An excerpt from an article on Yahoo: "The disappearances of two top Taliban figures from public view have prompted a spokesperson to deny that one of them had died, multiple outlets reported".
In the books on English Grammar the Present Perfect tense is described as involving a span of time from earliest memory to the present, i.e. the situation is expected to extend to the present moment (depicts some indefinite event(s)) or depicting past actions the effects of which continue up to the present time. Thus it makes Present Perfect appropriate to also introduce a topic of discourse or be used in the news (as it is in the pattern).
But in the pattern the action (of prompting) is implied to be finished before a definite moment in the past (before outlets reported). So abiding by the rules of "sequence of tenses" it should be put in the Past Perfect tense: The disappearances of two top Taliban figures from public view had prompted...
Is using Present Perfect here being an exception to the rule? If so, what are other exceptions when the "sequence of tenses" principles can or shall be not observed?