The rules of the competition are simple: the award goes to whoever in my opinion -- assisted by climate scientists and specialists -- managed in the course of 2009 to cram as many misrepresentations, distortions and falsehoods into a single online article, statement, lecture, film or interview about climate change.

The first contestant was the man after which this beautiful trophy was named, the famous strangler of facts, the Telegraph Terror, Christopher Booker. In just one short column in the Sunday Telegraph, he managed to drop six and a half clangers. I thought that would set a high bar for the other contestants. How wrong I was.

The Indonesian government has announced plans to sell tigers as pets for £67,000 a pair in what it claims is a move to protect the critically endangered species.

However, environmental groups have criticised the scheme as a money-making scam that will do nothing to save tigers, which face an increased risk from poachers on the eve of the Chinese Year of the Tiger.

Three people have already applied to follow in the footsteps of Michael Jackson and Mike Tyson and keep a tiger as a pet.

The criteria for taking ownership of 30 available tigers is having a spare billion rupiah (£67,000) and a minimum of 5 sq kilometre of land on which to keep the animals.

The government said the tigers would be constantly monitored in their new homes and any mistreatment would be punished by fines or jail.

The future of the EU's Low Carbon Revolution hangs in the balance as it becomes likely its emissions targets will be delayed again.

The ongoing uncertainty is rooted in the EU's offer to the Copenhagen climate summit of a 30% emissions cut.

But this was dependent on "comparable effort" from other big polluters.

Observers say there is a world of difference between the upper and lower targets - but Europe still hasn't decided how high to aim.

A cargo of highly radioactive nuclear waste set sail for Japan last night, after a breakthrough agreement that will cut Britain's stockpile of high-level waste by almost 40 per cent over the next decade.

After years of planning, a programme to repatriate all 925 tonnes of foreign atomic waste from Britain to Japan and four other countries began yesterday.

Under heavy security, 28 steel canisters of waste, each weighing half a tonne but sheathed in 100-tonne steel flasks, were moved by rail from the Sellafield plant in west Cumbria, where they have been held in temporary storage since the 1990s, to the port at Barrow-in-Furness. There they were loaded on to the Pacific Sandpiper, a custom-built, double-hulled ship that will be protected by armed guards throughout the six to eight-week sea journey to the Far East.

Members of the German government and leading utility providers are set to begin negotiations in Berlin on Thursday over a possible extension of the lifespans of the country's nuclear power plants. The government says it would funnel profits from the reactors towards promoting renewable energies.

One of the biggest poker games in recent German history was set to begin on Thursday in Berlin as the government begins to negotiate a partial retreat from the country's 2001 move to abandon nuclear energy.

Ronald Pofalla, Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff, invited the executives responsible for nuclear power at Germany's top four energy utility companies as well as senior officials from the Economics and Environment ministries for top-level meetings about the future of atomic energy in the country. The government is playing down the importance of the meeting, with the Economics Ministry describing it as "routine." Participants belong to the so-called Monitoring Group, a panel formed by the former government of Gerhard Schröder's center-left Social Democrats and the Green Party to monitor Germany's atomic energy phase-out at regular intervals.

But Thursday's meeting is actually far more spectacular because the exact opposite of the Schröder government's policy will be at issue: reversing the phase-out, an issue that divides Germany like few others. The meeting isn't scheduled until Thursday evening, but anti-nuclear organizations planned protests in front of the Chancellery in the capital throughout the day.

WASHINGTON -- For the first time in the history of the Clean Air Act, the federal government has reached settlements that will require a glassmaker and a cement company to add pollution controls at all their plants across the country.

Lafarge, the nation's second largest maker of Portland cement, and Saint-Gobain Containers, the second largest manufacturer of glass containers for beverages and foods in the U.S., agreed to add up-to-date pollution control devices, accept emissions limits and pay penalties to settle complaints that they violated the law.

There have been similar company-wide settlements for air pollution violations for coal-fired power plants, the largest source of air pollution, but this was the first such settlement in the cement and glass sectors, which also rank near the top as big pollution sources.

The settlement will require the companies to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. The pollutants are known to trigger asthma and other respiratory problems, contribute to heart disease, cause acid rain and damage water quality.

The Environmental Protection Agency has targeted coal plants, oil refiners, and cement and glassmakers for enforcement of air pollution rules known as "new source review," which require companies to add modern pollution controls when they expand or upgrade.