Sale, Dunn carry White Sox past Astros

By RICK GANO

AP Sports Writer

Associated Press Sports

updated 7:25 p.m. ET June 9, 2012

CHICAGO (AP) - When Chris Sale is on the mound with his quirky motion and left-handed deliveries that come at all speeds and from all angles, the Chicago White Sox like their chances. Every time.

"Obviously we have all the confidence in the world. We know if we score him a few runs, then normally it's going to be good enough," slugger Adam Dunn said.

That's what happened again on Saturday when Sale pitched eight shutout innings and Dunn had a grand slam in a 17-hit attack that produced a 10-1 victory against the Houston Astros.

Sale (8-2) gave up four singles, struck out seven and walked none while lowering his AL-leading ERA to 2.05 during his fifth straight victory.

"I'm not one to really look at my stats or anything like that. It really doesn't do anything for you," the 6-foot-6 Sale said. "You got a five (ERA) or a one and you still got to go out there and pitch and get outs."

Sale was sent to the bullpen for one game in May after there was concern about some arm soreness. But he had a candid and strong conversation with general manager Ken Williams and convinced the team he should return to the rotation.

"It was kind of crazy there," Sale said. "But everything got figured out and I'm trying to move forward from that."

Sale gave the White Sox a momentary scare in the sixth when he was struck by a comebacker from Jed Lowrie. The ball hit him on the bottom of the left foot, then caught him on the calf. But he was not injured and stayed in the game.

"That ball was smoked. Got to get out of the way of it," he said. "It was kind of comical after the panic went away."

At age 23, Sale is emerging as Chicago's stopper. In his two previous outings, he pitched his first complete game against Seattle and struck out 15 against Tampa Bay.

"He's tough to hit against because he has a lot of different things he can throw. I think a lot of people believe he just goes out and throws 98, 99, that's not what he does," White Sox manager Robin Ventura said. "He actually pitches, hits corners, creates angles and things like that that make him extremely tough."

Gordon Beckham had three RBIs and Alejandro De Aza finished with four hits for the White Sox, who sent 10 batters to the plate during a five-run fifth that chased Houston starter Jordan Lyles (1-2). Chicago finished with 17 hits - 16 singles and Dunn's 19th homer, a bases-loaded shot off Rhiner Cruz in the eighth for his 12th career grand slam.

"I just let the fifth inning blow up on me," Lyles said, refusing to blame the poor fielding that jumped started the inning. "I didn't make pitches. I put guys on base that I shouldn't have."

Alexei Ramirez reached on third baseman Matt Downs' throwing error to start the fifth. Jordan Danks had an infield single and Ramirez reached third after a bad throw by second baseman Jose Altuve.

Eduardo Escobar worked a walk to load the bases, De Aza delivered an RBI single, and Beckham followed with a two-run single to right as Escobar made a nice slide around catcher Chris Snyder to score the third run. Dunn hit a sacrifice fly and, after a walk to Paul Konerko, Alex Rios had another RBI single to finish Lyles.

Beckham added an RBI single in the sixth.

"You just can't give a good hitting team like that extra outs," Houston manager Brad Mills said.

The 21-year-old Lyles allowed seven hits and five runs, four earned, with three walks in his 4 1-3 innings. He is now 0-5 in 14 road games, including 12 starts.

Lowrie hit his 12th homer leading off the ninth against Zach Stewart.

NOTES: White Sox LF Dayan Viciedo, who left Friday's game after five innings with tightness in both hamstrings, was out of the lineup. Jordan Danks made his first major league start in left and got two hits. His brother, LHP John Danks, is scheduled for a minor league rehab outing Tuesday. He's been on the DL with a strained left shoulder. ... The White Sox were doing more tests on 3B Brent Morel, who pulled himself out of a rehab game earlier in the week. Morel has been bothered by back problems. ... Houston placed OF Fernando Martinez on the seven-day disabled list Saturday for post-concussion like symptoms. Martinez was complaining of blurred vision. He was hit in the head by a pitch while playing for Oklahoma City on May 26. He was called up to the major league team June 2. Four days later, he may have hit his head diving for a ball against the Cardinals. "The thinking was that might have stirred something up a little bit. He went and saw the doctors on Friday and they wanted more tests done," Mills said. ... Astros INF Chris Johnson, who left Friday night's game in the sixth inning with nausea, was not in the lineup.

? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Hope for punchless Rays

DeMarco's Mailbag: The Tampa Bay Rays remain in the thick of the? AL East race despite a punchless offense, but keep in mind that Desmond Jennings just returned from the disabled list, and Evan Longoria could be back within two weeks.

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Western wildfires forcing evacuations

LOVELAND, Colo. (AP) ? Crews in Colorado and New Mexico battled wildfires Sunday that were moving fast through parched forests, forcing scores of evacuations and destroying or damaging numerous structures.

A blaze in northern Colorado first reported Saturday morning had grown to nearly 22 square miles by Sunday morning, while a fire in southern New Mexico began growing Friday, reaching about 10,000 acres.

Both fires have damaged property and forced numerous evacuations, but officials haven't yet released specific figures on the numbers who fled.

The smell of smoke drifted into the Denver area and smoke from the Colorado and New Mexico fires spread as far away as parts central Nebraska, western Kansas and Texas.

The Colorado wildfire was burning in the mountainous Paradise Park area about 15 miles west of Fort Collins. Officials didn't specify how many residents had evacuated but said they had sent out more than 1,500 emergency notifications urging people to be prepared to evacuate if necessary. About 500 people had checked in at two Red Cross shelters.

Law officers went door to door to alert people in the evacuation area on Saturday, but officials were worried that not everyone got the word.

Elaine Mantle and her family got a call to evacuate their Bellvue home Sunday morning. It took about 30 minutes for them to get out and reach a spillover shelter at the Budweiser Event Center in Loveland. Evacuees gathered there for a fire briefing, sipping coffee and eating bananas and powdered doughnuts, in a large gymnasium-like space.

It was the Mantles' first evacuation in the 25 years they have lived in the mountains and they were grateful to be safe.

"We're all here, we're all OK. Our neighbors are all here. We feel good," Mantle said.

She, her husband and adult daughter checked for fire information updates on their phones as they waited for the briefing to begin.

At least 18 structures have been destroyed or damaged, although authorities were unsure if they were homes or some other kind of buildings. No injuries have been reported, and the cause of the fire was unknown.

Authorities say it's the worst fire seen in the county in about 25 years. It spread as fast as 1 1 1/2 miles an hour Saturday, skipping and jumping over some areas but burning intensely in trees in others. Flames were coming dangerously close to deputies who were telling some residents to evacuate, Sheriff Justin Smith said.

Because of the erratic way the fire has burned, unburned structures within the fire perimeter remain at risk.

Gusts up to 40 mph and low humidity were forecast Sunday.

"It's going to make the firefighting difficult as soon as it warms up," National Weather Service meteorologist Kyle Fredin said.

Four air tankers ? including two from Canada ? and several helicopters were on the scene to help fight the blaze, which appeared to be burning on private and U.S. Forest Service land and was expected to be fueled by wind gusts of up 40 mph Sunday.

Wind was also playing a major role in the expansion of a lightning-sparked blaze in New Mexico's Lincoln National Forest that jumped its containment lines and raced through thick conifer forests. Fire managers said 20 structures were damaged or destroyed.

Spanning only a few acres on Wednesday, the Little Bear fire began to grow Friday and by Saturday afternoon about 10,000 acres had been charred northwest of the mountain community of Ruidoso.

"It's nerve-racking right now," Mayor Ray Alborn said in a telephone interview Saturday, as he watched what he described as "real heavy smoke" rise from the Sierra Blanca mountain range.

The mix of timber, dry grass and the steepness of the slopes were making the firefighting efforts more difficult. Windy conditions were also limiting what could be done from the air by helicopters and air tankers, Alborn said.

Fire information officers said summer homes in a few subdivisions and several campgrounds were evacuated late Friday, and more on homes on Saturday. Roads throughout the area were closed, said forest spokeswoman Peg Crim.

The fire was burning in steep, rocky, inaccessible terrain in the White Mountain Wilderness of the Lincoln National Forest, which is home to Smokey Bear, the little black cub that became the nation's symbol of fire prevention in the 1940s.

U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., said decades of mismanagement, forests packed full of trees and persistent drought conditions have resulted in an explosive situation.

"We just can't keep managing our forests this way," he said. "It's not a question of if our forests in the West are going to burn, it's a matter of when. This is just one more demonstration of that."

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To snag the best airfares, flexibility is key

FILE - In this Friday, May 25, 2012 file photo, travelers arrive at Orlando International Airport make their way to baggage claim in Orlando, Fla. Flying this summer doesn?t need to be expensive, as search engines, social media, creativity and flexibility can make finding bargain airfares easier. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

FILE - In this Friday, May 25, 2012 file photo, travelers arrive at Orlando International Airport make their way to baggage claim in Orlando, Fla. Flying this summer doesn?t need to be expensive, as search engines, social media, creativity and flexibility can make finding bargain airfares easier. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

FILE - In this Wednesday, May 23, 2012 file photo, an Air China jet prepares to land at the Capital International Airport in Beijing. Flying this summer doesn?t need to be expensive, as search engines, social media, creativity and flexibility can make finding bargain airfares easier. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan, File)

NEW YORK (AP) ? To snag the best airfares, travelers need to be adventurous and willing to pick up at a moment's notice.

OK, now let's be realistic. Most people making summer travel plans need just that: plans. They get a week off, maybe two, and aren't going to spend hard-earned cash on a last-second whim.

But great deals are still within reach for those who have even a little flexibility in choosing where and when to travel.

The average roundtrip domestic ticket will cost $431 this summer, an increase of 2.6 percent from last year, according to Kayak.com. But remember: that's an average. One trip might cost $800 while another can be found for $200.

"Airfares are high but there are pockets of cheap out there," says Seth Miller, an information technology consultant who writes a blog under the name The Wandering Aramean. Miller does his best to beat the system by connecting in strange cities, flying at off hours and taking advantage of sales often offered when an airline adds a new destination.

Here are some tips from Miller and other expert travelers on how to combat rising airfares.

? LAST-MINUTE WEEKEND FARES

When airlines don't fill planes for an upcoming weekend, they slash prices.

Each Tuesday, they email offers for that coming weekend or the following one to fliers who have signed up online for the deal alerts. Travelers have to depart late Friday night or anytime Saturday and come back Monday or Tuesday. An added plus: weekend getaways save precious vacation days.

Recent offers include: Houston to Memphis for $180, Huntsville, Ala. to Chicago for $174, Washington D.C. to Greenville, S.C. for $157 and Charlotte, N.C. to West Palm Beach, Fla. for $240.

? TWITTER AND FACEBOOK

Airlines are experimenting with sales on Twitter. At the forefront is JetBlue, which tweets last-second fare sales and vacation package discounts from (at)JetBlueCheeps. Some deals apply to just a few seats and are gone within hours.

"If you find something, jump on it," says John DiScala, who each year flies around 150,000 miles, visits 20 countries and writes about it at JohnnyJet.com.

JetBlue recently tweeted a sale at 3:16 p.m.; it ended at 6 p.m.

Airlines announce special sales to those who "like" their Facebook pages and sites like AirfareWatchdog offer fare alert emails (airfarewatchdog.com/fare-alerts/).

There are also frequent fliers who search for and post cheap flights in online discussion boards. Two of the better discussion boards are: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mileage-run-deals-372/ and http://milepoint.com/forums/forums/mileage-runs-mattress-runs-travel-hacking.6/

? FLEXIBLE DATES

Looking to go to Paris for a week but don't care when in the next few months? ITA Software's airfare search (matrix.itasoftware.com) provides a calendar of the lowest fares.

Just enter the departure and destination city ? nearby airports can even be added ? and then how many nights to spend there. It will find the cheapest prices for a month out from a given date. The length of the trip can even be a range, say five to seven days.

? CHASE THE FARE, NOT THE DESTINATION

Want to know the cheapest fares from a departure city to anywhere? Check out Kayak's explore tool (kayak.com/explore). It allows travelers to search multiple airlines at once this way. A map pops up with all the destinations under a set budget point.

Searches can be done for a particular month or for all of summer. The query can be narrowed by activity ? beach, golf, gambling, skiing ? or by continent.

? ODD CONNECTIONS

Fares to Hawaii might be steep. But connecting though another city with a sale to Hawaii, could save a lot of money. Use AirfareWatchdog's "fares to a city search" (airfarewatchdog.com/cheap-flights/to-a-city) to see if there are any less expensive indirect routes to your destination. Instead of flying from, say, Boston to Honolulu, it could be a lot cheaper to book two separate tickets ? the first between Boston and Houston and the second from there to Hawaii.

"If you can save $1,000 per couple and get two cities for less than the price of one, it's a no brainer," says George Hobica, founder of AirfareWatchdog.

___

Scott Mayerowitz can be reached at http://twitter.com/GlobeTrotScott.>Associated Press

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Mapping genes: New risk factors for neurodegenerative diseases found

ScienceDaily (June 7, 2012) ? Using a new and powerful approach to understand the origins of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida are building the case that these diseases are primarily caused by genes that are too active or not active enough, rather than by harmful gene mutations.

In the June 7 online issue of PLoS Genetics, they report that several hundred genes within almost 800 brain samples of patients with Alzheimer's disease or other disorders had altered expression levels that did not result from neurodegeneration. Many of those variants were likely the cause.

"We now understand that disease likely develops from gene variants that have modest effects on gene expression, and which are also found in healthy people. But some of the variants -- elevating expression of some genes, reducing levels of others -- combine to produce a perfect storm that leads to dysfunction," says lead investigator Nilufer Ertekin-Taner, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic neurologist and neuroscientist.

"If we can identify the genes linked to a disease that are too active or too dormant, we might be able to define new drug targets and therapies," she says. "That could be the case for both neurodegenerative disease as well as disease in general."

Dr. Ertekin-Taner says no other lab has performed the extent of brain gene expression study conducted at Mayo Clinic's Florida campus. "The novelty, and the usefulness, of our study is the sheer number of brain samples that we looked at and the way in which we analyzed them. These results demonstrate the significant contribution of genetic factors that alter brain gene expression and increase risk of disease," she says.

This form of data analysis measures gene expression levels by quantifying the amount of RNA produced in tissue and scans the genome of patients to identify genetic variants that associate with these levels.

Mayo researchers measured the level of 24,526 transcripts (messenger RNA) for 18,401 genes using cerebellar autopsy tissue from 197 Alzheimer's disease patients and from 177 patients with other forms of neurodegeneration. The researchers then validated the results by examining the temporal cortex from 202 Alzheimer's disease patients and from 197 with other pathologies. The difference between these samples is that while the temporal cortex is affected by Alzheimer's disease, the cerebellum is relatively spared.

From these analyses, the researchers identified more than 2,000 markers of altered expression in both groups of patients that were common between the cerebellum and temporal cortex. Some of these markers also influenced risk of human diseases, suggesting their contribution to development of neurodegenerative and other diseases regardless of their location in the brain.

They identified novel expression "hits" for genetic risk markers of diseases that included progressive supranuclear palsy, Parkinson's disease, and Paget's disease, and confirmed other known associations for lupus, ulcerative colitis, and type 1 diabetes.

"Altered expression of brain genes can be linked to a number of diseases that affect the entire body," Dr. Ertekin-Taner says.

They then compared their eGWAS to GWAS data on Alzheimer's disease, conducted by the federally funded Alzheimer's Disease Genetics Consortium, to test whether some of the risk genes already identified promote disease through altered expression.

"We found that a number of genes already linked to Alzheimer's disease do, in fact, have altered gene expression, but we also discovered that many of the variants in what we call the gray zone of the GWAS -- genes whose contribution to Alzheimer's disease was uncertain -- were also influencing brain expression levels," Dr. Ertekin-Taner says. "That offers us new candidate risk genes to explore.

"This is a powerful approach to understanding disease," she says. "It can find new genes that contribute to risk, as well as new genetic pathways, and can also help us understand the function for a large number of genes and other molecular regulators in the genome that are implicated in very important diseases."

The study was funded in part by National Institutes of Health grants and the Mayo Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. The complete results are being made available to the scientific community.

Study co-authors include Fanggeng Zou, Ph.D., High Seng Chai, Curtis Younkin, Mariet Allen, Steven Younkin, M.D., Ph.D., and Minerva Carrasquillo, Ph.D., who also provided genotypes for the Mayo Alzheimer's disease GWAS; Dennis Dickson, M.D., Julia Crook, Ph.D., Shane Pankratz, Ph.D., Neill Graff-Radford, M.D., and Ronald Petersen, M.D., Ph.D.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Mayo Clinic, via Newswise.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Fanggeng Zou, High Seng Chai, Curtis S. Younkin, Mariet Allen, Julia Crook, V. Shane Pankratz, Minerva M. Carrasquillo, Christopher N. Rowley, Asha A. Nair, Sumit Middha, Sooraj Maharjan, Thuy Nguyen, Li Ma, Kimberly G. Malphrus, Ryan Palusak, Sarah Lincoln, Gina Bisceglio, Constantin Georgescu, Naomi Kouri, Christopher P. Kolbert, Jin Jen, Jonathan L. Haines, Richard Mayeux, Margaret A. Pericak-Vance, Lindsay A. Farrer, Gerard D. Schellenberg, Ronald C. Petersen, Neill R. Graff-Radford, Dennis W. Dickson, Steven G. Younkin, Nil?fer Ertekin-Taner. Brain Expression Genome-Wide Association Study (eGWAS) Identifies Human Disease-Associated Variants. PLoS Genetics, 2012; 8 (6): e1002707 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1002707

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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Vade Retro Desktop 4.0

Bedeviled by spam? Looking for an antispam tool that will make it just go away? Vade Retro Desktop 4.0 ($24.69/year, direct) aims to be that tool. It's an attractive package with some unusual features, but in my testing its performance didn't live up to its good looks.

Straightforward Setup
Vade Retro filters POP3 and IMAP accounts and specifically supports Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express / Windows Mail, and Windows Live Mail. During setup you can choose to activate its protection for any one of these, or for all three. After installation a simple initialization wizard offers to import your recent correspondents into the "green list" (what others might call a whitelist). The wizard will optionally send a test message that should be flagged as spam, so you can immediately see that the tool is working.

Most spam filters simply dump all unwanted mail into a single spam folder. Some distinguish spam from phishing mail, or use one folder for definite spam and another for suspected spam. Vade Retro goes all out, with four different folders for different types of unwanted mail.

Advertisements get their own folder, as do virus-infested messages. Delivery notification failed "bounce" messages go into a third folder. All other unwanted mail goes into one marked "Unwanted Messages." For testing purposes I discarded the bounce and virus messages.

Thorough Integration
Vade Retro integrates very thoroughly with the three email clients it supports. A toolbar lets you flag any valid mail that was marked as spam, or flag advertising or unwanted mail that wasn't filtered. One button displays the total number of messages processed; clicking it brings up a very detailed chart of valid messages, spam, and ads received over a user-specified time period.

Full integration means it's easy to have Vade Retro scan a folder even after messages have been downloaded. That came in handy in my testing. I initially let the program process a spam-infested email account that had been idle for several months. Downloading the over 30,000 messages from this account took overnight.

I could see at a glance that Vade Retro hadn't scanned most of the messages, perhaps because of the huge volume at once. Fortunately, all I had to do was select the Inbox and click Scan on the toolbar. It took another couple hours, but Vade Retro properly scanned the already-received mail. I don't imagine any normal user would run into this fluke behavior.

Integration also means that the filter can detect when you move messages between folders. If you move mail from a spam folder to another folder, that may be a sign that you don't think it's spam. On detecting such a move it offers to treat the messages as legitimate and send them for analysis, to help refine the spam filter. By the same token, if you move messages from the Inbox to a spam folder the program can treat them as if you clicked the "Mark Spam" button.

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Magic Mike Clip: It's Sort of Literally Raining Men!


In an official new clip from Magic Mike, Matthew McConaughey introduces Channing Tatum, Matthew Bomer, Alex Pettyfer and his whole crew for a routine.

A stripper routine. This is a film about male strippers. Maybe you've heard.

In the sneak peek below, Channing and his Magic Mike cohorts dance their clothes off to the popular song “It’s Raining Men” as the ladies go berzerk.

Check it out here and try to contain the squealing at school/work:

On top of Tatum, Pettyfer, Bomer amd McConaughey, Magic Mike also stars True Blood's Joe Manganiello, Olivia Munn, Riley Keough, and Cody Horn.

Look out for the movie when it hits theaters nationwide June 29.

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Whose Islands are they? South Korea tries branding in its dispute with Japan

Japan and Korea have long sparred over the Takeshima/Dokdo islets. The latest bid to promote Korea's claim: Napa Valley wine labels.

By Bryan Kay,?Correspondent / May 24, 2012

Dokdo island, also known as Takeshima in Japanese, east of Seoul, is seen in this August 2011 file photo.

Lee Sang-hak/Yonhap/Reuters/File

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When it comes to some disputed islets located in the Sea of Japan, South Korea is not shy about making its claim.

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Though the Japanese refer to island group as Takeshima and remain in a bitter dispute over the issue, ?Koreans are adamant that Dokdo is Korean sovereign territory ? and they are very committed to letting the rest of the world know.

The latest ploy: a Napa Valley wine produced by Korean-American dentist Ahn Jae-hyun at his Dokdo Winery that uses the island post code as its moniker.

Illustrating the fervor with which such attempts to garner attention for Korea?s sovereign claims over the outcrop, when the wine debuted on the Korean market the local distributor pledged to donate all proceeds to nonprofit groups promoting Korean sovereign claims in other countries. ?

While both Korea and Japan point to historical documents to back up their respective claims, South Korea has occupied Dokdo/Takeshima for more than half a century. And it remains a key rallying symbol for lingering resentment over Japan's colonial occupation of the then unified Korean Peninsula in the first half of the 20th century.

Previous efforts to highlight Korea?s territorial claims to Dokdo/Takeshima range from what some observers view as the practical to the more extreme.

In 2010, the Korean singer Kim Jang-hoon was behind a months-long video advertisement in New York's Times Square that not only specifically proclaimed Dokdo as Korean territory but also made sure to refer to the sea in which they are located the East Sea, as opposed to the Sea of Japan.

In recent years, a series of ads taken out in major American newspapers announced a near identical message. The latest, placed as a full-page ad in The New York Times in March by Dokdo campaigner Seo Kyoung-duk and South Korean e-commerce firm Gmarket displayed the national flags of four countries ? including the South Korean Taegukgi ? alongside the names of four islands related to each.

In the case of the other three countries, a line connects each island with the relevant national flag ? except that of South Korea and Dokdo. Readers were encouraged to connect the two, the implication being that Dokdo is Korean territory. Japan protested the ad.?

In 2008, the president of the Korean Dry Cleaners Association in the US produced plastic bags emblazoned with a picture and a map of the disputed island along with the English slogans ?Dokdo Island is Korean territory? and ?The Japanese government must acknowledge this fact,? which were taken up by about 100 Korean dry cleaners in New York.?

And the Korea Times, a leading South Korean English-language newspaper, has for several years run an international Dokdo-themed essay competition in conjunction with the Seoul-based Northeast Asian History Foundation that invariably challenges entrants to tip their hat toward Korea?s claims to the outcrop. The winner receives a $1,270 cash prize.

Still, despite the stated intentions of Dokdo wine producer Ahn and others like him, his website gently hints at what could be seen as the futility of the territorial dispute.

Without any apparent irony, it states: ?For as long as we can remember, there has been much controversy over the island and the ownership of it. Instead of appreciating the beauty of Dokdo, the world has been too busy fighting over it.?

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