US town grows money from trees during pandemic downturn

A sign at Tenino Coffee Bistro in Washington state announces the shop accepts the city's wooden money, created to help businesses hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. [AFP]

Tenino had become a ghost town, and small businesses were struggling to survive amid the coronavirus pandemic, so local officials revived an unconventional idea from the last century: printing the town's own currency on thin planks of wood.