Rev. Danny Fisher

Just in time for his 90th birthday…

The United States has removed former South African president Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress from a three-decade old immigration watch list for possible terrorists, the White House said Tuesday.

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Now Mandela and members of the ANC will be able to simply apply for visas to travel to the United States, the State Department said.

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Mandela won the Nobel peace price in 1993, and was president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.

Unbelievable. We’re finally taking care of this now?

Relevant news for chaplain-types at the Washington Post today:

Twenty-five years after Medicare began paying for hospice care, the federal health program has issued a new rule calling hospice providers to closer account on the quality of care they offer. The rule, which will take effect in December, guarantees hospice patients a say in their treatment plans and requires hospice providers to show they are improving in areas where they have been found deficient.

The move comes at a time when hospice care is growing exponentially but is still vastly underused and under-appreciated, hospice providers and advocates say. About 1.3 million people received hospice services in 2006, more than twice as many as did a decade earlier.

Read the full article here. Author Alicia Ault also provides a list of resources for learning more about hospice care, which can be found here.

Here are a few recent items about Burma: