Two seemingly unrelated investment stories roused the press and the public this week.

The path between American business and Capitol Hill is usually marked by political contributions and lobbying expenses.

Former President Bill Clinton’s extraordinary mission to North Korea that resulted in the freeing of two U.S. journalists marked a thaw in his relations with his former vice president, Al Gore.

The Federal Trade Commission is looking into the relationships between technology stars Apple and Google to see if they might violate antitrust laws.

New legal challenges for search giant Google Inc. may be looming - and from chief executive Eric Schmidt’s new BFF Barack Obama, of all people.

He has few connections to Chicago or Cambridge. Nonetheless, Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google Inc. has emerged as one of the big winners of the 2008 presidential election.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled a new, improved Apple iPhone today, with prices starting at $199 for the 8GB phone - less than half the price of the original model.

So, the Rev. Pat Roberson and the Rev. Al Sharpton are sitting on a couch…

It sounds like the setup line of a joke, but in reality the two are actually having a serious discussion about one topic they can agree upon - global climate change.

Casting has begun for Oliver Stone’s upcoming film W., which will tell the story of George W. Bush’s early years.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader declared Sunday on Meet the Press that he is running — again — for president.

The Politico said Nader’s third-party run would be a “huge boon” for Republicans in November.

The New York Times, however, pointed out that Nader received just .3 percent of the vote in his 2004 presidential bid, down considerably from the 2.7 percent he received as the Green Party candidate in 2000.

The campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have tried to get the endorsement of former Vice President Al Gore, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner is refusing to indicate a preference.

In fact, in the past week, Gore and Democratic party leaders have held private talks because some Democrats fear a bitterly divided convention could end up hurting the party in the general election, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Lawrence Haas isn’t the first to suggest that Democrats might blow a sure thing.

Yet Haas, vice president of the U.S.-based Committee on the Present Danger, offers a theory that goes well beyond the Democrats-always-shoot-themselves-in-the-foot school of thought.

He suggests that the party may lose the White House in 2008 because of its stance on national security.

The media company co-founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt five years ago plans to go public.

Current Media, which operates a TV network and a web site aimed at young audiences, notified the SEC of its intentions today.

Add another line to what has to be one of the greatest resumes of all time.

Al Gore is now a partner at Kleiner Perkins, the storied Silicon Valley venture capital company that has backed such web and technology giants as Google, Sun Microsystems and Amazon.

Not every candidate would welcome an endorsement from a guy known as “Meathead.”

But when that guy is Rob Reiner — Meathead in the 1970s television hit All in the Family — you take the endorsement and run.

Reiner, the 62-year-old actor, director, comedian and political activist, and one of the most connected people in Hollywood and Democratic politics, came out for Hillary Rodham Clinton in September.

The script has changed.

Pointing to Al Gore, parents throughout the country may be telling their children that if they study hard, lead good lives and not become president they could be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Gore is the co-winner of this year’s Peace Prize for sounding the alarm on global warming. He shares the prize with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

While Gore may have fashioned a grand comeback, a look at the post-defeat careers of other recent unsuccessful presidential wannabes shows that there can be life, a good life at that, after losing. All have found things to do, sometimes lucrative things, and many have held elective office, most often in the U.S. Senate.

All have continued in public life and some have remained in politics, most especially in the U.S. Senate.

It’s the sort of windfall that not-for-profits don’t receive every day.

A little more than a year old, the Alliance for Climate Protection gained $750,000 when former Vice President Al Gore was named co-recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Friday.

Gore announced that he would give his share of the prize to the alliance, a Palo Alto, Calif., organization he formed last year.

The group’s goal is to increase awareness about threats to the environment from global warming.
It helped put on this July’s Live Earth concerts in seven cities around the world.

Sure, he’s won every award known to man except the Olympic gold. (Unless he gets into wrestling or weight lifting, that honor seems beyond even his reach.)

But the main achievement of Al Gore is not his comeback from having the White House snatched away, not his Oscar or even his sharing of the Nobel Peace Prize, announced today.

The real phenomenon of Al Gore is how connected he has become despite (and because of) his losing the presidency.

Gore has forged strong bonds not only in politics, science and the international environmental movement, but in finance, high-tech and Hollywood.

The board of directors of Dow Jones said late Tuesday night that itw as “prepared to approve” a buyout offer from Rupert Murdoch, which would give the conservative press baron control of The Wall Street Journal.

Fine, but the real news is that Al Gore says Murdoch is a man of his word who supports independent voices, according to The New York Times.

It’s not often that the Times buries a lead, but this is one of them. The newspaper acknowledged that Gore’s support is an “unlikely endorsement,” but put it at the very end of its main Murdoch-Dow Jones story, posted to its Web site late Tuesday night.