Finally, the elephant stables, 12 chambers that would have fit two elephants each, now stand empty and silent.

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The pigeon houses riddling the rock faces, traditionally used to collect the birds' droppings for use as fertiliser, mostly stand empty.

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In some areas of Croatia, houses held by the special property agency stand empty, waiting for decisions to be taken.

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Several stand empty, as do at least four of the six former state juvenile prisons that were shuttered two years ago.

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The offices of the electoral commission stand empty.

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Just over the border in Rwanda, two refugee camps set up by United Nations agencies and the Rwandan government stand virtually empty.

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"Allowing this armory to remain empty and stand as a symbol of the abandonment that once plagued the Bronx was simply unthinkable, " Bloomberg said as he stood in the chilly, vaulted, four-acre-plus expanse that was the armory's drill floor.

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In the north-east both Middlesbrough and Sunderland have built impressive new stadiums, which stand in splendid isolation amidst a lot of empty ground.

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The seats, which will be placed in the empty parts of the East and Family Stand, were all snapped up on Friday morning.

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Some houses are already coming down and whole streets stand boarded up, but if you look more closely, not every house is empty.

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