Recently, we introduced updates to the Google News Sitemap format to
help you more easily manage your News Sitemap and articles. Within the
next two weeks, we will be phasing out the six-months transition period
and would like your help to avoid interrupting the inclusion of your
articles in Google News.
Although we've been supporting Google
News Sitemaps under the old format, we will discontinue this support
within the next two weeks. If you haven't done this already, please
re-submit your Google News Sitemap under the new format as soon as
possible. For more details on how to submit your Sitemap using the new
format visit the Sitemaps section of our Help Center at:
http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/topic.py?topic=11666.
Once the transition period is over, we will
no longer maintain (not 'accept', as we haven't been accepting them
anyway) News Sitemaps previously created using the old format and any
old News Sitemaps in your Webmaster Tools account will be rejected.
~ Inbal, on behalf of the News Team