Please create a PHP file with the code below, upload it somewhere on your server and copy its output. It will just output the time of the server and its timezone. Like this, we know that the server's time is the problem and that it isn't CuteNews doing something weird.
<?php
echo 'Server time: '.date('d M Y, H:i');
echo '
Timezone: '.date('e (\G\M\T P)');
echo '
Timestamp: '.time();
?>
Please provide your actual time as well — my guess is that "Server time" will be five hours ahead of your time. That would mean the server's timezone is configured five hours ahead of you, which seems a bit odd (unless you're in Hawaii and you're renting a server located on the East Coast). Once confirmed, we can look into changing your timezone (if possible).
If you go back to Options > System Configurations and look at the setting Time Adjustment, does it still say -300 or has it defaulted back to 0, for instance? (There was a bug in an early UTF-8 CuteNews version doing that.) Could you also please try setting it to "60" for instance and see if that value has any effect?