Best places to start
CIA World Factbook - Published by the U.S. Central American Intelligence Agency and updated annually. To use this site, choose the name of your country from the pull-down menu near the top of the page, where it says "Select a country or location."
BBC Country Profiles - Published by the British Broadcasting Corporation and updated regularly. Choose your country or territory from the pull-down menu under Asia (for Turkey, use Europe). Includes a country profile, overview, leaders, facts, and media. Also look for a timeline and links to current news stories about your country.
New York Times Country List - Click the name of a country or territory on this page to view a summary, links, and news about that country from The New York Times.
Environment
CIA World Factbook -Start here. Look at the Geography section under things like "Climate" "Terrain" "Natural Resources" "Natural Hazards" "Environment - Current Issues." Look under Economy to see how many people make their living from agriculture. Is mining important? Is there a coastline or rivers that people use for transportation or fishing?
Encyclopedia of the Nations - Environment - This resource will give you a great summary of your countries environmental issues (except for Israel):
Nation Master - Look on this page for your country and click on the link. Then look for the link that says Environment. There are tons of Environmental statistics. Some will make more sense than others!
Country studies, profiles, and statistics
Index Mundi - detailed country statistics, charts, and maps compiled from multiple sources.
United Nations Countries at a Glance - Choose a country from the map to find a country overview, today's news, economy, environment, health, and technology.
United Nations InfoNation Basic (also InfoNation Advanced) - Allows you to compare data from different countries.
State Department Background Notes - from the U.S. Department of State. These profiles are updated periodically and include information on each country's people, history, government, political conditions, economy, defense, foreign and U.S. relations, and travel/business information.
Library of Congress Country Profiles - These are Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files. Brief, summarized information on a country’s historical background, geography, society, economy, transportation and telecommunications, government and politics, and national security. Part of the Country Studies Program, formerly the Army Area Handbook Program. Does not cover every country in the world.
National Geographic for Kids - Has country profiles on Iran, Iraq, Israel, and Turkey
Weather & Time
WeatherReports.com - Current weather, weather forecast and weather averages across the U.S. and in 6,500+ locations worldwide. Run a search on a city in your country and click on "More Averages" to get data for a climagraph.
Weather Base - records and averages, climatology and historical weather for 16,000+ cities in the U.S. and worldwide, searchable by city, state, country or ZIP code.
World Weather Information Service – Asia
Search the World Clock - Search for your country or a city in your country to find out the current time and time zone, see current weather, sunset/sunrise, international telephone country code, etc.
Travel information
New York Times Travel section - search destinations
Pictures
Many of the travel sites and some other sites here are good sources for photographs. Check the page Photos of Places for other ideas on places to get pictures.
News - Check the BBC Country Profiles and New York Times Country List to start. You may also find some helpful news information from these sites.
Al Jazeera - Arab news network - sort of a CNN for the Middle East
Jerusalem Post - Top English-language Israeli paper
Culture: Freedom & Holidays, Food
Press Freedom Index 2009 - Reporters Without Frontiers
Earth Calendar (World Holidays by Country)
The Middle East: Food of Many Nations
Flags
Coloring Book of Flags (Middle East)
Flags, Maps, Holidays, Weather, Currency
Road/transportation Maps in the Middle East
Currency
Currency Converter - Find out how much the currency in your country is worth compared to the U.S. Dollar or other currencies.
Pictures of Asian Banknotes - Go here to see pictures of the banknotes of your country. Be careful to look at pictures that are recent, not old ones!