According to British newspaper The Telegraph, Arsene Wenger and the Gunners were considered Lukasz Piszczek to replace Bakary Sagna. Since his contract expires in 2014 and a only recently he did not close the door on a move to Paris-Saint-Germain or AS Moncao, it appears like Bakary Sagna is close to leaving Arsenal.

The Israeli Airforce shot down a drone (a plane that has no pilot and is remotely controlled) nearby Haifa in the north of the country. The Israeli government is accusing the Lebanese Hezbolla of being responsible for the aircraft. Lebanese Hezbollah has denied the claim through a message released in their official television channel. It all happened at the start of midday. Israeli radars detected the drone a little after one o’clock. Two F-16 fighers then received the order to destroy the drone, which is exploded in flight less than ten kilometers from the Israeli coast.

The coach of Dortmund, Jurgen Klopp, devalued the fact that Jose Mourinho had went to watch his team play on Saturday. The Portuguese manager of Spanish club Real Madrid, Dortmund’s upcoming European opponent, saw Klopp’s club win 6-1, but the German manager said that the information Mourinho collected will be futile for him: “He will return home with information that will not serve him in the next two weeks,” he said.

After fighting against pneumonia and being discharged from hospital less than one week ago, Nelson Mandela saw his name being involved in a new battle, this time for his inheritance. Two daughters of the former South-African president are trying to win in court control of portion of the assets of their father. Makaziwe and Zenami are accusing George Bizos and two other people of unduly occupying Mandela’s two investments funds. The value of the assets are believed to reach up to 1.7 million.

The Senate in France approved on Friday a project that legalizes same-sex marriage. The vote in the higher chamber of Parliament, where the majority are of the socialists of the president Francois Hollande, happened despite large protests from the public. Opponents of the law, the majority of them conservatives and evangelicals, wanted to maintain the traditional concept of marriage. The French justice minister, Christine Taubira, one of the biggest supporters of the project, said that the reform recognizes the large growth that has already happened with parents of the same sex in the country and that they deserve the same protections to marriages formed by a man and woman.

The ongoing crises in North Korea and Syria dominated the meeting between foreign affairs ministers of the G8 nations currently ongoing this Thursday in London. For the German chancellor, the threats of North Korea are elevating the tension and the “war rhetoric needs to stop”. Guido Westerwelle said that all the ministers of the group – comprised by the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia – share the same conviction.

The extremist front al Nusra, who oppose the Syrian regime, said that they are loyal to the terrorist network of Al Qaeda but clarified that they are not dependent on their network and they are not unified with the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda. In audio revealed on the internet, Abi Mohamed al Yulani, identified as the leader of al Nusra, said that his group should have respect for the leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Uhuru Kenyatta took control on Tuesday as the fourth president of Kenya in a stadium crowded with tens of thousands of Kenyans and dozens of African leaders. The fifty one year old Kenyatta is the son of Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of the country. The president of Uganada and the new vice president of Kenya used the crowning ceremony to attack the alert made by the ICC (International Criminal Court) and the US before the elections that a victory of Kenyatta could bring “consequences” to Kenya.

Politicians from around the United Kingdom paid tributed to Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister who died on Monday April 8 in London, and highlighted the importance of her legacy. Known as the “Iron Lady”, Thatcher rose to power in 1979 and stayed in power for eleven years until 1990. The British Prime Minister David Cameron, who was informed of the news while in Spain, changed his entire schedule to return to the UK and suspended his trip to Paris and his meeting with the French president.

The general-secretary of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, declared that the world must adopt by 2015 a new climate accord to reduce green house gas emissions or “it will be too late to save the environment”. According to him, close to ninety objectives related to environmental questions were adopted by the international community in the last twenty years. However, not even a tenth of the measures managed to accomplish significant progress. “Our standards of consumption are incompatible with the health of the planet,” he said.