There has been a fashionable academic trend in the last decade to describe the past using the present tense, in the way newspapers have done for a long time. I think the purpose is to engage the reader as if they are witnessing history as it happens, more like reading a fiction book than nonfiction.
Commented Jun 20, 2013 at 18:57The headline of a newspaper was originally intended to attract the readers attention (and encourage them to purchase the paper). Framing the bold headline statements in the present tense gives them a sense of urgency and excitement that is (assumed to be) more enticing to the reader.
As other answers have said, the essence of news coverage is its immediacy. The history books will report that "the Taliban established a faux-embassy in Qatar in the middle of 2013". In the newspapers it is "Taliban open mid-east office".
If you watched a delayed coverage of a test match, would you expect the commentators to refer to each event in the past tense? Newspapers operate in the same fashion.
Even though the events are technically in the past (as is the instant when I just typed "in the past") news coverage of them is presented as though it was occurring at the same time.