I think the Times reporter was trying to show off, and if so, he/she probably misused it, or at least was imprecise in its usage. That happens a lot. While I am it it...
(warning!!! rant about to begin.....)
there is a common word that increasingly is being misused and I am predicting that the misuse will become so common that the word will be redefined, which will be a damn shame. The word is "includes."
Back when words meant what they meant, we used "includes" to say that we were enumerating some (but not all) of something. For example: "The southern states include Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia." Obviously, this is some, but not all, of them. If we wanted to say the list was complete, we would use "comprises" or "comprising", or just "The southern states are..." and be done with it.
Now, all too often I see a complete enumeration of a set of things, with the word "includes" in front of it, as in: "The original U.S. colonies included..." and then a complete list of all of them.
This is a bad idea because in the old, clearer world, if the reader saw "includes," he/she knew the list was partial. Now, if this takes hold -- and it seems to be doing so -- the reader has no idea whether the list is complete or not. Maybe it is, and maybe not. And a word that has a precise meaning will have lost its precision, and writers and readers will be the real losers.
is what we used to call an emoticon 
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