noose, which she promptly turned over Orlando Police. “There was no name, so to me it’s like the cowards in the Ku Klux Klan who wore hoods over their faces,” Lynum said. “This just shows there is still ignorance in our society.” Lynum kicked off a firestorm last week when she demanded that the Dubsdread Gold Course take down the photograph of the boy caddying for White players, which she said was offensive and had no place in course owned by the city. “They say it [photograph] is a part of history,” Lynum said, according to The Orlando Sentinel, “but so is lynching and killing. Do we keep those pictures on display?” Her reaction even made her a target of an Orlando Sentinel columnist, who said “she should apologize immediately for this insensitive and insulting hyperbole.” Sports writer Mike Bianchi said, “Disgraceful. To compare a photo of this photo – a photo of a young Black kid innocently and voluntarily tending the flagstick for a White golfer – to murders and lynchings is simply disgraceful.” That elicited an angry response from Sentinel reader named Bill, who wrote, “Mike, I’m not an African American, but I can see how Ms. Lynum could find the photo insensitive. Let’s see, I wonder how many African American members Dubsdread had at that time. I’m guessing … zero? But they can be shown in a subservient manner slaving for the man. You should apologize. You’re the insensitive one.”

NAACP renews call for removal of S.C.’s rebel flag

The NAACP is getting little support from the residents of mostly Black South Carolina as it tries to pressure the state to remove the Confederate flag from a Civil War memorial in the heart of Columbia. Part of the reason for the seeming complacency is that it took such a major effort to get leaders of the state, Black and White, to agree to remove it from the Capitol dome eight years ago. Read more at BET.com/News.

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Woman is charged in brutal baby-stealing case
n what must qualify as one of the most macabre murders in Pennsylvania history, a 38-year-old Pittsburgh-area woman has been accused of slaying a teen and cutting open her womb to steal her baby. Police on Friday arrested Andrea Curry-Demus of Wilkinsburg and charged her with homicide, unlawful restraint and kidnapping. She was taken into custody after showing up at a hospital with a baby, still covered in afterbirth, wrapped in a blanket. Read the rest at BET.com/News.