Once again, somebody hacked into Reuters blogs and posted an inflammatory, and false, story from the Middle East, this time reporting that Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal (above), had died. He has not, but he did undergo minor surgery for an intestinal obstruction over the weekend. Reuters blogs are still down, and have been since Tuesday, according to a tweet from Reuters Opinion, but Reuters own reporting on the hack says it happened on Wednesday, and it already deleted the post. The fake story doesn't appear in the cached copy of Reuters' blogging site, as it did the last time this happened. In Early August, someone posted a fake story that Syrian rebels had retreated from the city of Aleppo, where fighting was intense at the time. Following the hack, we noted that a hacking outfit called the Syrian Electronic Army, which is sympathetic to the Syrian government, has been known to attack media outlets it sees as pro-rebels. If there's a connection to that group and this latest attack, it could be that Saudi Arabia has been supportive of the Syrian rebels, something Reuters (along with every other media outlet) has been reporting.

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Adam Martin