KUWAIT: Kuwait University (KU) announced yesterday increasing the minimum acceptance rate for student's enrollment in the academic year 2017/2018, only one day after Minister of Education and Minister of Higher Education Dr Bader Al-Essa denied intentions to do so next year. According to the new decision, high school students in the scientific sector must finish with at least a GPA of 75 percent to be eligible for enrollment in two years, while arts sector's students must finish with at least a GPA of 80 percent. The minimum enrollment limit remains the same for the 2016/2017 academic year - 70 percent for the scientific sector and 78 percent for the arts sector.

Blackouts

Municipal Council member and head of Farwaniya committee Nayef Al-Sour condemned what he described as 'massive blackouts' in some areas over the past two days because of the extreme heat during the daytime, despite reassurances by Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) officials who claimed that power supplies are secure this summer. Sour added that people in those areas were not even warned or notified before the outages, that if they happened for regular maintenance. Accordingly, he urged MEW to explain the reasons for these blackouts.

Not found

A police force that had been surrounding Sheikh Athbi Al-Fahd's house to arrest him yesterday left the house perimeter because he was not there. Notably, the force had raided the former state security chief's diwaniya in Abu Al-Hassaniya but did not find him there, so they went to his house and besieged it. A court has sentenced Sheikh Athbi, Sheikh Khalifa Al-Ali and Ahmed Al-Dawoud to five years in prison with labor each in the 'Fintas Group' case.

Statistics

The citizen services department at the Public Authority for Housing Welfare issued a report with statistics about transactions done in May, noting that 20,904 transactions were processed without any petitions made to Housing Minister Yasser Abul.

By Meshaal Al-Enezi