FACTBOX- Who is Al Gore?

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Al Gore and the U.N. climate panel won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for raising awareness of the risks of climate change.

Here are some key facts on the former U.S. vice-president.

* WHO IS AL GORE?

-- Albert Arnold Gore Jr. was born in Washington on March 31, 1948, to Albert Gore Sr., who represented Tennessee in Congress for 32 years, and Pauline Gore, a homemaker and law school graduate.

-- As a toddler Gore bounced on the knee of Richard Nixon, the California Republican who years later, as president, helped oust Gore's Democratic father from Congress.

-- After graduating from Harvard, he married Mary Elizabeth "Tipper" Aitcheson, volunteered for the military and served as an Army journalist in Vietnam.

-- Upon his return home, he became a divinity student and went to work for The Nashville Tennessean as a reporter. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Gore said he was turned off by politics.

* A CHANGE OF HEART:

-- However while a reporter in the mid-1970s, he developed a personal appetite for it and in 1976 a House seat from central Tennessee became vacant and he won it.

* VICE-PRESIDENT:

-- In 1992, four years after his first White House bid, Gore considered running again, but decided against it.

-- Bill Clinton won the nomination that year, and picked Gore as his running mate. "We raised him for it," Gore's father gushed.

-- As vice president, Gore's squeaky clean image was tarnished when he became embroiled in a fund-raising scandal.

* RUN FOR PRESIDENT:

-- In August 2000, Gore won the Democratic Party nomination for U.S. president, choosing Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate; in the November general election they ran against the Republican ticket of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

-- Gore got around 300,000 more votes nationally than Bush. But Bush, with the help of Florida, got the needed state-based 270 electoral votes to win the White House.

* A NEW CAREER:

-- Since then Gore has dedicated himself to raising public awareness of global warming.

-- Gore produced a documentary about a slide show he has given on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth". The short film was presented in Cannes in 2006 and won an Oscar in 2007 for best documentary.

-- He also spearheaded last July's Live Earth world wide concerts, with some of the world's biggest pop stars including Madonna and Police, to urge fans and governments to fight global warming.

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