What happened
The Trump administration is preparing to move Greg Bovino, the senior official overseeing Border Patrol operations in Minneapolis, following intense criticism over his response to the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents. The expected reassignment comes days after Bovino alleged, without evidence, that Pretti intended to “massacre” police – a claim later undermined by video footage of the encounter. 

Who said what
Donald Trump announced he was sending his border czar, Tom Homan, to Minnesota to take charge locally and report directly to him. 

Unusually, the White House avoided a “Minneapolis tirade” yesterday amid signs that “Trump is backing down”, said David Smith in The Guardian. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, tried to “distance Trump” from the initial response to the latest Minnesota killing which has posed “one of the gravest political threats to President Trump since his inauguration”, said Luke Broadwater and David E. Sanger in The New York Times.

What next?
Minnesota officials are pressing for a state-led investigation and limits on federal enforcement operations, as judges consider challenges to the deployment of thousands of agents.

What happened
Videos from Iran have provided stark evidence of a violent crackdown on nationwide protests, showing bodies stacked inside hospitals, armed personnel firing on streets and surveillance cameras being smashed. The footage, analysed by BBC Verify despite a near-total internet shutdown, dates from 8 and 9 January, believed to be the deadliest period so far after calls for mass demonstrations across the country.

Who said what
Human Rights Activists News Agency said it had confirmed almost 6,000 deaths since unrest began in late December, most of them protesters, and is examining reports of thousands more. Iran Human Rights warned the eventual toll could pass 25,000. 

There are currently “huge discrepancies in the numbers due to the internet shutdown”, UN rapporteur on Iran Mai Sato told Le Monde. “According to Iranian authorities, the death toll is just over 3,000, including security forces”.

What next?
With access to the internet still severely restricted, further evidence is expected to surface gradually via satellite links and VPNs, potentially shedding more light on the scale of the violence.

Indonesia’s vast archipelago is covered with the fingerprints of human history: ancient cave paintings. 

But on an island just off Sulawesi, archaeologists have now identified the world’s oldest known example of rock art to date: the outline of a handprint. Using new laser techniques, scientists dated the faded red imprint back to “at least 67,800 years ago”, said the study, published in Nature. That’s about 1,100 years earlier than hand stencils in Spain, previously thought to be the oldest (although that’s disputed).

Crucially, the tip of one finger appears to have been deliberately “narrowed”, researchers say, creating a “claw-like effect” that suggests complexity of thought – and a Homo sapiens artist. The finding adds to growing evidence challenging the “Eurocentric views of ancient intelligence that once dominated archaeology”, said National Geographic. 

Many archaeologists believed art and abstract thinking “burst suddenly into life in Ice Age Europe and spread from there”. They argued for a mental “big bang” in Europe, because cave paintings, carvings and new tools “all seem to appear together in France and Spain about 40,000 years ago”. As Adam Brumm, who co-led the fieldwork on Sulawesi, said: “When I went to university in the mid to late 90s, that’s what we were taught.”

But a “new consensus is being shaped”, said the BBC. A series of discoveries in South Africa and Sulawesi has “overturned the old idea” and suggested “a much deeper and more widespread story of creativity”. 

We’re seeing “traits of modern human behaviour, including narrative art”, in Indonesia, said Brumm. That makes the “Eurocentric argument very hard to sustain”.