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Facebook, in partnership with Microsoft and several academics, has launched a contest to help people to better detect "deep fakes" - realistic videos of real people doing or saying fictional things to mislead the viewer. The social media giant is investing $10m [€9m] in "The Deepfake Detection Challenge", which will include a dataset, a leaderboard, grants, and awards, to encourage industries to create "fact-checking" techniques to prevent AI manipulation.

The new Italian foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, said to a gathering of Italian diplomats that migration will be his priority and that Italy will "overcome" the Dublin agreement, according to La Repubblica. Under the Dublin agreement, European members states agreed that migrants and refugees should ask for asylum in the country where they are first registered. Italy is Europe's main entry point for migrants.

European countries that avoid repatriating ISIS fighters and put them on trial in their country of origin threaten the regional security in Syria, warned the US defence secretary Mark Esper. Thousands of ISIS fighters, many from Europe, are held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in north-east Syria. EU nationals are mostly from France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, and Sweden, according to a research.

Irish opinion leaders reacted angrily on the visit of US vice-president Mike Pence to Ireland earlier this week. In a statement Pence declared: "Let me be clear: the US supports the UK decision to leave the EU in Brexit". As the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is at the centre of the Brexit debate, one Irish Times columnist wrote that Pence had "shat on the carpet".

"There is [...] a worrying pattern of attacks on critical civilian infrastructure, including health facilities, schools and water facilities by the Syrian regime and its allies and such attacks have to stop," an EU spokesperson told Anadolu newsagency. For four months the Syrian regime, supported by Russia and Iran, has bombed the north-western region of Syria, killing at least 1,000 people, even though they earlier declared it a demilitarised zone.

President-elect of the European Council, Charles Michel, said in a speech to EU ambassadors that the "European Union should play a leading role on the global stage". He stressed that only by acting "boldly and confidently" Europe will avoid becoming a victim of the competition between the United States and China which is "defining today's international relations". The approximately 150 EU ambassadors were gathering for their annual meeting in Brussels.

Experts from several organisations say that reform of the Energy Charter Treaty, proposed by the EU Commission, will make it difficult to meet the targets agreed in the Paris Agreement - making it an obstacle to the clean-energy transition.

The EU's judicial cooperation agency, Eurojust, launched a counter-terrorism register Thursday, which will give investigators and prosecutors an overview of criminal proceedings against suspects in EU countries. "Terrorists operate more and more in cross-border networks, the EU must do the same," Eurojust's chief, Ladislav Hamran, said. The database cooperation idea gained momentum after the 2015 Paris attacks, when suspects linked to the attacks were traced across other EU states.

Facebook confirmed that 419 million "old" records, containing users' phone numbers, names, genders, and countries, were exposed in an open database, the technology website TechCrunch reported. The data leak includes 133 million records on Facebook users in the US, 18 million on people in the UK, and more than 50 million in Vietnam. The database was taken offline, but it is unclear who pulled the data from Facebook.

A British gang forced some 300 Polish people into "slavery" by luring them with offers of work, then taking their passports, forcing them to live in squalid conditions, and threatening to kill them if they escaped, according to a BBC documentary to be aired on Thursday. The British police have spent the past four years bringing the human traffickers to justice, the British broadcaster said.

Turkey "will be forced to open the gates" to Syrian refugees fleeing to Europe if international powers did not create a "safe zone in Syria for them instead, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan told party officials on Thursday. "We cannot be forced to handle the burden alone," he said. He spoke amid concern that Russian and Syrian attacks on rebels in Syria's Idlib province could prompt a new mass exodus.

EU Commission president-elect Ursula von der Leyen will present her team of commissioners next Tuesday (5 September), she announced on Twitter Thursday. "I am happy to have received all names from EU member states. Now looking forward to assembling a well-balanced College which I'll present on Tuesday," she wrote. The UK did not put forward a candidate for commissioner. The parliament will begin the commissioners' hearings later in September.

British prime minister Boris Johnson's brother has announced he is resigning as an MP and government minister, citing irreconcilable differences between his family loyalty and the national interest. Jo Johnson has been a Conservative MP for nine years, and is currently a minister for business. It comes in a bad week for the PM, who has lost votes on a no-deal Brexit and a snap election.

The upper chamber of the UK parliament - the House of Lords - has agreed to pass the rebel bill from MPs blocking any no-deal Brexit by Boris Johnson's government. In the early hours of Thursday, members were told the bill would return to the House of Commons on Friday, where it is expected to pass, preventing any attempt to talk out the bill by the House of Lords.

MPs took control of Brexit after pushing through a bill aimed to prevent a no-deal Brexit, while Johnson's call for early elections has also been defeated.

European commissioner for trade, Cecilia Malmstrom said she hoped that the US plans on raising tariffs on European cars would not be implemented because "we think it's not based on facts". President Donald Trump said he would impose these tariffs based on a loophole in international trade agreements in case of a national threat. Malmstrom added that cars "are not a security threat to you, it's based on normal trade".

Gulf tensions have intensified, with Iran to speed up nuclear enrichment after US scorns French-led EU diplomacy.

Former MEP Elmar Brok will advise European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker on EU relations with Ukraine, the Politico news website has reported. The German Christian Democrat was chair of the foreign affairs committee of the European Parliament for several terms. According to the EU commission, he will advise on "strategy and priorities in relations with Ukraine in the aftermath of the country's presidential and parliamentary elections earlier this year".

The German chancellor's visit to China starts Thursday. She must signal to Beijing that Europe is serious and united in its newly critical approach to China - and show Washington that there are less destructive ways to deal with differences.

Wealthy EU nations should spend more to help central banks protect the economy, the likely next head of the European Central Bank (ECB) has said.