Japan to build tallest wooden skyscraper

Tokyo: A Japanese company is planning to build a 350 metre high wooden skyscraper in Tokyo by 2041, making it the world’s tallest wooden building. Sumitomo Forestry estimates that the cost of the building, which will have 70 floors, will be around $5 billion, almost twice the cost of a conventional building. The W350 tower will be 90 per cent wooden and 10 per cent steel. IANS

Million trees pledged for Trump Forest  

Washington: More than one million trees have been pledged for Trump Forest, a bid by environmentalists to offset the US President’s curtailing of clean energy initiatives by planting 10 billion trees around the globe. “Donald Trump doesn’t believe in the science of human-caused climate change,” reads the website for the project. “So we’re planting a forest to soak up the extra greenhouse gases Trump plans to put into our atmosphere.” IANS

Plants arose 100 mn yrs earlier than thought  

London: The first plants to colonise the Earth originated around 500 million years ago — 100 million years earlier than previously thought, says a new study. For the first four billion years of Earth’s history, our planet’s continents would have been devoid of all life except microbes. All of this changed with the origin of land plants from their pond scum relatives, greening the continents and creating habitats that animals would later invade. IANS

$258,000 fine for cheating at self-service till  

Berlin: A German man has been fined 208,000 euros for cheating at a supermarket self-service till. Munich’s district court convicted the 58-year-old businessman for trying to pass off 47 euros worth of veal liver as cheaper fruit. The man had done the same thing three times before. The court based the high fine on the man’s monthly income of 24,000 euros. He was released from jail, where he had been held since the theft in December. AP