Signatories of the Act of Independence of Lithuania recognition. The signatories succeeded in their mission and independent Lithuania survived until the Soviet Union occupied the state on June 15, 1940. Their political, professional, and social backgrounds were diverse. Several rose to political prominence; Antanas Smetona and Aleksandras Stulginskis were later elected Presidents of Lithuania and Jonas Vileišis went on to become mayor of Kaunas, the temporary capital of Lithuania. After Lithuania lost its independence during World War II, six of the surviving signatories were sent to prison or executed by the Soviet government and six others emigrated to Western countries. The signatories came from a variety of social
United States recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel the primate of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, Patriarch Theophilos III, widely regarded as the most senior Christian figure in Jerusalem, and twelve other church leaders in the Holy Land sent a letter to Trump warning that his move “w[ould] yield increased hatred, conflict, violence and suffering in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, moving us farther from the goal of unity and deeper toward destructive division”. Apart from Theophilos III, the letter was signed by heads of Jerusalem's Syrian, Armenian, Ethiopioan and Coptic Orthodox patriarchates as well as the Roman Catholic Church's Apostolic Administrator for Jerusalem (the Latin Patriarchate