WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is back on the bench after an unexplained one-day absence.

Thomas, 75, was in his usual seat, to the right of Chief Justice John Roberts as the court met to hear arguments in a case about the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Thomas has ignored calls from some progressive groups to step aside from cases involving Jan. 6 because his wife, Ginni, attended then-President Donald Trump’s rally near the White House before protesters descended on the Capitol. Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist, also texted senior Trump administration officials in the weeks after the election offering support and reiterating her belief that there was widespread fraud in the election.

On Monday, Roberts announced Thomas’ absence, without providing an explanation. Justices sometimes miss court, but participate remotely. Thomas did not take part in Monday’s arguments.

He was hospitalized two years ago with an infection, causing him to miss several court sessions. He took part in the cases then, too.

Thomas is the longest serving of the current justices, joining the Supreme Court in 1991.

• Greece plans to establish two large marine parks aiming to safeguard biodiversity and marine ecosystems.
• Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the expansion of marine protected areas by 80 percent will involve banning harmful fishing practices and implementing new monitoring technologies.
• Greece intends to build marine parks in the Ionian and Aegean Seas, covering over 30 percent of its waters.

Greece aims to create two large marine parks as part of an $830 million program to protect biodiversity and marine ecosystems, with the plans to be formally announced at an international oceans conference starting in Athens Tuesday.

But the plan has irked Greece’s neighbor and regional rival, Turkey, while environmental organizations say the initiative doesn’t go far enough, noting that the country also allows environmentally harmful practices such as energy exploration in sensitive marine environments.

“We are increasing the size of our marine protected areas by 80%, banning harmful fishing practices and using new technologies to monitor and enforce the commitments we make here,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said ahead of the conference.

IS THIS TECHNOLOGY THE ANSWER TO CLEANING UP OUR OCEAN’S PLASTIC PROBLEM?

The two-day international meeting being held in Athens aims “to catalyze global action against two overlapping crises, the climate crisis and the crisis of our ocean,” Mitsotakis said. “Countries have come with specific proposals to take decisive action.”

With thousands of islands and islets and one of the longest coastlines in the Mediterranean, Greece has said it will create one new marine park in the Ionian Sea and one in the Aegean Sea, bringing the total area of marine protected areas to over 30% of its waters.

But environmental organizations have called for stronger commitments to environmental protection.

Under a slogan of “The sea is not for sale,” Greenpeace urged leaders attending the Our Ocean Conference in Athens to take concrete measures to protect the world’s marine environment.

CORAL REEFS AROUND THE WORLD ARE EXPERIENCING MASS BLEACHING IN WARMING OCEANS, SCIENTISTS SAY

The conference “must not be simply an opportunity for governments to congratulate themselves for what they have said until now,” said Nikos Charalambidis, head of Greenpeace in Greece. “On the contrary, this must be where serious steps and action plans are presented to prevent the looting of our seas.”

Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and other organizations have leveled particular criticism at Greece for allowing deep-sea seismic exploration for energy and mineral resources in the Hellenic Trench, which includes the deepest waters in the Mediterranean at more than 5,200 meters (17,300 feet).

The trench, which stretches from southwestern Greece to Crete, is a vital habitat for the Mediterranean’s few hundred sperm whales and for other marine mammals already threatened by fishing, ship collisions and plastic pollution.

Asked whether the Greek government planned to extend protection to the entirety of the Hellenic Trench, Theodoros Skylakakis, Greece’s minister for both the environment and energy, stressed that adapting to a green economy requires significant funds over the coming decades.

“We need to be a lot more efficient in everything we do. And not trigger our reaction by ideology but rather trigger it by science, by efficiency and by investment,” Skylakakis said. “And for that, we will need money. If anybody thinks we can meet this challenge of paying for the adaptation … and at the same time don’t have economic growth, they don’t live in this world.”

Greece’s plan for the two marine parks has also irked its neighbor and regional rival Turkey. When the plan was initially aired last week, Turkey’s foreign ministry accused Athens of exploiting environmental issues to push its geopolitical agenda. The two countries, both NATO members, have been at odds for decades over a series of issues, including territorial claims in the Aegean, and have reached the brink of war three times in the last 50 years.

Relations have improved somewhat over the past year following a period of heightened tensions that saw the two countries’ warships facing off in the eastern Mediterranean. But Ankara responded with annoyance to the plan for a marine park in the Agean.

“It is known that Greece has long been trying to benefit from almost every platform in the context of Aegean problems,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said. “Despite the recent softening in our relations, it appears that Greece is exploiting environmental issues this time.”

Greece’s foreign ministry retorted that Ankara was “politicizing a clearly environmental issue.”

Controversial small-business envoy Markus Pieper now won’t take up duties at the European Commission – but the scandal takes place at a sensitive time in Brussels.

A decision to hand a lucrative €20,000-a-month official post to Pieper, a member of the same German political party as Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, could have complex repercussions ahead of European elections due in June.

In a statement posted on X, Pieper himself said the role had been “abused for party political reasons”, and accused EU Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton of having “boycotted” his appointment.

“Things will look different after the European elections with the foreseeable new majorities,” Pieper added – suggesting that future Commission official recruitments could be influenced by June elections projected to see a rise in support for right-wing parties.

Sources close to Breton said Pieper’s allegations were “ludicrous at best”, while Commission Chief Spokesperson Eric Mamer declined to comment.

But Mamer was candid that pre-election turbulence has played a role, after MEPs voted 382-144 in favour of rescinding the appointment.

“The context in which this whole procedure has evolved in recent weeks is not serene,” Mamer said. “Waiting for the end of elections will bring us to a point in time where the procedure can take place in a better environment.”

The Pieper hire drew controversy given allegations he scored worse on assessment tests than other candidates, and was not supported by Breton, the portfolio Commissioner for the role, in apparent contradiction to official senior appointment guidelines.

Piepergate comes at a sensitive time

It comes at a key moment in Brussels, with changeovers pending at both Commission and Parliament.

Von der Leyen is currently campaigning for a second five-year term in office as candidate of the centre-right European People’s Party.

According to most polls, the EPP will likely come first, but she’s unlikely to win an outright majority. To be voted into office, she’ll almost certainly have to form some kind of coalition with the MEPs currently her rivals.

And those lawmakers are certainly making hay from the scandal.

Von der Leyen “went too far” in appointing Pieper, and “his resignation was the only way out of the unbearable situation” she and the EPP had created, said a post on X by the Socialists and Democrats, the Parliament’s second biggest party. The EPP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Though Piepergate won’t change the price of butter, EU hiring crises can sometimes have an outsize impact.

Long ago in 1999, a previous Commission president, Jacques Santer, was forced to resign after a scandal in which one of his Commissioners hired a dentist to a senior advisory position.

And in a speech last week, the EU’s Ombudsman, responsible for investigating cases of maladministration, highlighted “some causes for concern” in the politicisation of official roles.

Though she didn’t refer to the Pieper case directly, Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly said “there has also been an overt political evolution in the outlook” of the Commission’s most senior decision-making body, and warned that “this drift toward overt politicisation might extend deeper into the workings of the system.”

Mamer said today that “there is no reason” for O’Reilly to probe the Pieper case further, as the Commission “respected all of the relevant procedures when it came to the selection process.”