Lake Worth's Palm Beach Post beat reporter, copy and paste journalism?

Today our local beat reporter Chris Persaud hit the big time! He has a Palm Beach Post front page below the fold story about the release of the movie The Interview. Maybe you have heard about it. Below the news story byline and preceding the first paragraph was this: "NEW YORK". Why is that I thought to myself ? 

I copied a sentence and Googled it, here is what I found. This is an Associated Press story from December 23rd. When I printed out the story from the Associated Press and compared it to the story by Chris Persaud I found more than a few similarities. 

What I have below is the text from Chris Persaud's story in the Palm Beach Post and, highlighted in yellow, is the exact same wording, WORD FOR WORD, from the Associated Press article:

At the end of Chris Persaud's article is the line: "The Associated Press contributed to this story."

The Associated Press did in fact contribute to the story by Chris Persaud, most of it.