The slate of projects Bloomberg outlined Tuesday marks one of the biggest, most ambitious plans ever for defending a major U.S. city from the rising seas and severe weather that climate change is expected to bring. Recommendations range from installing removable flood walls in lower Manhattan to restoring marshes in Jamaica Bay in Queens, and from flood-proofing homes to setting repair timeframe standards for phone and Internet service providers.

With less than seven months left in office, Bloomberg said his administration plans to start on projects such as fortifying beaches and to begin designing others and lining up money, but he acknowledged much of the work would extend beyond his term.

"It's up to you," he told a crowd of officials and others at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, "to hold the next administration accountable for getting it done."

With that said, the ideas face an uncertain political landscape amid the bevy of candidates seeking Bloomberg's job, including at least one who suggests the proposals may be needlessly expensive. It also remains to be seen what kind of support financial and otherwise they might get from the federal government and other entities, not to mention from New Yorkers themselves.

Several mayoral candidates praised the mayor for thinking big, and Democrat Sal Albanese, Republican George McDonald and GOP front-runner Joe Lhota said they were inclined to pursue its major projects. Democratic front-runner Christine Quinn, who heads a City Council that is making its own proposals, called Bloomberg's report "a roadmap for future mayors."

Others raised some caveats.

Democrat Bill de Blasio, the city's elected public advocate, praised the all-encompassing approach but said officials need to ensure the plan does enough to help the poor and doesn't rely too much on uncertain federal support.

And Republican John Catsimatidis, who has questioned whether the effects of climate change are overstated, wondered in a statement whether the city could spend considerably less and still get adequate protection.

"The $19.5 billion price tag is a huge amount of money," said the billionaire candidate, whose businesses include oil, real estate and grocery stores.

Bloomberg said the city and federal money already allocated for Sandy relief would provide $10 billion for the project, and the city believes it could get at least $5 billion more from the federal government. Other options include a small surcharge on homeowners' insurance, around $1 a month for a homeowner who pays a $1,000 premium a year, according to a 400-page city report on the plan.

Environmentalists, real estate interests and local officials hailed the plan as far-reaching and comprehensive. "The mayor has rightly decided to face the future," Natural Resources Defense Council Executive Director Peter Lehner wrote in a blog post. The proposals would dwarf the estimated $12 billion that the Army Corps of Engineers has spent so far to improve the New Orleans area's floodwalls, gates and levees since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In lower Manhattan, a removable system of posts and slats could be deployed to form temporary flood walls rising from ground level along the waterfront. The height would depend on the ground elevation and potential surge. The approach is used along some Midwestern rivers and in the Netherlands, city officials said.

Projects also include a 15-to-20-foot levee to guard part of Staten Island, building dunes in the Rockaways, building barrier systems of levees and gates to bar one creek from carrying floodwaters inland, and possibly creating a levee and a sizeable new "Seaport City" development in lower Manhattan.

Bloomberg acknowledged some projects could block water views and otherwise prove controversial. But "if we're going to save lives and protect the lives of communities, we're going to have to live with some of the new realities," he said.

After Sandy, at least some New Yorkers are ready for it, Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro said.

"The constituents that I talk to would take a 15-foot wall tomorrow," he said.

The plan doesn't call for moving people out of coastal communities. And it dismisses building massive storm surge barriers with gates and levees, an idea some researchers and residents have promoted but Bloomberg has long called impractical.

A lower Manhattan community board had called for a study of storm surge barriers, but former chairwoman Julie Menin said Wednesday she was delighted with the removable walls and other solutions Bloomberg had proposed.

"It's going to protect the communities," said Menin, who is now running for Manhattan borough president.

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Associated Press writer Deepti Hajela contributed to this report.

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Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Electronic publishing is allowing authors to be more creative and the best ones are successfully blending video and online content with traditional text, says cult writer Irvine Welsh.

The author of "Trainspotting" and "The Acid House", who has also written short stories and plays, said e-publishing meant writers had to work harder to grab readers' attention in an age when wireless devices are rapidly replacing paperback books.

Welsh, 54, said he struggled to combine marketing of his books with writing, but that a combination of the two was needed if writers were going to break into the e-book world while also writing for TV, movies and traditional readers.

"You can't just be into one thing, you have to be into TV adaptations, movie adaptations," Welsh, whose "Trainspotting" was turned into a hit movie by director Danny Boyle, told Reuters at a conference in Brussels on digital media trends.

"It will come out in book format, it will be shot and come out in film format, and at the same time it will come out in series format. And that will happen instantaneously."

The Scotsman, who burst onto the literary scene when "Trainspotting" was published in his mid-30s, heaped praise on fellow Scot Ewan Morrison, who has wooed the book world by including web links to short films as part of his novel "Tales from the Mall", which examines the seedy allure of capitalism.

Morrison had established an innovative niche between a book and a game, said Welsh, predicting that such a multimedia style would become common practice for tomorrow's e-book producers.

E-book sales have grown rapidly in recent years with the popularity of tablets and e-readers. Industry group BookStats reported that sales were up 44 percent in the United States during 2012, rising to a little over $3 billion.

Sales of regular books remain far larger and have also climbed, although far more slowly, gaining around 7 percent to $15 billion, thanks in large part to blockbusters such as "Fifty Shades of Grey", a book first published online.

CREATIVITY FIRST

In his latest novel, which is not yet named, Welsh explores the relationship between two women living in Miami, a personal trainer and an artist, who are obsessed with each other. The book is due out in April next year and a screenplay, currently under discussion, may follow in November.

"It's a very self-centered narcissistic process. That is why it runs the risk of being crap," said Welsh, acknowledging that a focus on female characters was a departure from his favored gritty, drug-addicted male protagonists.

"You can't really put strong women characters into that world because any strong woman would go nowhere near these guys," he said by way of explanation.

While Welsh is an advocate of digital publishing, his own works are more difficult to translate into e-book form as he frequently plays with font sizes and other techniques which digital readers cannot easily capture.

Whether traditional publishing or e-publishing is the way forward, one thing authors should rigidly adhere to is creative license, Welsh said. Some books start online, others are published traditionally. The only winning ingredient is originality and creativity.

"The success of self-publishing shows that publishers and agents and editors don't always know (what works)," he said.

(Reporting By Claire Davenport; editing by Luke Baker)

The Italian-born challenger briefly ruffled the champion by landing a couple of punches in the second round but apart from that appeared out of his depth.

Klitschko twice sent his opponent to the canvas in the fourth round before the referee called a halt to proceedings eight seconds from the end of the sixth as Pianeta took a pounding.

The 37-year-old Ukrainian extended his unbeaten run to 18 fights, his last defeat coming when he challenged Lamon Brewster for the WBO title in 2004.

Overall, he has won 60 of his 63 fights, including 52 within the distance.

Klitschko holds the IBF, IBO, WBO and WBA crown and his older brother Vitali holds the WBC crown. The two have pledged not to fight each other.

Pianeta, who at 1.93 meters is five centimeters shorter than his opponent, was previously undefeated with 28 wins and one draw.

"He started well and he tried to take the fight to me, he fought with great courage," said Klitschko.

(Reporting by Brian Homewood, editing by Alan Baldwin)

Chicago hosts the defending champion Los Angeles Kings in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals on Saturday and Pittsburgh plays Boston at home in the Eastern Conference finals opener in prime time that night.

Before the puck drops for the double-header, the only one scheduled unless both series go to Game 7 on June 12, here are six storylines to watch.

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THE KINGS' QUEST: Los Angeles is attempting to become the first team to repeat as Stanley Cup champions since the Detroit Red Wings in 1997 and 1998, and the first franchise to win two titles in the NHL's eight-season, salary-cap era. The fifth-seeded Kings can take a big step toward accomplishing the feat if they can finish off top-seeded Chicago, which was pushed to the brink of elimination by seventh-seeded Detroit.

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QUICK IS THE NAME: Kings goaltender Jonathan Quick has been tough to beat again but can he keep up the pace for his offensively challenged team? The reigning Conn Smythe winner is leading the league with three shutouts and a .948 save percentage in the playoffs and he's giving up just 1.5 goals a game. Los Angeles, meanwhile, isn't helping Quick out much offensively, averaging just two goals a game to trail the other three teams still playing in scoring by a large margin.

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POWERLESS PLAY: Chicago's penalty-killers have been almost perfect, allowing Detroit and Minnesota to combine for only one goal on 41 power plays. Goalie Corey Crawford has had a lot to do with that, helping the Blackhawks make a run after their championship season in 2010 was followed up by consecutive first-round exits. The only time Chicago has given up a power-play goal was in Game 4 against the Red Wings, who went on to win and take a 3-1 lead in the series.

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POTENT PENGUINS: Superstar Sidney Crosby has been simply spectacular with seven goals. No one could've guessed his teammate, Pascal Dupuis, also would have seven goals to share the league lead to match his scoring total from the previous five postseasons combined. The duo isn't doing it alone. Kris Letang has an NHL-high 13 assists and 16 points to match Evgeni Malkin for the most on the team. Jarome Iginla has 12 points in 11 postseason games, slightly surpassing his production in 13 regular-season games after being traded to Pittsburgh.

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CAN HE KEEP IT UP? The fourth-seeded Bruins' best chance to eliminate the East's top team is to figure out a way to get to goalie Tomas Vokoun, who is 6-1 since replacing Marc-Andre Fleury in the first round against the New York Islanders. The 36-year-old Vokoun, playing on his third team in three seasons, has played in his way into being in a postseason net for the first time since 2007 with Nashville. Boston's David Krejci leads the league with 17 points to surpass his strong pace during Boston's 2011 championship season.

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ISN'T THAT SPECIAL: Pittsburgh has been the NHL's best team on the power play, scoring on 13 of 46 chances, to move halfway toward its goal of winning it all again for the first time since 2009. Boston, meanwhile, has allowed seven goals in 37 short-handed situations, the most of the four teams still playing. The Bruins will likely lean a lot on defenseman Zdeno Chara to slow down the Penguins. The 2009 Norris Trophy winner is averaging 29-plus minutes a game, more than any active player in this postseason.

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Follow Larry Lage on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/larrylage

Experts aren't sure what's behind the increase. Could it be that children are growing up in households so clean that it leaves them more sensitive to things that can trigger allergies?Or are mom and dad paying closer attention to rashes and reactions, and more likely to call it an allergy?

"We don't really have the answer," said Dr. Lara Akinbami of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the senior author of the new report released Thursday.

The CDC survey suggests that about 1 in 20 U.S. children have food allergies. That's a 50 percent increase from the late 1990s. For eczema and other skin allergies, it's 1 in 8 children, an increase of 69 percent. It found no increase, however, in hay fever or other respiratory allergies.

Already familiar with the trend in food allergies are school nurses, who have grown busier with allergy-related duties, like banishing peanuts at school parties or stocking emergency allergy medicine.

Sally Schoessler started as school nurse in 1992 in New York state, and didn't encounter a child with a food allergy for a few years. But by the time she left school nursing in 2005, "there were children in the majority of classrooms" with the disorder, said Schoessler, who now works at the National Association of School Nurses in Silver Spring, Md.

Food allergies tend to be most feared; severe cases may cause anaphylactic shock or even death from eating, say, a peanut. But many food allergies are milder and something children grow out of. Skin conditions like eczema, too, can be mild and temporary.

It's been difficult getting exact numbers for children's allergies, and the new report isn't precise. It uses annual surveys of thousands of adults interviewed in person. The report compares answers from 1997-1999 to those from 2009-2011.

Parents were asked if in the previous year their child had any kind of food or digestive allergy, any eczema or skin allergy, or any kind of respiratory allergy like hay fever.

The researchers did not ask if a doctor had made the diagnosis or check medical records. So some parents may have been stating a personal opinion, and not necessarily a correct one.

"We see a lot of kids in clinic that really aren't" allergic to the foods their parents worry about, said Dr. Morton Galina, a pediatric allergist at Atlanta's Emory School of Medicine.

For example, hives are sometimes blamed on a certain food when a virus was the actual cause, he added.

But experts also said they believe there is a real and unexplained increase going on, too.

One of the more popular theories is "the hygiene hypothesis," which says that exposure to germs and parasites in early childhood somehow prevents the body from developing certain allergies.

The hypothesis argues that there is a downside to America's culture of disinfection and overuse of antibiotics. The argument has been bolstered by a range of laboratory and observational studies, including some that have found lower rates of eczema and food allergies in foreign-born children in the U.S.

There could be other explanations, though. Big cities have higher childhood allergy rates, so maybe some air pollutant is the unrecognized trigger, said Dr. Peter Lio, a Northwestern University pediatric dermatologist who specializes in eczema.

Some suspect the change has something to do with the evolution in how foods are grown and produced, like the crossbreeding of wheat or the use of antibiotics in cattle. But Lio said tests haven't supported that.

Emory's Galina said the new CDC statistics may reflect a recent "sea change" in the recommendations for when young children should first eat certain foods.

In families with a history of eczema or food allergies, parents were advised to wait for years before introducing their young children to foods tied to severe allergies, like peanuts, milks and eggs. But professional associations changed that advice a few years ago after research suggested that allergies were more likely in those kids when the foods were delayed.

The old advice "was exactly the wrong thing to do," and could have contributed to some of the increased cases, Galina said.

The CDC report also found:

Food and respiratory allergies are more common in higher-income families than the poor,

Eczema and skin allergies are most common among the poor.

More black children have the skin problems, 17 percent, compared to 12 percent of white children and about 10 percent of Hispanic children.

The mother of a 13-year-old girl, who is black, runs an eczema support group in suburban Washington, D.C. Renee Dantzler says roughly half the families in her group are African-American. Eczema is an itchy skin condition, which often occurs on the arms or behind the knees. The cause isn't always clear.

Her daughter, Jasmine, started getting rashes at 6 months and got much worse when she was 4.

"Her whole body would flare. If she ate something, you would kind of hold your breath," Dantzler said. "And she's allergic to every grass and tree God made."

Her daughter took to wearing long sleeves and pants, even in hot weather, so people wouldn't see her skin scarred and whitened in spots from scratching. She began to improve about four years ago with steroid creams and other treatments and has gradually become less self-conscious about her skin, Dantzler said.

She's now on a school track team, which means wearing shorts.

"She's the only one on the team with long socks," her mom said.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

Plenty.

Let me start with the drunks and new parents. Monday night I boarded a very delayed flight fromto . Behind me were four 20/30-somethings boisterously swigging from "coffee" cups. (Our gate was across from a Cantina and you could practically smell the tequila in their paper cups.)

As the boarding continued they grew increasingly animated. Their frenetic energy seemed to wind up not just each other but everyone around them. Fellow passengers were visibly agitated.

Just before the plane doors closed, a young couple came on with a sleeping baby. The last two open seats were amongst this motley crew.

Suddenly, everything changed.

The presence of the earnest and exhausted parents had an immediate calming effect on both the inebriated passengers and those around them. It was as if a mirror had been placed in the center of the plane to remind us all of our humanity.

Enter, Jo Piazza's delicious new book, .

To me, this book is the figurative version of the newborn's parents getting on the plane. It serves as a mirror reflecting back the reality what's in the "coffee" cups of the celebrity scene.

That got me wondering what other financial lessons the author of Celebrity, Inc. might have stumbled across while writing this fascinating book. Thankfully, Jo Piazza was willing to share with us...

Q: Of the celebrities you profile in Celebrity, Inc. whose money attitude were you most impressed with and why?

(2) What surprised you the most about the money habits you observed during your Celebrity, Inc. research?

(3) What personal finance lessons do you think the rest of us can take away from the way famous people live their lives?

In many ways our celebrity culture is like a group of chaotic drunk people. It lurches rapidly from one topic and fad to the next. In the heat of the excitement money can feel like no object. But the financial hangover of being, or trying to emulate, that lifestyle can result in a serious financial crash.

So pick up a copy of Celebrity, Inc. and tell me what you think. Does our national obsession with the lifestyles of the rich and famous ever cause you to do things with your money that you later regret?

[This post originally appeared at .] For more MoneyZen in your life, follow Manisha on Twitter aton Facebook ator sign up to receive Manisha's MoneyZen blog via email .

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three congressional hearings during the past week have allowed lawmakers to vent their anger at the U.S. tax agency for its targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny, but the sessions have yielded few answers about who was responsible.

The frustration on Capitol Hill seemed to reach a crescendo on Wednesday when Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service official who first acknowledged the targeting - and the day's star witness before a House panel - refused to testify.

Lerner, whom lawmakers have accused of providing false information to Congress because she did not tell them about the problems in the office she leads before revealing them at a lawyers' conference on May 10, told lawmakers that she had done nothing wrong.

She then invoked her constitutional right not to incriminate herself, and declined to answer questions.

"I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any congressional committee," Lerner told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

"Because I am asserting my right not to testify, I know that some people will assume that I have done something wrong. I have not," she said.

The scene marked the latest in a series of failed attempts by lawmakers to pry details from high-level IRS officials about who precisely was responsible for targeting conservative groups that have sought tax-exempt status since 2010.

The scandal over what a Treasury inspector general called "inappropriate" targeting of groups with names that included terms like "Tea Party" and "Patriot" by the IRS has become a distraction for Democratic President Barack Obama as he pursues an ambitious second-term agenda.

And as Republicans in Congress seek to determine whether the White House might have had a hand in encouraging the extra scrutiny of populist groups that seek lower taxation and less government, the scandal has fueled Republicans' portrayals of an indifferent, overreaching federal bureaucracy.

The Justice Department has opened a criminal probe into the targeting scandal.

On Wednesday, former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who unlike Lerner had appeared at a Senate hearing on Tuesday, again was asked who was behind the targeting done in the IRS office in Cincinnati, Ohio.

And again, Shulman said that he had no names to provide. Like outgoing acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller, whom Obama has fired, Shulman also rejected accusations that he had misled or lied to lawmakers about the matter.

"I answered truthfully based on the information that I had at the time," Shulman said.

Shulman's answers did not satisfy many lawmakers. "Either there was a cover-up or an extreme lack of curiosity on your part," said Republican Representative Mark Meadows from North Carolina.

House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa released documents including internal emails between Cincinnati workers and Holly Paz, an IRS director in Washington who led an internal review of the matter in 2012. They seem to confirm the Treasury inspector general's conclusion that low-level employees came up with the controversial criteria.

"This is criteria the screening group came up with," Cindy Thomas, a Cincinnati-based IRS employee wrote to Paz in a June 2, 2011 email.

'THAT'S NOT THE WAY IT WORKS'

Issa and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle became exasperated that the officials on Wednesday provided so few answers about the scandal and whether there was a cover-up.

Lerner is seen as central to the scandal because she was alerted in June 2011 that the partisan criteria were being used, and she ordered them changed. They were then changed back in January 2012 to focus on the policy positions of organizations, but is it not clear who changed them.

Issa and other Republicans also questioned whether Lerner technically waived her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by reading an opening statement declaring her innocence.

Republican Trey Gowdy of South Carolina demanded that she stay to answer questions, drawing applause from the crowd in the hearing room. "You don't get to tell your side of the story and then not be subject to cross-examination. That's not the way it works," Gowdy said.

Lerner has hired high-powered Washington attorney William Taylor to help defend her against accusations from Issa that she provided "false or misleading" information to Congress last year about the IRS' treatment of conservative groups.

Taylor, of the law firm Zuckerman Spaeder, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that there was no point in Lerner agreeing to answer lawmakers' questions at the hearing.

"Why should she go up there and confront people who have already decided she has done something wrong?" Taylor said.

After conferring with aides, Issa dismissed Lerner from the hearing but said he might call her to testify in the future.

CONGRESS IN THE DARK

At Wednesday's hearing, frustrated lawmakers repeatedly criticized former IRS chief Shulman and J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general who published a watchdog report on the practice last week, for not alerting Congress to the practice earlier.

Democratic Representative Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts warned their failure to be more forthcoming could force the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the scandal.

Issa noted that the IRS internal review uncovered the policy of scrutinizing conservative groups in May 2012 and that top officials, including Miller, were made aware of the findings but did not alert Congress for nearly a year.

He also questioned why George's investigators looking into the targeting allowed IRS officials to be present during interviews with subordinates, and he criticized the inspector general for waiting 10 months to give the committee information on the targeting.

George said it would have been "impractical for us to give you partial information that may not be accurate."

Shulman repeated testimony he gave at the Senate hearing on Tuesday that he did not know the full details of the targeting for two years after it started in 2010. Issa told Shulman, "If you didn't know, you were derelict in your duty."

Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the panel, criticized Shulman for not correcting congressional testimony he gave in March 2012 denying that targeting was occurring, after learning the results of the IRS internal review in May 2012.

"Why didn't you ever come back to the Congress to explain that you were mistaken?" Cummings asked.

"I didn't have all the facts, I didn't know what was on the list, exactly how it was used," Shulman said. He later acknowledged he "would have answered differently" in March 2012 if he had known what he did in May 2012.

Cummings also said the panel would like to hear from Daniel Werfel, the White House budget official who started on Wednesday as the new IRS head after Obama fired Miller last week.

Werfel is conducting a 30-day review of the IRS and is due to report back to Obama about how to correct failures that led to the targeting and how to hold IRS staff accountable for inappropriate actions.

(Additional reporting by Casey Sullivan; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Karey Van Hall and Tim Dobbyn)

ST PETERSBURG (Reuters) - Hockey and rugby will play their Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics competitions at the more remote Deodoro area of the city after organizers boosted the number of sports there to liven up what they say has now become a second Olympic park.

With hockey, initially set to be at the main Olympic park by the sea, forced to move to the Deodoro cluster, organizers said they were also placing Olympic debutants rugby sevens there, as well as some basketball preliminaries.

"For us it is quite important because we now have eight sports and 12 disciplines there," said Rio Games sports director Agberto Guimaraes. "For the first time there is a second Olympic park."

Guimaraes said as many as 50,000 people were expected to be within the Deodoro Olympic Park.

"We are much happier because it (Rio organizers) has added new team sports there," Kelly Fairweather, the CEO of the International Hockey Federation told Reuters.

Federation officials were initially unhappy about a move to Deodoro after having been told they would be in the main Olympic Park.

Fairweather said the addition of rugby and other sports such as BMX and hugely popular basketball added more value to the area.

"We are comfortable with this legacy. It is now a really good place," he said.

Rugby sevens was not part of Rio's bid file as it became an Olympic sport only in 2009, along with golf.

Deodoro will also host shooting competitions, modern pentathlon, equestrian, canoe slalom and fencing events.

(Editing by Clare Fallon)

Sanchez tweeted a photo of herself at the airport in Madrid, lugging a small blue suitcase emblazoned with the logo of her Generation Y blog. Her husband said she was booked on a Havana-bound plane scheduled to arrive in the evening.

"Ready to leave for Cuba," she tweeted, accompanied by a smiley-face emoticon matching her own expression in the picture.

Sanchez has been away since Feb. 17, when she took advantage of a new travel reform law ending a longtime requirement that all Cubans obtain official permission to travel abroad. Under the old rules, government critics who are officially branded as traitorous "counterrevolutionaries" were routinely denied such exit visas.

In the last three months Sanchez has traveled to more than a dozen countries in Europe and the Americas and given speeches criticizing President Raul Castro's Communist-led government. She has met with human rights activists and foreign lawmakers and cultivated relationships with journalists at leading Western newspapers.

In the process she picked up more than 100,000 Twitter followers to top the half-million mark.

A number of other dissidents have also tested authorities' patience by traveling abroad and bashing their government in public forums, and some have reported various levels of harassment upon their return.

Eliecer Avila said he was taken aside at the airport and subjected to an exhaustive search in which agents scrutinized every last item in his luggage and confiscated 26 books.

"They pulled me out of the line and had me in there for four hours and 15 minutes," Avila said. "They took pictures of everything."

Analysts have said Sanchez's rising international fame likely insulates her physically from arrest and some forms of harassment. Sanchez has told people close to her she expects to be the target of more propaganda attacks by the government and its allies, but less detention.

The Justice Department stopped short of saying that Attorney General Eric Holder O.K.'d the investigation into Fox News reporter James Rosen. But critics have seized on a comment Holder made last week, asking if the attorney general misled Congress.

The Obama administration has been criticized for reportedly seizing Rosen's emails and phone records, and for tracking his movement in and out of the State Department through security-badge records, as it investigated possible leaks of information about North Korea. Last week'sadded fuel to an already controversial time for the Justice Department, which seized phone records of Associated Press reporters and offices.

In a statement on Friday, the Justice Department said the Rosen investigation had been approved "at the highest levels" of the Justice Department, including "discussions with the Attorney General."

Here's how the department explained its decision to investigate Rosen, in a background statement:

The Department takes seriously the First Amendment right to freedom of the press.In recognition of this, the Department took great care in deciding that a search warrant was necessary in the Kim matter, vetting the decision at the highest levels of the Department, including discussions with the Attorney General.After extensive deliberations, and after following all applicable laws, regulations and policies, the Department sought an appropriately tailored search warrant under the Privacy Protection Act.And a federal magistrate judge made an independent finding that probable cause existed to approve the search warrant.

Attorney General Holder understands the concerns that have been raised by the media and has initiated a reevaluation of existing Department policies and procedures.This review will include extensive engagement with representatives of the media.The Department must strike the appropriate balance between its obligation to enforce the laws preventing leaks of classified information and First Amendment rights, and, through a new media shield law and appropriate updates to the Department's internal guidelines, we are committed to achieving that balance.

When Holder appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on May 15, four days before the Post reported on the Rosen investigation, Holder expressed skepticism of prosecuting reporters, as lawmakers asked him about the AP probe.

"You've got a long way to go to try to prosecute people - the press for the publication of that material," Holder told the committee, according to a transcript service.

But he also said that he had never been aware of potential prosecutions of reporters - as there was never an intent to prosecute reporters but rather the search was intended to find the source of leaks.

"Well, I would say this. With regard to the potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, that is not something that I've ever been involved in, heard of or would think would be a wise policy," Holder said, responding to Georgia Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson's suggestion that reporters' First Amendment rights should be protected.

The Rosen leak was part of another prosecution - of the alleged leaker - but the Justice Department did suggest, in seeking a warrant for Rosen's G-mail account, that he may have broken the law.

FBI agent Reginald Reyes wrote in an affidavit that "there is probably cause to believe that the Reporter has committed or is committing a violation of section 793(d), as an aider and abbettor and/or co-conspirator, to which the materials relate."

Conservatives have seized on Holder's comment, asking if the attorney general lied to Congress when he made it. Fox's Karl Rovethat question, as haveand .