Hey,
it looks like you've deleted too much of the feed - the only code that needs to be removed is that of the ticker and maybe the code for the preview images too.
You can hide it with CSS by adding
display:none;
between the brackets of .ticker and .preview_images in your style.css
OR, you can delete this code from index.php
if($k_options['mainpage']['ticker_autorotate']==1)
{
echo'<div class="ticker">'."\n";
$firstitem = "class='active_ticker'"."\n";
if (have_posts()) :
while (have_posts()) : the_post();
echo'<span '.$firstitem.' ><a href="'.get_permalink().'"><strong>Latest News:</strong> '.get_the_title().'</a></span>'."\n";
$firstitem = "";
endwhile;
endif;
echo'</div><!--end ticker-->'."\n";
}