"Are Jews evil? It's not a question I've ever thought of asking. I hadn't gone looking for it. But there it was. I press enter. A page of results appears. This was Google's question. And this was Google's answer: Jews are evil." We've spent a lot of time talking about the spread of fake news. But as The Guardian's Carole Cadwalladr found out, there's also been a concerted and quite effective effort to distort what you see in Google autocomplete and search results. Here's more on Google, democracy and the truth about internet search. (The bad news: There are people who dedicate their lives to creating fake stories and messages of hate. The worse news: There are millions of people susceptible to believing it.)

+ Just hours after The Guardian's article was published, Google tweaked its autocomplete to remove some of the offensive search suggestions. That move will bring up questions about free speech and where we draw the line in such cases.

+ A ridiculous fake news story about Hillary Clinton and an imaginary pedophilia ring has made a DC pizza restaurant a target on social media. Over the weekend, it turned the restaurant into a crime scene as well, when a guy armed with an AR-15 showed up to self-investigate the issue.

+ Buzzfeed: How The Bizarre Conspiracy Theory Behind "Pizzagate" Was Spread.

+ News isn't the only thing that's fake these days. From WaPo: Mobsters ran a fake U.S. Embassy in Ghana for 10 years.

"And then the incredible happened. On Sunday afternoon, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers legally blocked the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, denying it a needed easement to drill beneath the Missouri River." After a long protest that has gained an increasing amount of attention, the Standing Rock protesters won a big (and somewhat surprising) victory.

+ The move by the federal government is unlikely to mark the final chapter in this story. From Slate: The companies behind the Dakota Access Pipeline don't think they've lost.

Authorities still don't know the cause of a tragic fire at an Oakland that ripped through warehouse where a music event was being held. The toll from the devastating blaze has already reached 36 people, and there's still more of the building to be searched.

Italy and Austria were the latest countries to head to the polls in elections that will help us quantify the strength of the international lurch towards nationalism and measure the mood when it comes to the European Union. In Austria, voters strongly supported the pro-EU presidential candidate, while in Italy, a no vote on a referendum led to the resignation of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and provided a boost to his anti-EU opponents.

"The meeting may not be the strangest thing that has come out of the Trump transition process. (That honor has to go to the Naked Cowboy's appearance in a Trump Tower elevator last week.) It is, however, an unusual development." Al Gore was the latest leader to meet with President-elect Trump, in what the former veep called "extremely interesting conversation." Gore also met with Ivanka Trump who reportedly wants to make climate change one of her "signature issues."

+ "We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today. If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet." That was part of a 2009 letter sent to President Obama. Its signatories included Donald Trump and his three children. Since then, things have changed.

+ From WaPo: Trump's Taiwan phone call was long planned. It's unclear whether the same is true for Trump's China-related tweets that followed.

+ In a much-anticipated move, Trump has nominated Ben Carson to run HUD.

InFocus does a great job gathering collections of news photos during the course of the year. So, it's the perfect place to catch up on the top news photos of 2016. (This year, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the top news photos were just stick figure drawings purporting to be news photos.)

"The now-infamous video which captured the incident shows Slager firing his handgun multiple times, striking Scott in the back as he ran away following a traffic stop related to a burned-out brake light." The judge has declared a mistrial after jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict in the case of former South Carolina officer Michael Slager

"By the time he was fifteen, he was making six thousand dollars a week. But then he was arrested for kidnapping, carjacking, and robbing a drug dealer. He was tried as an adult and sentenced to fifteen years." Now, he's the co-founder of a campus group that provides support to current and prospective UC Berkeley students who have been incarcerated. From The New Yorker: The Ex-Con Scholars Of Berkeley.

"Amazon says that through sensors, computer vision, and deep learning, it's able to track customers as they move about the store, and automatically register which items get picked up." Amazon is set to open a grocery store with no cashiers and no checkout lines. (That should provide some expediency for those who still leave their house to go shopping.)

+ Many years ago, my pal Jeff O'Keefe wrote an IBM commercial that predicted this kind of store.

This is my very important note to people in the media, along with anyone hoping to make sense of political news in this new era: Don't Be Distracted!

+ NPR is out with their lists of the top albums and songs of 2016. (That feeling when you realize you've aged into the NPR music demo...)

+ From Quartz: A former student is suing Oxford for $1 million for failing to make him rich and successful.