Tel Aviv - Israel will release 198 Palestinian prisoners Monday as a goodwill gesture to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a government statement Sunday said.

The release follows a cabinet decision of one week ago and includes two prisoners "with blood on their hands" - Israeli terminology for prisoners who have killed Israelis, and who Israel has previously refused to include in prisoners deals with the Palestinians.

The prisoners will be released as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to arrive for a visit to the region, during which she will meet Israeli and Palestinian officials and gauge the progress of the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, which resumed around the turn of the year.

Tbilisi - A 35-year-old woman was killed and a man was seriously injured when two landmines exploded near the Georgian city of Gori, media reports said Sunday.

Beijing, Aug. 23 : The Air Pollution Index (API) in the Olympic host city has dropped by over 20 percentage points compared with the same period last year, said an official here on Saturday.

The API declined from around 80 points last year to about 56 during the Olympic Games in August, said Du Shaozhong, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Bureau at a press conference.

Major air pollutants on average dropped 40 percent, with nitrogen oxide emission directly related to vehicles down by 61 percent, and inhalable particulate matters falling
40 percent, said Du.

Beirut - Lack of funds is threatening the work of teams working with the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre (UNMACC) in southern Lebanon to clear Israeli cluster bombs which were dropped over the area in the July 2006 war.

UNMACC spokeswoman Dayla Farran said some of the teams "will have to stop because the donors have failed to come up with a promised 4.7 million dollars needed to fund the program in 2008."

"A large number of the clearance teams will be stopping by the end of this month if funds are not ready before that," she said.

Tbilisi - Georgia's security council chief Alexander Lomaia confirmed Russian forces had left the strategic cities of Gori and Zugdidi in Georgia late Friday.

He added, however, that Russian troops had not unblocked checkpoints on a key highway between Tbilisi and Senaki, news agency Interfax reported.

Georgian media, meanwhile, reported explosions heard at Georgian military bases in Senaki, suggesting the ongoing demolition of Georgian military hardware by Russian forces.

Russia's army general staff said that troops were "in the final stage of pulling back," fulfilling President Dmitry Medvedev's pledge to pull out troops by Friday.