I'm not sure when it changed, but it appears that zenphoto news is actually showing news oldest first. Would make more sense to be newest first.

Edit: (talking about the zenphoto site itself, not zenphoto in general)

I fear I don't see that. The last post on the news section is for me the CombiNews entry about the "Greek Orchid Society" showcase entry (uploaded yesterday) followed by the news article about Zenphoto.org running 1.4.2 beta now (from Dec 10th, this is also the latest article in the category "news").

This seems to appear correct for me.

To note: The user guide and extensions sections/categories however are itself displayed alphabetically as that is easier to view/search (they also appear under the main news section then sorted latest to oldest).

Sure that your browser cache does not play tricks?

Odd.. yeah not sure what was going on. anytime I clicked the news link it was showing me the posts in ascending order for some reason. Its functioning fine now, so must have been something wonky on my cache.