In today’s Bulldog wrapup of science and technology news:

  • Panel urges better cybersecurity to President-elect Trump 
  • In Macedonia’s fake news hub, teen shows AP how it’s done
  • Nations OK European Space Agency’s mission to Mars in 2020
  • China to US: Avoid politics in purchase of Germany’s Aixtron

​The details:

  • Panel urges better cybersecurity to President-elect Trump

A presidential commission on Friday made 16 urgent recommendations to improve the nation’s cybersecurity, including creating a nutritional-type label to help consumers shop wisely and appointing a new international ambassador on the subject — weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The release of the 100-page report follows the worst hacking of U.S. government systems in history and accusations by the Obama administration that Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election by hacking Democrats.

The Presidential Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity urged immediate action within two to five years and suggested the Trump administration consider acting on some proposals within its first 100 days.

The commission recommended that Trump create an assistant to the president for cybersecurity, who would report through the national security adviser, and establish an ambassador for cybersecurity, who would lead efforts to create international rules. It urged steps, such as getting rid of traditional passwords, to end the threat of identity theft by 2021 and said Trump’s administration should train 100,000 new cybersecurityworkers by 2020.

Other ideas included helping consumers to judge products using an independent nutritional-type label for technology products and services.

“What we’ve been doing over the last 15 to 20 years simply isn’t working, and the problem isn’t going to be fixed simply by adding more money,” said Steven Chabinsky, a commission member and the global chair of the data, privacy and cybersecurity practice for White & Case LLP, an international law firm.

  • In Macedonia’s fake news hub, teen shows AP how it’s done

On the second floor of a noisy sports center in the Macedonian town of Veles, a teenage purveyor of fake news cracked open his laptop and laid out his case for why lying is more lucrative than the truth.

Real news gets reported everywhere, he argued. Made-up stories are unique.

“The fake news is the good news,” the 18-year-old said, pointing to a graph showing his audience figures, which reached into the hundreds of thousands, a bling watch clasped firmly around his wrist. “A fake news article is way more opened than any other.”

As President Barack Obama, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, journalists and academics argue over the impact of social media-driven propaganda on the latest American election, this sleepy former manufacturing town overlooking the Vardar River in central Macedonia has found itself increasingly drawn into the debate.

BuzzFeed News identified Veles as a hub of the fake news industry seeding sensationalized or falsified information across Facebook. A reporter from Britain’s Channel 4 News chased the industry’s adolescent kingpins across town, cornering one 16-year-old fake news baron who said he had no plans to stop — even though he acknowledged it was wrong.

But there were no such qualms from the teenager who spoke to The Associated Press at Veles’ Gemdidzii Sports Hall.

He showed the AP how he ripped much of his material off The Political Insider, a right-wing news site that produces a steady drumbeat of pro-Donald Trump pieces. He then flipped over to Google Analytics, an audience tracking tool, to show that he’d managed to gather more than 685,000 page views a week.

  • Nations OK European Space Agency’s mission to Mars in 2020

Nations have approved an additional 440 million euros ($469 million) to fund the European Space Agency’s next mission to Mars.

As part of the ExoMars mission, the agency this year sent an orbiter and a test lander to the red planet. The Trace Gas Orbiter was successfully deployed but the Schiaparelli lander malfunctioned and crashed on the surface/a of Mars, raising fears about the next stage of the mission.

Despite the crash, officials meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland, on Friday approved the budget that ESA said it requires to send a rover to Mars in 2020.

In all, member states approved 10.3 billion euros ($10.95 billion) in funding for the agency, which will also allow it to continue participating in the International SpaceStation program until at least 2024.

  • China to US: Avoid politics in purchase of Germany’s Aixtron

China appealed to Washington and Berlin to avoid injecting politics into the proposed takeover of a German maker of semiconductor manufacturing equipment following a report President Obama plans to oppose it as a security risk.

The proposed 670 million euro ($740 million) acquisition of Aixtron SE by Fujian Grand Chip, a semiconductor maker, is “normal business activity,” said a foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang.