There are new reports at the Google News Help forum that Google has removed the "sort by date" feature on the left hand side after conducting a news search.
The feature first introduced in May 2007 has become incredibly useful for many. But now many cannot see it nor use it.
I personally still see the date sorting option on Google News, but I am also still on the old design. So maybe it is only impacting those on the new design?
Google has yet to confirm the bug or address it.
The first report of this came yesterday, where a searcher said:
I have several news tabs set up for Google News. I used to be able to click a tab I had set up, and then sort by date to see the most breaking news on a topic. Then it changed so I had to scroll to the bottom of the page and click "more..." or whatever topic I was searching, and that would open the option on the left side of the page to sort by date. . I no longer see the "more" section at the bottom of the page, and I do not see an option to sort by date.
Forum discussion at Google News Help.