I'M BACK. Five days with no blogging and even no e-mail was very refreshing. I'll try to report on the conferences in the next couple of days. It's late here and I'm tired, but here are a couple of interesting items noted briefly by Chuck Jones on the IraqCrisis list (in a message that does not seem to have been archived in its original form), both from Monday's Iraqi Press Monitor:

Rights of Jews 'under study'
(Al-Mutamar) - Minister of Migrants and Displacement Bascal Ishu Werde said Iraq was to study the possibility of granting passports to Jews of Iraqi origin and to compensate those who lost their properties. She said they would grant passports to those residing inside Iraq first. Israeli sources said the passport issue was of "great importance" because it would enable Jews to travel freely within the Arab States and would allow them to participate in the Iraqi elections.
(Al-Mutamar is issued daily by the Iraqi National Congress.)

Authorities end restriction on travel to Israel
(Asharq Al-Awsat) - The Manager of Passports Sabbar al-Atiya said the authorities have cancelled the prohibition to travel to Israel. He said new Iraqi passports would be issued without the famous note of "Bearer is allowed to travel to the entire world except Israel". He added that they started issuing the new passports, which would be valid for one year, on July 15 to replace the travel documents, which were no more valid, issued by the now-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority.
(London-based Asharq al-Awsat, a Saudi independent paper, is issued daily.)

I hope this means that the question of whether Jewish scholars will now be allowed into Iraq to do reseach is on the agenda and will be clarified soon.

Blogger seems to be feeling fussy and I'm in no mood to deal with it, so I think I'll call it a night.

UPDATE: Conference report here.