Create block of content?

How can I create a simple block of content, similar to the "Unrest in the Middl开发者_C百科e East" section on The Economist?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Views will allow you to do this. http://drupal.org/project/views

Simply create a block view that queries the specific node term you desire. From there you can specify to only display titles, show an image from the latest post, limit the number of titles displayed, etc...

Views will take some learning though. I'd highly recommend lullabot's tutorials.