President Obama on Monday commuted the sentences of 153 prisoners convicted of federal crimes and pardoned 78 others, marking the largest act of clemency in a single day ever by a U.S. president.

White House Counsel Neil Eggleston said in a statement Monday that all 231 individuals who benefited from Obama's acts were "deserving," and that they "have all demonstrated that they are ready to make use — or have already made use — of a second chance."

Obama has commuted far more sentences than his predecessors, shortening 1,176 sentences over eight years, though he has pardoned only 148 prisoners. Eggleston said Obama would likely grant more commutations and pardons before he leaves office, which is in 31 days. Kimberly Alters

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, spoke with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace at a town hall event in New Hampshire on Sunday, and he didn't shy away from criticizing the network and its pundits. He singled out prime-time pundits Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham for remarks about immigrants. "There is a reason why anyone has to swallow hard and think twice about participating in this media ecosystem," Buittigieg said. "Even though some of those hosts are not there in good faith, I think a lot of people tune into this network who do it in good faith."

Trump had criticized Fox News, Wallace, and Buttigieg before the town hall, and Wallace asked Buttigieg how he plans to handle Trump's tweets and insults. "The tweets are ... I don't care," he said, to applause. Trump's twitter feed is very effective at grabbing the media's attention, he added. "It is the nature of grotesque things that you can't look away."

Responding to a question about restrictive new abortion laws, Buttigieg said he believes "the right of a woman to make her own decisions about her own reproductive health and her own body is a national right, I believe it is an American freedom." He said abortions in the third trimester should remain legal, too. "If it's that late in your pregnancy, then it's almost — by definition — you've been expecting to carry it to term," he said. "We're talking about women who have perhaps chosen a name, women who have purchased a crib, and families that then get the most devastating medical news of their lifetime," which "forces them to make an impossible, unthinkable choice. ... That decision is not going to be made any better medically or morally because the government is dictating how that decision should be made."

The crowd sent Buttigieg off with rousing applause. "Wow, a standing ovation," Wallace said, apparently surprised. Peter Weber

Thought Game of Thrones was going to go out without leaving one last modern beverage in a scene? Think again.

After a coffee cup was spotted in an earlier episode of the eighth season, fans once again found an out-of-place drink in the show's series finale. During one of the episode's most crucial scenes, a plastic water bottle can be seen near Samwell Tarly's foot — although at least this one is slightly more hidden than the coffee cup was.

Minutes later, what looks to be another plastic water bottle can also be seen nearby Davos Seaworth, apparently giving us not one but two beverage bloopers in a single scene.

After the now infamous coffee cup gaffe, HBO released a joking statement saying it was a mistake because "Daenerys had ordered an herbal tea." The network was quick to correct the error, though, and by Tuesday morning, the cup had been scrubbed from the scene. An art director for the show told Variety the situation was "so blown out of proportion" because such a mistake "has not happened with Thrones so far."

Little did we know it wouldn't even be the last time this season. Then again, this scene did occur immediately following a time jump, so perhaps the frantically-paced final season merely skipped over the introduction of plastic water bottles into Westeros. And given the fierce debate the divisive final episode has already sparked, a drink of water may be much needed for everyone involved. Brendan Morrow

Volodymyr Zelensky, a comic actor with no political experience who played an accidental Ukrainian president on TV, was sworn in as president on Monday. During his inauguration ceremony, Zelensky announced he is "dissolving the Verkhovna Rada," or parliament, setting up snap elections. Parliamentary elections had been scheduled for October, but Zelensky campaigned on cleaning out parliament of lawmakers he accused of corruption and self-enrichment. "People must come to power who will serve the public," he said on Monday.

Zelensky, 41, crushed outgoing President Petro Poroshenko in last month's presidential runoff election, earning 73 percent of the vote. In his inaugural address, Zelensky said his top priority is ending the five-year-old conflict with Russian-back separatists in Eastern Ukraine. "I'm ready to do everything so that our heroes don't die there," he said. "I'm ready to lose my popularly and, if necessary, I'm ready to lose my post so that we have peace." Zelensky gave his address in Ukrainian, but he switched to Russian to express his conviction "that for this dialogue to start, we must see the return of all Ukrainian prisoners."

Zelensky has released few details of his governing agenda, but he laid out a broad vision for Ukraine in his address. "We must become Icelanders in football, Israelis in defending our land, Japanese in technology," he said, and "Swiss in our ability to live happily with each other, despite any differences." Although he was trained as a lawyer before becoming a TV star, Zelensky gave a nod to his fame as a comedian. "Throughout all of my life, I tried to do everything to make Ukrainians laugh," he said. "In the next five years I will do everything so that Ukrainians don't cry." Peter Weber

The Trump administration is going to start unveiling its long-promised Israeli-Palestinian peace plan at a June 25-26 economic "workshop" in Bahrain, the White House announced Sunday. The conference, involving finance ministers and business executives, is being described as Phase 1 of the peace initiative, with the second part, dealing with difficult political solutions that have thwarted earlier peace attempts, being rolled out later this year.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will lead the U.S. delegation with Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law. Kushner and Trump's Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt have worked on the plan for two years.

The goal of June's conference is to secure tens of billions of dollars from wealthy Gulf Arab states and donors in Europe and Asia. The reported target of $68 billion would go toward infrastructure, industry, and government reform in the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon. "Just as they have done in their sometimes highly leveraged real estate businesses," The New York Times says, Trump and Kushner "hope to use other people's money to achieve their goals. The vast bulk of the funds they hope to generate as part of the plan would come from other nations, not the United States."

Middle East experts cast doubt on the efficacy of putting the economic carrots in front of the political thorns. Israel, whose government has only taken a harder line against Palestinians since the last election, is expected to send its finance minister. The Palestinian Authority, which has ruled out the Trump administration acting as peace brokers due to its pro-Israel leanings and actions, is not expected to send anybody. On Sunday, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the conference "futile," since "any economic plan without political horizons will lead nowhere," and any political plan that doesn't "include a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital" is a nonstarter. Peter Weber

John Oliver used his last Game of Thrones lead-in to discuss death. "Specifically, this story is about the people who investigate deaths when they happen," he explained on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. "And if you're thinking, 'I don't want to see that on TV,' are you completely sure about that? Because death investigators aren't just supporting characters on some of the most popular shows."

"In real life, every year about 2.8 million Americans die," Oliver said, and while doctors identify cause of death on most death certificates, "if someone dies under suspicious or unnatural circumstances, their body may be sent for further examination and possibly a forensic autopsy. That's what happens to about a half a million bodies each year, and those investigations are incredibly important. A death certificate isn't like a degree from USC — it actually means something." Autopsies are important in murder investigations, but they also highlight trends in drug deaths, help identify defective products, and warn of infectious disease outbreaks.

"So tonight, let's learn about our death investigation system, specifically how it works, why it's such a mess, and what we can do about it," Oliver said. First, medical examiners and coroners aren't synonymous — medical examiners must be doctors, coroners are often elected, with shockingly few qualifications. That's "frankly weird enough," he said, but "in some jurisdictions, the coroner is also the county sheriff, and that has led to some serious problems."

The medical examiner system is better, but there are problems there, too, Oliver said. "The resources crunch is so bad that some offices wind up outsourcing work to private contractors, and this is where this story gets absolutely incredible." He focused on one contractor. "Look, I know this issue is tempting to ignore — it combines two things that people hate thinking about the most: Death and municipal funding," he said. But he tried to make it palatable, roping in Beyoncé, Glenn Close's spleen, and Tracy Morgan. (There's NSFW language.) Peter Weber

All the major players in the intensifying standoff between the U.S. and Iran say they do not want war, usually with a caveat. On Sunday, Saudi Arabia's foreign affairs minister and the commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps both reiterated that their countries aren't looking for war but aren't afraid to fight, either. President Trump has similarly said he doesn't want war with Iran, but.

On Sunday afternoon, Trump tweeted: "If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!" Trump's threat to obliterate Iran may have been in response to initial reports of a rocket fired into the Green Zone in Iraq — the State Department confirmed Sunday night that a "low-grade rocket" landed harmlessly about a mile from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad — but Matthew Gertz at Media Matters has another theory:

Gertz had more evidence Trump was live-tweeting Fox News, including Trump's tweet attacking his favorite network for hosting Democrat Pete Buttigieg. Still, it's not like Trump has been silent about Iran over the past week. In a Fox News interview broadcast Sunday night, but recorded last week, Trump said he's "not somebody that wants to go in to war, because war hurts economies, war kills people, most importantly." But, he said, "I just don't want them to have nuclear weapons and they can't be threatening us."

"The current tensions are rooted in Trump's decision last year to withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and world powers and impose wide-reaching sanctions," The Associated Press reports. "Iran has said it would resume enriching uranium at higher levels if a new nuclear deal is not reached by July 7. That would potentially bring it closer to being able to develop a nuclear weapon, something Iran insists it has never sought." Peter Weber