Learn Spanish (Latin America): La noticia es inesperada. La realidad los sorprende. - The news is unexpected. Reality surprises them.

You could say La noticia es inesperada; sin embargo, la realidad los sorprende. (The news is unexpected; however, reality surprises them). Notice that sin embargo works just like "however" in English to introduce a contrast, and is usually separated by punctuation like a semicolon and a comma.

Why is noticia singular here? Doesn't "news" always have an 's' in English?

In Spanish, una noticia refers to a single, specific piece of news. If you are talking about the daily news broadcast on TV or the news in general, you would use the plural las noticias. Since this sentence is about a specific announcement, the singular la noticia is used.

Why does the first sentence use es instead of está?

We use es (from the verb ser) because being inesperada (unexpected) is a defining characteristic of this particular piece of news, not a temporary physical state or a location.

Why is there a La before realidad? In English we just say "Reality surprises them."