A few months ago, Google made a change to Google News where you need to sign in to be able to change your local news information.
For example, if Google News targeted your location to San Francisco, California, but you wanted news based on being in San Jose, California, now you need to sign in to change your location. You use to be able to change it based on a cookie on your computer.
One Google News user complained in the Google News Help forums and Google actually responded.
Stacie from Google said:
This change is about putting our users in the driving seat and helping them take advantage of some pretty cool features that allow them to directly tailor the news they see according to their own likes, dislikes and personal preferences.If you are not signed-in you will still get a great News experience from the 60,000 publishers who show up there, but it won’t be precisely tailored to your likes and dislikes, including location.
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
This post was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today. FYI, I am offline today, so if Google does a Penguin update - I won't get to it until Monday.