Dubai declared on Saturday it now boasts the world's tallest building, with the Burj Dubai (Dubai Tower) scraping the sky at 512.1m (1,680ft) a year before its slated completion.
The Burj Dubai, built by South Korea's Samsung, now stands at 141 storeys, outstripping Taiwan's Taipei 101 which rises a modest 508m (1,667ft). Developer Emaar Properties is keeping tight-lipped on the $1bn structure's final vital stats, but says it will eventually be "more than" 700m (2,296ft) tall and have "more than" 160 storeys.
This reluctance to divulge the full facts may be a response to rival local developer Nakheel, which has announced it will build the equally inspirationally-titled "Al-Burj" (The Tower) - "whose projected height also remains a closely guarded secret", as the Gulf Times puts it....