PHOENIX (Reuters) - The death penalty phase in the trial of Jodi Arias, the California woman convicted of first-degree murder in the brutal slaying of an ex-boyfriend, has been postponed until May 15, court officials said on Thursday.

An Arizona jury on Wednesday found Arias guilty of murdering 30-year-old Travis Alexander, whose body was found in the shower of his Phoenix valley home in June 2008. He had been shot in the face, stabbed nearly 30 times, and his throat had been slashed.

Arias, who was put on suicide watch and moved to a psychiatric unit after the verdict, had been due in court on Thursday to begin the part of her trial in which a jury will decide whether she deserves to be executed by lethal injection.

But the proceedings were postponed, and are now due to resume at 10 a.m. (1700 GMT) on Wednesday. Court officials tweeted that trial proceedings were sealed on Thursday, but gave no reason for the postponement.

A spokesman for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office said Arias and her counsel had held a closed meeting with Judge Sherry Stephens.

"After that meeting, the details of which are under seal, Judge Stephens canceled court for the day without providing a reason," spokesman Jerry Cobb said.

A call to defense attorney Kirk Nurmi was not immediately returned.

Arias, 32, had tried to convince the jury during her four-month trial that she had acted in self-defense after Alexander attacked her because she had dropped his camera while taking photographs of him in the shower.

She teared up as the jury's decision was read while a crowd of hundreds erupted into cheers outside the court. Jurors could have convicted Arias of a lesser crime such as second-degree murder or manslaughter, but instead found her guilty of the most serious charge possible.

The trial, which aired graphic evidence including a sex tape and photographs of the blood-spattered crime scene, became a sensation on cable television news with its tale of an attractive and soft-spoken young woman charged with a brutal crime.

'THE ULTIMATE FREEDOM'

In a television interview moments after the verdict, Arias indicated that she preferred a death sentence to life in prison. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office later moved Arias to a jail psychiatric facility after placing her on suicide watch on Wednesday.

"The worst outcome for me would be natural life. I would much rather die sooner than later," Arias, speaking slowly and calmly, said in an interview with Fox affiliate KSAZ.

"I said years ago I'd rather get death than life and that still is true today. I believe death is the ultimate freedom, so I'd rather just have my freedom as soon as I can get it," she said.

In a separate development on Thursday, the sheriff's office said deputies arrested a man suspected of tweeting that he was going to put a bomb in the courtroom where Arias' case was being heard.

Laquint Cherry, 18, was booked into jail on a felony charge related to acts of terrorism. Sheriff's office spokesman Joaquin Enriquez said no explosive device was found at the court and that the trial postponement was not related to the threat. In the next phase of the trial, the prosecution will present evidence trying to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that aggravating factors exist that merit the death penalty. The defense can also present rebuttal evidence. The decision will then be up to the jury.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said the state planned to present "evidence to prove the murder was committed in an especially heinous, cruel or depraved manner."

Nurmi has argued that the one-time waitress snapped in the "sudden heat of passion" in the moments between a photograph she took showing Alexander alive and taking a shower, and a subsequent picture of his apparently dead body covered in blood.

(Writing by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Toni Reinhold and Xavier Briand)

RELATED:

According to the Bureau's review of the November election, 66.2 percent of registered black voters went to the polls, compared to 64.1 percent of white voters — and only 61.8 percent of voters overall. The election marks the first time that turnout in the African-American community has been higher than in other ethnic groups.

RELATED:

Black turnout was highest in Wisconsin, Mississippi, and North Carolina. The lowest percentages — of eligible black voters, not of voters overall — were in Arizona, Washington, and Arkansas. (Many states have African-American populations too small for the Census Bureau to track; those states are in white in the interactive map below. Otherwise, the darker the color of the state in the map, the higher the turnout.)

RELATED:

Looking at a map of the results in 2012, it's hard to see a strong correlation between that turnout and electoral results. Here's how each state voted, using the traditional red/Republican, blue/Democrat format.

RELATED:

The effect comes into sharper relief when you look at the margin of black turnout — in other words, how much black voters turned out compared to voters on the whole. That gives us this map, wherein darker shaded states indicate higher turnout compared to the voting population, and lighter shades indicate lower margins.

RELATED:

Swing states — Ohio, North Carolina, Indiana, Wisconsin — had black turnout that was higher than the rest of the population, perhaps in part due to turnout efforts in those states.

With the Supreme Court currently reviewing the 1965 Voting Rights Act, mandating, among other things, that certain states subject new voting plans to the Department of Justice before implementation, it's worth seeing how turnout did in those states. Below are the states that have some form of mandated review, or preclearance.

As may be clear from the maps above, those states didn't see lower-than-average black turnout. In fact, averaging both turnout and deviance from the norm in those Voting Rights Act (VRA) states, we see that they outperformed non-VRA ones.

This data carries a heavy caveat, of course. The 2012 election featured the nation's first African-American president facing off against a not-terribly-popular white Republican. And Voting Rights Act states are commonly ones in which there's a higher percentage of African-Americans; racism against that community is why Congress stepped in to create the VRA in the first place.

The true test will likely come in 2016, when Obama is not on the ticket. It's very likely that black turnout is no longer the highest during that election. And there's a small chance that .

Then, last month, the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio stepped out on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica the first Jesuit to be elected pope.

The number of queries jumped to four or five each day.

"Some guys who made contact in the past weeks are serious candidates," said Frederico, vocations director for the region from Maine to Georgia. "This election of the Holy Father has given them reason to examine this more fully."

Jesuits have only started absorbing the novelty of one of their own leading the church. Most were so shocked, they Googled to confirm the connection before they dared to celebrate. Robert Wassmann, an instructor at Washington Jesuit Academy, a middle school, told the Archdiocese of Washington newspaper he ran down the hall shouting: "He's a Jesuit! He's a Jesuit!"

But members of the order have also started thinking ahead, to the potential impact of this pontificate on their many ministries, colleges and overall future. Pope Francis could inspire new recruits and wider regard for the society. But he could also feel compelled to intervene in the inner workings of the order, which has had sometimes tense relations with the Vatican over the centuries.

"In the context of young men and women considering a religious vocation and calling, it has to have an impact," said the Rev. Thomas Gaunt, a Jesuit and analyst at Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. "And that impact will be at least a blip on the screen and could be more."

Bergoglio was more than a rank-and-file member of the Society of Jesus. He held the order's most trusted positions in Argentina.

Soon after he was ordained, he was appointed novice master, in charge of training the newest recruits. He went on to become provincial, or national leader, before joining the church hierarchy as a bishop in Buenos Aires. Francis has chosen a papal coat of arms featuring the Jesuit seal: a sunburst containing a red cross and the "IHS" abbreviation for Jesus Christ.

In pure marketing terms, it's the ultimate branding opportunity.

Many Jesuit-run colleges, such as Georgetown, are already prominent and a top draw for applicants, although most of the order's 3,700-plus schools worldwide are smaller and many are struggling.

The Rev. Tom Smolich, president of the Jesuit Conference USA, said some are half-jokingly wondering about a papal version of the "Flutie effect," a reference to Doug Flutie, quarterback for Jesuit-run Boston College whose last-second "Hail Mary" pass won a 1984 game against Miami. In the aftermath, BC's applications increased.

Mostly, though, the society is hoping for what the Rev. Matt Malone, editor of the Jesuit magazine America, called "a moment of reconciliation." Previous popes have disciplined Jesuit theologians over liberal teachings. In 2008, Benedict XVI sent a letter asking the order's worldwide members to pledge "total adhesion" to Catholic doctrine, including on divorce and homosexuality.

"That the cardinals would even consider choosing a Jesuit now, I thought, marked a new beginning in that relationship," Malone wrote.

Recognized by the church in 1540, the order was founded by Basque soldier Inigo de Loyola. Jesuits swear an oath of obedience to the papacy and have been dubbed "God's Soldiers" for their readiness to evangelize anywhere the pontiff sent them. Jesuits brought Christianity to 16th-century Japan. A 19th-century Belgian Jesuit was a peace negotiator between the U.S. government and Sioux Indians.

But depending on the era, the society could be viewed with as much suspicion as respect.

Their growing influence sometimes generated resentment. Anti-clerical European monarchs pressured Pope Clement XIV to abolish the society in 1773 a suppression that wasn't lifted until 1814. Still, Jesuits remained a target for anti-Catholic conspiracy theorists who believed the priests were scheming to overthrow foreign governments.

The order has become known more recently for academic rigor seen in the universities they built in the U.S. and around the world. Jesuit scientists have made so many advances in astronomy, physics and math that 35 moon craters have been named in their honor. But partly because of these intellectual achievements, claims of elitism often surround the society.

The Rev. Joseph McShane, president of the Jesuit Fordham University, opened a recent event with a quip playing on the order's reputation and Francis' no-frills papacy. The pope has kept the simple, iron-plated pectoral cross he used as bishop and living in the Vatican guesthouse rather than the grand papal apartment.

"A humble Jesuit? An oxymoron. A Jesuit pope? An impossibility. A humble Jesuit pope? A miracle," McShane said.

In the 1970s, when the church was debating how it should relate to the modern world, the order's General Congregation, or legislative body, decreed that "the service of faith" and "the promotion of justice" would be the focus of every Jesuit ministry. This coincided with a period of high-profile detractors would say notorious activist Jesuits, including the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, a founder of the anti-nuclear Plowshares Movement.

In Latin America, the Jesuit emphasis on helping the poorest peoples often drew the society into political upheaval, including the cause of liberation theology, a Latin American-inspired view that Jesus' teachings imbue followers with a duty to fight for social and economic justice. U.S. Jesuit James Carney was killed in 1983 serving as chaplain to a rebel column from Honduras.

Pope John Paul II, hoping to re-direct the religious order, took the extraordinary step in 1981 of replacing the Jesuit's chosen leader with his own representative. The society encompasses a range of outlooks, including tradition-minded men. Still, conservative Catholics often view Jesuits as a band of disloyal liberals. The day after Francis was elected, George Weigel, a John Paul biographer, wrote in the conservative National Review magazine that the pope "just might take in hand the reform of the Jesuits" that Weigel argued was never finished. (Smolich rejects any suggestion that the order isn't faithful to the church or its teachings.)

It's too early to say how these past conflicts could influence Francis and his relationships with the society. He had disavowed liberation theology as a misguided strain of Catholic tenets, while still maintaining a focus on the economic failings of Western-style capitalism and the need to close the divide between rich and poor.

Jesuits also worry that the religious order could suffer in the spotlight. Maybe the new pope will keep his distance from the society, for fear of giving an appearance of favoritism. Or, he could use his new authority to become from their perspective too involved in the society, like John Paul. And they wonder if Jesuits would somehow be blamed for any of Francis' decisions that prove unpopular.

Jesuits were already at a crossroads when Francis was elected. Although the order remains the largest in the church for men, membership has dropped by more than half since peaking in 1965, Gaunt said.

The decline came mostly in the West. But In South Asia and India, Christianity, and Catholicism specifically, have been growing, and so too have the numbers of Jesuits in those areas. Gaunt calls it "the changing Jesuit geography." India now has the largest national group of Jesuits with just over 3,900 members, followed by the U.S., with just under 2,500. About one-third of the world's 17,287 Jesuits came from developing countries, a figure that is expected to rise in coming years.

For U.S. Jesuits, this has meant a long season of wondering where they go from here. The order is restructuring in the U.S., merging their 10 smaller provinces into four larger ones.

Lay people now staff most Jesuit schools and ministries, so the order has started Jesuit spirituality retreats and instruction for lay faculty and staff to help maintain the religious identity of what they've built. Among the newer Jesuit initiatives are high schools or middle schools in poor communities, and programs that bring online college-level classes to refugees in Africa and elsewhere.

Whatever is ahead, Jesuits are aware this is a signal moment.

Francis has visited with and exchanged letters and visited with the Jesuit superior general, the Rev. Adolfo Nicolas, with both pledging to work together as brothers. A photo of the two embracing is circulating around the Jesuit world.

___

Follow Rachel Zoll at www.twitter.com/rzollAP

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A modest tax increase that Republicans embraced months ago will be part of President Barack Obama's budget proposal set for release next week, White House officials said on Friday.

The proposal would change how Social Security pension benefits are periodically adjusted for inflation and, in doing so, also change the adjustment of federal individual income tax brackets, resulting in slightly higher taxes for many Americans.

The idea - involving a measure of inflation known as the chained Consumer Price Index, or chained CPI - was backed in December by House of Representative Republican leaders. White House officials detailed it ahead of Wednesday's budget release.

Chained CPI is staunchly opposed by many Democrats as well as labor and retiree groups because it would reduce some Social Security benefits. By offering it in his budget as a concession, Obama could be trying to bring Republicans back to the deficit-reduction negotiating table in coming weeks.

Republicans backed chained CPI as a way to raise $200 billion over a decade in an offer when the two sides were dueling over how to avert the $600 billion "fiscal cliff" mix of tax hikes and spending cuts that loomed at the start of the year.

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and other House Republican leaders signed a December 3 offer that proposed chained CPI. Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said on Friday that the speaker is still open to such a move.

"There is a substantial bipartisan consensus that there's a more accurate measure of inflation," Buck said.

"And the Speaker has said if a measure is more accurate, it should be used wherever it is applied throughout government."

So where does the tax boost come in?

Switching to chained CPI from the CPI measure now used by Social Security would also change tax bracket adjustments so that they would occur less often. As a result, Americans with rising incomes would see more of their income move more quickly into higher tax brackets. This is known as "bracket creep."

"Chained CPI increases revenues because we adjust the tax code by that measurement of inflation," said Steve Bell, senior director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank, and a former adviser to congressional Republicans.

BIPARTISAN IDEA

Many bipartisan deficit-cutting groups have proposed moving to chained CPI, including the so-called Simpson-Bowles commission and the Bipartisan Policy Center.

"I can't explain," how Republicans can back a tax hike, said Stephen Entin, an economist at the conservative Tax Foundation think tank and former Treasury official under President Ronald Reagan. "It is usually put forward as a technical adjustment, but it is also a tax increase."

Supporters of the switch say the standard CPI index overstates price rises, but opponents say moving to chained CPI would unfairly deprive older Americans of benefits they have been promised.

In addition, because more affluent taxpayers can't be bumped beyond the top bracket, the change would tend to bite hardest among middle-class taxpayers, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center.

About three-quarters of households would see a tax hike, TPC said in an analysis, with those making between $30,000 and $40,000 seeing the biggest cut in after-tax income - on average about 0.3 percent.

Obama's fiscal 2014 budget aims to cut the deficit by $1.8 trillion over 10 years, administration officials said.

Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, has ruled out any further revenue increases after letting taxes rise for the wealthiest Americans earlier this year.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Eric Walsh)

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 14 points at 14,960 points shortly after the opening bell Monday, a decline of 0.1 percent.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index was up two points at 1,616, or 0.1 percent. The Nasdaq composite was up nine at 3,387 points, or 0.2 percent.

Few companies were reporting earnings Monday. Tyson Foods, the nation's largest meat company, fell 4 percent, or 94 cents, to $24. Tyson's income dropped 42 percent as chicken feed costs rose and profits fell in its beef business.

The market closed at a record high Friday after the government reported a sharp pickup in hiring last month.

He also decides how much they get paid and what the contract details will be. So Robert Guerrero was somewhat prepared when Mayweather picked him to be the opponent for his first fight in a year Saturday night at the MGM Grand hotel.

What he wasn't prepared for was what Mayweather's camp insisted on putting in the contract.

"He asked for a rematch clause. That was the very first thing," Guerrero said. "It just shows me where his head is at."

Where Mayweather's head is at has, of course, been the topic of many conversations over the years. When he fought last May against Miguel Cotto the worry among his fans was that he would be distracted by an upcoming jail sentence, though that turned out to be unfounded.

Talk to Mayweather now, and his head seems to be fine. So, too, are his reflexes at the age of 36, at least judged by a sparring session last week where he practiced landing right hand leads against a fighter mimicking Guerrero's southpaw style.

He has to lose sometime because nearly every fighter not named Rocky Marciano lost at some point in their career. But Mayweather has a new six-fight television deal that should cement his status as the world's highest paid athlete, and he doesn't seem terribly concerned about a loss or a possible rematch of their welterweight title fight.

"I've done this my whole life," Mayweather said. "This is what I love to do."

Though Mayweather sees Guerrero as just the latest opponent for yet another huge payday, Guerrero sees things quite differently. He believes he is the fighter who will be the first to beat Mayweather, and he's eager to earn both the recognition and the money that would come with such a win.

At the final pre-fight press conference Wednesday he said Mayweather made a mistake by picking him as an opponent.

"They talk about this as Floyd Mayweather's home," Guerrero said. "Well, this is a home invasion."

Oddsmakers don't share Guerrero's confidence, making the former champion in three weight classes a decided underdog in the biggest fight of his career. But the once-beaten (31-1-1) fighter from Gilroy, Calif., said he's been underestimated his entire career.

"The only thing that means something is what you do in that ring," he said. "I just can't wait to get in that ring."

Both fighters were on their best behavior at their final press conference, though their fathers almost mixed it up. Floyd Mayweather Sr.and Ruben Guerrero who both train their sons exchanged words after Reuben Guerrero went into a rant about Mayweather being a woman beater for the altercation with the mother of his children that got him jailed for 70 days last year.

There is an undercurrent of hostility between the fighters, too, with Mayweather suggesting Guerrero who talks openly about his faith is a hypocrite for getting busted in a New York gun charge while promoting the fight. Mayweather also said that Guerrero used his wife's fight with leukemia she is now healthy to gain fans and sympathy for himself.

"It's laughable," Guerrero said. "I don't need sympathy, I come to fight. Sympathy doesn't win fights."

Though Mayweather is unbeaten in 43 fights and has been a pay-per-view star since his 2007 win over Oscar De La Hoya, he has been fighting professionally for 17 years and is getting to an age that historically fighters have had trouble with. The fact he's fought only four times since beating Ricky Hatton more than five years ago and has not fought in a year leads some in boxing to believe he may have as much trouble with ring rust as he has with Guerrero.

There are signs, too, that perhaps his appeal is fading, though Mayweather would argue that his fan base is bigger than ever. Seats are still readily available for the fight at the MGM arena, and the All Access shows promoting the fight on Showtime have generated little buzz.

A documentary on Mayweather's life that aired last Saturday in primetime on Showtime's sister network, CBS, also drew miserable ratings.

Still, Mayweather who acts as his own promoter insists the promotion is going well and people will tune in at home, even at a suggested retail price of $69.95. Mayweather's win over Cotto last May drew 1.5 million pay-per-view buys, his biggest sales since he and De La Hoya combined for a record 2.5 million.

"I think everything is playing out like it should play out," Mayweather said. "I'm ready to go out there and perform.

____

Tim Dahlberg can be reached at http://twitter.com/timdahlberg

Shares of the online professional networking service fell $21.67, or 10.8 percent, to $180 after hours. The stock had closed above $200 for the first time after hitting a record high of $202.91 earlier in the day in anticipation of the results.

LinkedIn Corp. earned $22.6 million, or 20 cents per share, in the first quarter. That's up from $5 million, or 4 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier. Adjusted earnings were 45 cents per share in the latest quarter, well above analysts' expectations of 30 cents.

Revenue grew 72 percent to $324.7 million from $188.5 million. Analysts, on average, had expected revenue of $317.6 million, according to a poll by FactSet.

LinkedIn went public in May 2011 at a share price of $45. Its stock has soared since as the company has consistently beat expectations with its results. As of Thursday's closing, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company's stock was up 75.6 percent year to date, compared with a 12 percent increase for the Standard & Poor's 500 index.

LinkedIn has thrived by establishing itself as the go-to place for employers to find talented workers and for people to get job tips and other advice to manage their careers. It doesn't cost anything for people to set up a professional profile on the site the company makes most of its money by charging employers and headhunters for analytical tools and additional access to LinkedIn profiles and the site, such as the ability to send messages to users.

LinkedIn's forecast for the current quarter and the full year implied that its winning streak could end. The company said it expects revenue between $342 million and $347 million for the April-June period. Analysts had forecast $360 million.

For the full year, LinkedIn expects revenue of $1.43 billion to $1.46 billion, an increase of its previous guidance range by $20 million but still below analysts' forecast of $1.5 billion.

Another figure that likely gave investors pause is LinkedIn's EBITDA forecast, said Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter. The company expects this figure earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to be $330 million to $345 million for the full year, below analysts' expectations of $363 million.

LinkedIn said it has 225 million members, up from 202 million at the end of last year.

(Reuters) - Lower oil prices bit into Chevron Corp'squarterly profit as did refinery downtime and higher operating costs in its home market, but the oil company's shares rose as the earnings topped expectations.

Analysts cited foreign currency gains that gave the company a particular boost in the quarter.

Chevron also announced this week an 11 percent increase in its dividend, making use of some of the $19 billion in cash accumulated to shoulder a near-$37 billion annual capital spending program, which has been inflated by natural gas projects in Australia.

"Chevron has significant financial flexibility to increase shareholders distribution, despite higher spending levels," Oppenhemier analyst Fadel Gheit said in a note.

First-quarter net income fell 4.5 percent to $6.18 billion, or $3.18 per share, from $6.47 billion, or $3.27 per share, a year earlier. Analysts, on average, expected $3.08 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The company produced 2.65 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, up from 2.63 million bpd a year earlier, though down from a particularly strong 2.67 million in the fourth quarter.

Achieving increased production from oil wells has been a struggle for Chevron and larger rival Exxon Mobil Corp , which reported a drop in first-quarter production on Thursday.

Chevron is targeting 25 percent growth in output by 2017, and its much-delayed liquefied natural gas plant in Angola is a key new project this year. Chief Financial Officer Pat Yarrington said it would start up this quarter, and reach full capacity by year-end - contributing about 20,000 bpd for 2013.

"Obviously, that would just be a partial year contribution for us," she told analysts on a call. "It is worth about 60,000 barrels a day net to us when fully operational."

At the Frade field off the coast of Brazil, where Chevron had faced sanctions due to an oil leak, the company has approval to restart production at four wells. Ramp-up would be slow, however, and it would contribute only about 5,000 bpd this year, Yarrington said.

In the first quarter, Chevron's U.S. E&P earnings fell by about a quarter to $1.13 billion, with operating expenses higher and the average sale price for U.S. liquids down to $94 per barrel from $102 a year before.

Analysts at Simmons & Co said most of the outperformance for Chevron in the quarter was from its international operations.

U.S. downstream earnings, from refining and marketing, declined more than 70 percent, with refinery crude input falling by 350,000 barrels per day to 576,000 bpd due to planned work at a few of its refineries.

Chevron is trying to get its plant in Richmond, California, back to normal after a fire last August damaged its crude unit. The company said it reintroduced feedstock to the crude unit this week, and would bring it to full capacity in the coming days.

Chevron shares were up 1 percent at $119.51 in midday trading on Friday. The stock has gained about 10 percent so far this year, compared with a 2 percent rise for Exxon.

(Reporting by Braden Reddall in San Francisco, with additional reporting by Anna Driver in Houston; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick nand Steve Orlofsky)

Bon Jovi called the law a lifesaver and encouraged other states to do the same.

"I hope that Governor Christie's actions here will cause other states to stand up and to pay attention and also to follow in his footsteps," Bon Jovi said before accompanying the Republican governor on a visit with patients at a drug rehabilitation center.

The New Jersey law seeks to assure timely medical treatment for overdose victims by encouraging people to seek help without fear of being arrested for drug possession.

Bon Jovi's daughter overdosed in a dorm at Hamilton College in upstate New York last year. Prosecutors dropped drug charges against Stephanie Bongiovi and another student under that state's good Samaritan overdose-reporting law.

Bon Jovi, who has a home in New Jersey, did not bring up his daughter's case at the bill-signing, and neither did the governor. In a December interview, Bon Jovi said he was shocked to learn of her overdose.

"She was doing great. Then a sudden and steep decline. Hopefully, we caught it when we did and that's the end of it. But who knew?" said Bon Jovi, a father of four.

The governor and singer told patients during their visit they should be proud of their recovery.

Christie has called the war on drugs a failure and has pushed for mandatory treatment for all non-violent drug offenders.

As elected officials, the governor said Thursday, "it's our obligation to ensure that we are doing everything we can to prevent tragic deaths from drug overdoses."

Families who have loved ones who died of drug overdoses also attended the event, many holding up pictures of those they lost. If people aren't afraid to call 911 in overdose cases, they said, more lives will be saved.

Taking a two-pronged approach to preventing drug overdose deaths, the New Jersey law also provides civil, criminal and professional immunity to health care professionals who prescribe or administer any FDA-approved treatment for drug overdoses. Lay people who administer antidotes in an emergency will also be protected.

Legislative sponsors of the bill say New Jersey is now the 12th state to provide good Samaritan protections for those who report overdoses, and the 11th to give legal immunity to those who administer antidotes.

The law extends protection even to those on parole and probation from being arrested, charged or prosecuted for small amounts of drugs when reporting an overdose.

The measure includes the core of two bills that the governor, a former federal prosecutor, had previously vetoed. He insisted that the law spell out that no immunity will exist for drug traffickers. Protections were also removed for people with restraining orders against them and those facing forfeiture of assets.

"This is a real triumph of public health policy and we thank Gov. Christie and the Legislature for working so hard to come to an agreement," said Roseanne Scotti, state director of the New Jersey Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group for drug policy reforms.

RELATED:

Currently, social networks either don't have the technology to conduct extensive surveillance on their users, or they have been able to avoid cooperating with officials. So, no, Facebook is not spying on the wall posts of people on watch lists. But that's mostly because the government's ability to link up with major communications companies (under a 1994 law known as the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) has not kept up with its escalation in secret wiretapping legalese (famously build ). Now the FBI would like to change that, because of what they call periods of "," during which the intelligence community doesn't have the means to gather "valuable evidence" from Internet communications.

RELATED:

Some tech leaders are already playing along: Skype, for example, , making it possible for law enforcement officials to access the credit card information and addresses of video-chatters under suspicion. But the FBI's latest push, stemming from an , is to get more mainstream — and more social — Internet companies onboard. Google has , but mostly for YouTube and defamation complaints. Its chatting and email software, on the other hand, has end-to-end encryption, making it more technically difficult for the feds to monitor on the fly without help from the inside. The new FBI legislative proposal, which the Obama administration has yet to sing off on, hopes fines of tens of thousands of dollars and up will pressure Google and other key communications companies to change their infrastructure when intelligence gathering needs to get personal — and fast.

RELATED:

To be sure, there are possibilities: As revealing as  profiles of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev may have been — and however useless his newly discovered  may turn out — imagine what the FBI could have learned from Gchat or Facebook message communications. (Already a phone call between the Tsarnaev mother, Zubeidat, and one of the sons, , is beingas a possible intelligence failure in the Boston bombings.) Or imagine what U.S. intelligence officials could have done with Tamerlan Tsarnaev's YouTube favorites. In fact, if you look atwith that latter account, you have to look at the downsides, too.

RELATED:

While authorities claim they aren't expanding powers to encroach on civil liberties — the FBI is merely making sure the "existing authorities can be applied across the full range of communications technologies," a Justice Department official told the Post — that hasn't stopped privacy advocates from harping on the proposal. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has beforethat requiring these "technical back doors," as they're called, is "ineffective, cause security vulnerabilities, and hurt American business." Whether they can help catch American terrorists — well, that's the question any new law would hinge upon.