Iran has said it has replied to a US peace proposal, on a day when a month-old ceasefire showed signs of fraying, with drone strikes reported around the region.

Iranian state media reported that the Iranian response had been passed to Pakistani mediators, without giving further details. The announcement came a week after the US presented a peace proposal, which was reported to consist of a one-page 14-point memorandum of understanding that would reopen the strait of Hormuz while setting a framework for further talks on Iran’s nuclear programme.

The memorandum was itself a response to an earlier Iranian proposal. That also envisaged the lifting of parallel US and Iranian blockades on the strait, which have been driving up oil prices and stifling the global economy, with an emphasis on the lifting of sanctions and the release of frozen Iranian assets.

The announcement of a new response from Tehran came on a day when the Pakistan-brokered ceasefire, which came into effect on 8 April, showed new signs of strain. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait reported drone incursions in their airspace on Sunday, and a drone attack started a small fire on a ship on the coast of Qatar.

Another drone strike was reported at a camp used by an Iranian Kurdish rebel group near Erbil in north-eastern Iraq.

Qatar’s defence ministry did not give details of the vessel targeted on Sunday, other than that it had come from Abu Dhabi. The UAE defence ministry said it had shot down the drones which entered its airspace, and which it said were Iranian.

Kuwait’s defence ministry spokesperson said its forces had dealt with drones which entered the country’s airspace early on Sunday, “in accordance with established procedures”, without attributing responsibility for the incursion.

Tensions have flared under the truce as both the US and Iran have sought to assert their control of the Hormuz strait. On 4 May, Donald Trump launched what he called “Project Freedom”, which was supposed to provide a route out of the Gulf for the hundreds of ships trapped by the war.

Iran, which closed the strait after the initial US-Israeli attack on 28 February, responded with attacks on US naval vessels, commercial vessels and oil facilities in the UAE, a close ally of the US and Israel.

Trump called off Project Freedom after 36 hours and the passage of just two US-flagged ships. Saudi Arabia had refused permission for US forces to use its bases and airspace for the operation.

Tehran has insisted that all ships passing through the strait coordinate with its armed forces and pay a $2m (£1.5m) toll. On Sunday, Iranian state media reported that a Panama-flagged vessel bound for Brazil had been allowed to sail through the strait.

Qatar denounced the strike on a ship in its territorial waters as a “serious escalation”. The country’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, told Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, that using the strait as a means of exerting pressure would only deepen the crisis, and that freedom of maritime navigation should not be compromised.

Two critical issues which will be the heart of any future nuclear talks between the US and Iran are the suspension of Iranian uranium enrichment and the disposal of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), which could be used to make about a dozen nuclear warheads. In an interview on Iranian state media late on Saturday, a military spokesperson said the country’s forces were at “full readiness” to protect the stockpile.

“We considered it possible that they might intend to steal it through infiltration operations or heliborne operations,” Brig Gen Akrami Nia said.

The UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, believes at least half the stockpile is deeply buried in Isfahan. Trump is reported to have been presented with military options for seizing the HEU, but the operation would have required a large number of troops and would have taken weeks.

Trump has said that the current ceasefire includes Lebanon, and has told Israel to stop the bombing of Hezbollah targets there. Israel has reduced the intensity of its campaign but has continued to carry out strikes.

Lebanon’s health ministry reported that 36 people had been killed and 74 wounded by Israeli strikes on Saturday. Among the casualties were several paramedics wounded in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said, meanwhile, that it had intercepted Hezbollah drones approaching its troops in the area.

Investors in JP Morgan have been urged to vote in favour of splitting the role of chief executive and chair at America’s largest bank, amid concerns over the power wielded by its billionaire boss Jamie Dimon.

ISS and Glass Lewis, which issue advice to some of the world’s biggest fund managers on how to vote at annual investor meetings, have thrown their weight behind a shareholder resolution that would ensure two separate people hold the office of chair and chief executive “as soon as possible”. Investors are due to vote on the resolution at the bank’s annual general meeting on 19 May.

Dimon, who is worth an estimated $2.6bn (£1.9bn), has held the dual role for two decades. Holding the two most senior roles in a company is widely frowned upon in corporate governance circles, particularly in Europe, but not banned.

“The size and complexity of JP Morgan suggests that it is difficult for any one person to run both the company and the board,” ISS said in its shareholder report.

“The board is responsible for overseeing management and instilling accountability, and conflicts of interest may arise when one person holds both the chairman and CEO positions, thereby leading both the management team and the board which oversees it,” ISS said. “Effective board oversight may be enhanced by independent leadership.”

Glass Lewis said that an independent chair would be “better able to oversee the executives of the company and set a pro-shareholder agenda.”

The guidance has put the proxy advisers on a collision course with Dimon, who has held the chief executive and chair roles at JP Morgan since 2005 and 2006, respectively.

The two firms have long been in Dimon’s crosshairs. He has accused Glass Lewis and ISS of having too much sway over shareholders, particularly when it comes to social and environmental issues. Dimon – seen as the world’s most powerful banker – has also taken a patriotic stance, highlighting that neither firm is American-owned. Glass Lewis and ISS are owned by Canadian and German firms, respectively.

The battle has also made its way to the White House. Trump in December signed an executive order aimed at reining in Glass Lewis and ISS, which he claimed were using their power “to advance and prioritise radical politically motivated agendas”.

JP Morgan (JPM) has since shunned their use at its asset management arm, which is instead using its own internal AI-powered platform to help decide how to vote at the annual general meetings of companies held in its portfolios, according to the Wall Street Journal.

JP Morgan is urging investors to oppose the shareholder proposal – brought by an individual retail investor – to split the chair and chief executive roles, and has written public letters to Glass Lewis and ISS urging them to overturn their recommendations.

The bank said there was no evidence that companies with independent chairs performed any better than rivals, adding that any suggestions an independent chair would be better at overseeing executives and setting a pro-shareholder agenda “omits any reference to or consideration of JPM’s strong record of absolute and relative outperformance versus peers”.

The proposal revives a long-running debate over whether board independence is compromised by combining the roles, which are typically split at companies across Europe.

While JP Morgan’s board has said they intend to separate the two roles after Dimon steps down, ISS said there was “a clear possibility” he would stay on as chair, meaning the effectiveness of any lead independent board member would be overshadowed.

The bank said in its correspondence with Glass Lewis that the proxy adviser was looking to “undercut the flexibility the JPM board needs to design a leadership structure that enables orderly transition during management succession events, which does not promote shareholders’ interest”.

The bank said the current leadership structure “has overseen long-term, strong financial performance and continued, meaningful progress against key initiatives and effective execution on strategic priorities. “We believe that these results are tangible evidence of the board’s commitment to shareholder interests.”

A spokesperson for JP Morgan said the bank did not have any further comment.

Within just a few weeks, the Trump administration has proposed multiple contradictory policies related to overdose prevention – some that could help save lives and others that experts say could further strain health resources and put people at risk for overdose.

These policies include a new prohibition on funding for fentanyl test strips, which help people avoid overdoses; proposed budget cuts that would gut the country’s overdose prevention efforts; and an ambitious drug control strategy that will be impossible to implement if the aforementioned cuts go through.

An April letter from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Samhsa) indicated the agency would no longer fund test strips for fentanyl and other dangerous adulterants that are “intended for use by people using drugs”. Dr Nabarun Dasgupta, director of the University of North Carolina’s Opioid Data Lab, said defunding test strips “is a win for the cartels”, noting that it will take away people’s ability to identify impure products and flag it to their dealers.

This is the latest in a series of Trump administration attacks on harm reduction – a public health strategy first pioneered by Aids activists that helps people reduce the inherent risks that come with sex and drug use. Over the past few years, public health departments across the country have helped people prevent overdoses by ramping up harm reduction interventions such as test strips, which allow people to test their drug supply and avoid overdosing; nasal naloxone, an easy-to-administer nose spray that can reverse opioid overdoses; and public health messaging to “never use alone”, which helps ensure someone is there to administer naloxone in case of an overdose.

The Trump administration appears to be stripping away these interventions one by one.

In January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) moved to block “never use alone” messaging while simultaneously ensuring that it would still consider supporting fentanyl test strips. Now Samhsa is stripping funding for fentanyl test strips, which can help people avoid overdosing altogether, while emphasizing that it will continue to support naloxone access. Dasgupta said it was ironic that the administration is agreeing to fund medication that can reverse an overdose, but not test strips that can prevent the overdose from happening in the first place.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Dasgupta said.

The picture gets even more confusing in the context of the Trump administration’s other recent policy announcements. In April, it proposed budget cuts that, if enacted, would strip away $10bn in funding for addiction and overdose prevention and research, according to the Drug Policy Alliance. The following month, the White House announced an ambitious National Drug Control Strategy.

Maritza Perez Medina, director of federal affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, said she agrees with many aspects of the strategy, which expands access to naloxone and treatment, but questioned: “If you support these things, then why are you defunding them?”

Medina said that Medicaid cuts under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will already lead hospitals to close and reduce the availability of addiction treatment.

For this policy to be implemented, Congress will have to reject Trump’s proposed budget cuts, says Richard Baum, former acting director of the White House’s national drug control policy under Trump and others. The apparent contradiction between the two proposals stems from a lack of coordination between government agencies. Baum said that the drug control policy is largely informed by the office of national drug control policy, whereas the office of management and budget is behind the White House’s budget proposal.

The drug strategy includes initiatives to expand technology to help with drug interdiction, as well as wastewater surveillance to help track what’s in the drug supply. The Trump administration has cut funding for similar initiatives in the past. Dasgupta finds the focus on wastewater surveillance particularly perplexing given the attack on test strips. Wastewater contains urine that can provide clues as to what drugs people are taking, but it’s not a complete picture.

“Things that disappear in urine, like nitazines, will not be showing up in wastewater at any reliable level,” Dasgupta said.

Nitazines are ultra-potent synthetic opioids that have become more common in the drug supply in the wake of international crackdowns on fentanyl.

“The drug supply changes from hour to hour in the same location, and what your individual patient is taking is not something that you can just guess from the aggregate,” Dasgupta said. Tools that allow individuals to check their drugs, like test strips, can actually help people change behavior and avoid danger.

Medina agreed that with test strips “they may choose not to take that drug. They may choose to use slower. They may choose to use with a friend.”

The White House and the office of national drug control policy did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.

Dasgupta pointed to individual drug-checking services, including test strips and more advanced mass spectrometry testing, as more in line with precision medicine and the latest in medical technology than wastewater surveillance. Notably, he called the drug strategy “kind of weak sauce”, because it emphasizes technology that was cutting edge a decade ago. He added: “We have better tools now.”

The year is 2025 and far-right coup plotters have annihilated Brazil’s democracy, assassinating the president, closing the national congress and surrendering the Amazon rainforest and its untold riches to the United States.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Amazon of America,” a thick-accented North American soldier tells a group of journalists being taken on a propaganda tour of an oil refinery in the newly annexed jungle realm. Nearby, a replica of the Statue of Liberty has been carved out of the wilderness to celebrate Washington’s tutelage over more than half of Brazil.

The scenes are taken from Vitória Régia (Amazon Water Lily), a new short film that imagines what might have happened had Jair Bolsonaro’s plot to seize power after the 2022 election been successful.

In real life, the coup conspiracy flopped after rightwing insurrectionists rampaged through Brasília in a bungling attempt to overturn the result. Bolsonaro and his accomplices were tried and jailed.

The alternative reality presented to viewers in Vitória Régia offers a nightmarish snapshot of a future that Brazil may have escaped by the skin of its teeth – but that some fear could still lie ahead.

After the “green and yellow dagger revolution” wipes out Bolsonaro’s rivals, the military takes power, censoring the media, purging ideological “deviants” and transferring control of the Amazon to Washington in exchange for it having supported the coup.

Brazilian reporters such as the film’s lead character, Carol (played by the award-winning actor Alice Braga) are barred from entering the rainforest region without a visa, and a news blackout is imposed to stop details of the environmental calamity leaking out. Communications are cut and Indigenous leaders disappear.

Harold Goldman, the boss of an oil firm called Amazon X, celebrates Washington’s dominion over the rainforest’s natural resources, boasting to the cameras: “Olá amigos! Today marks a new chapter in the historic relationship between the United States of America and the beautiful nation of Brazil.”

The director, Denis Kamioka, known as Cisma, said the film was shot in March 2025, nearly a year before Donald Trump ordered Nicolás Maduro’s abduction as part of a plan to “take back” Venezuela’s oil. “It was frightening the extent to which reality and fiction became mixed up … We were constantly competing with reality,” he said.

Braga, who threw herself into Indigenous and environmental activism after first visiting the Amazon a decade ago, said: “It was crazy. We were making a fiction film … but then the US ended up taking this political stance with Trump … and the film became almost a documentary.”

The 21-minute movie was made with the collaboration of two Indigenous networks, Coiab and Apib, to highlight the threats facing Brazil’s Indigenous peoples and champion their centuries-long quest to defend their traditional lands.

Ywyzar Tentehar, 23, an Indigenous actor who plays a key character, said she hoped the project would draw attention to an ongoing onslaught she first witnessed while growing up in Buritizal, a village in the eastern Amazon where the Guajajara people live. “Today my territory is demarcated but loggers, ranchers and land-grabbers continue to invade … and nothing is done,” Tentehar said.

The Amazon’s already fragile future once again looks in peril as Bolsonaro’s politician son Flávio is poised to challenge the leftwing incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for the presidency this year.

During Jair Bolsonaro’s 2019-23 administration, his anti-environmental and Indigenous policies prompted soaring deforestation and a gold rush into Indigenous lands. Activists fear such rampant destruction may return if another Bolsonaro wins power. Others fret over the future of South America’s largest democracy if a rightwing president pardons those who were jailed for their role in the failed 2022-23 coup.

In another real-life echo of the film, Flávio Bolsonaro was recently accused of offering the US access to Brazil’s rare-earth reserves – some of the world’s largest – in exchange for help in October’s election.

Braga said: “I’m really worried. I really hope people properly study the candidates rather than taking the same journey that led us to Bolsonaro’s election a few years ago … not just the presidential candidates but the ones for congress too.”

Pedro Inoue, a graphic designer and activist who is one of the film’s creators, said the film, partly inspired by a counterintuitively hope-filled climate disaster novel called The Ministry of the Future, was not all doom and gloom. Its pop aesthetic and stirring soundtrack were designed to counter despair with an upbeat message about the power of Indigenous resistance, he said.

“They are the past, the present and the future. They are the ones who have the answers about dealing with the end of the world because they’ve been dealing with it for more than 500 years.”

Kamioka hoped Vitória Régia, which is named for the lily-shaped symbol used by Indigenous dissidents in the film, would serve as “an alert about what could happen when it comes to sovereignty, Indigenous resistance and democracy itself”.

He said: “This isn’t a film about a distant future. That’s the scariest part. It’s about something that’s happening right now.”