EU contest prize A Chinese student was awarded the third prize at the 30th European Union Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) in Dublin on September 18. It is the highest prize ever won by China since it began participating in the contest in 2003. Zhang Sijia, an 18-year-old student from China’s northeastern city of Changchun, won the third prize for her social science project named “Investigation into the verbal conflict problem existing in middle school students’ families,” which she completed after she graduated from middle school. Zhang is now a freshman at a university in China’s northeastern city of Harbin. Autonomous-driving tests Beijing has designated 11 more roads for autonomous-car testing, according to the Beijing Youth Daily. The 11 roads are located in Fangshan District. According to a notice released by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport, autonomous-driving cars must obtain a temporary number plate before they begin tests on designated roads. Autonomous driving cars have to complete 5,000 km of daily driving in designated closed test fields and pass assessments before they can get a temporary number plate. Better ties China on Thursday voiced the expectation for improvement of bilateral ties after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was re-elected as president of the Liberal Democratic Party. “We expect that Prime Minister Abe will continue attaching importance to the China-Japan relationship and work to improve bilateral ties in a sustained way,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said. Train passenger punished A woman who took another passenger’s seat on a high-speed train and refused to vacate* it has been banned from train travel for 180 days, China Railway Guangzhou Group said on Thursday. Railway police also fined the woman, surnamed Zhou, 200 yuan (US$29), the group said. A video posted online showed Zhou occupying a window seat on a train traveling from Yongzhou, Hunan Province, to Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, on September 19, when she was supposed to sit by the aisle. (SD-Agencies) | 