Yahoo! Picks - bringing you the best of the Web since 1995

Making sense of the Middle East has always been tough, but never more so than in the last month. Israel and the Shiite group Hezbollah are locked in a dance of death, with Lebanese civilians caught in between and taking the brunt of the blows. Throw Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Iran, and the United States into the mix, and you can't tell the players without a scorecard. That's why Slate has provided this simple schematic to help identify which parties are making nice with each other and which aren't. Hezbollah and Hamas? "Friends." Hezbollah and and Iraq? "It's complicated." The chart provides a quick way to separate friends from foes, with a short history of each relationship. If only defusing the crisis were as easy...

It would be difficult to follow events in the Middle East these days and not be confronted with shocking pictures -- especially from Iraq. Distressing photographs now seem to be an inseparable part of modern warfare. Camera/Iraq delves into the "war of images" by scouring the Web for anything related to photography and the Iraq war. (The most extreme images aren't included directly on the site, although the squeamish viewer should proceed with caution.) In-depth features on Abu Ghraib, Nick Berg, and Saddam's Sons track the development of stories that dominated the press. Faked Photos collects instances where hoaxes or manipulated images were presented as truth (such as the California man who staged his own mock beheading). The site allows space for comments and links to analysis, but it doesn't preach; it simply endeavors to provide context for the next distressing picture we see on the nightly news.