Devastating report into the failures of police and care agencies to protect teenage girls who have been groomed, raped and sold by male gangs, most of whom are Asian.

The mother of one teenager from Leeds, who attempted suicide after a gang rape, said her daughter was the victim of a 'broken system.'

'Everyone failed her,' she told The Times. 'There was no sharing of information. 

'They (police) had the names and knew where they (abusers) worked yet the men who did this have never once been arrested or spoken to by the police.'

West Yorkshire Police vowed to look again at the case to see if 'there is evidence that can help bring evil men to book'.

Growing worry: CCTV footage shows now jailed gang members Mohammed Romaan Liaqat and Abid Mohammed Saddique meeting girls as they cruise the streets of Derby in a BMW

Jailed: Saddique, left, and Liaqat, right, were leaders of the paedophile ring in Derby and committed a catalogue of offences against vulnerable young girls

Children's charity Barnardos has been calling on the Government to take action on child exploitation since January with its Cut Them Free campaign.

 

 

 

Other caregivers have also suggested that political sensitivities are to blame for a near paralysis of the systems designed to keep children safe.

JOSIE'S STORY

Like most little girls, Josie lived for horses. She had an exemplary school record with 100 per cent attendance rate.

But at 13, the teen from Keighley, West Yorkshire, was given a laptop and quickly became addicted to Facebook.

Her father was then warned his daughter was spending a lot of time with older Asian men.

One even told the father he would 'slit his throat' when he answered the phone to him.

From there it got worse. Josie started disappearing overnight and began drinking. 

Yet, when her father locked his daughter in her room to protect her, it was he who got into trouble with the police for false imprisonment.

He told The Times he has since collected every scrap of evidence to prove his daughter is being sexually exploited by gangs.

'The police kept saying that they're waiting until Josie realises it's wrong,' he said.

'Is that really the best they can do?

CHARLOTTE'S STORY

When the father of 14-year-old Charlotte looked at his daughter's Facebook profile, he discovered 'loads of male, Asian friends.'

Concerned, he started to restrict his daughter's activities. The teen from Keighley, West Yorkshire, then went to live with her mother.

He tracked down all the names and addresses of her friends he believed were involved and passed them on to police.

Meanwhile her school was reporting Charlotte had begun arriving looking 'dirty and extremely thin'. 

She was going missing for days at a time, according to agency notes.

By October last year she 'admitted she has slept with different Asian males.'

The police told Charlotte's father they hoped to take action against the men.

That was 17 months ago and he is still waiting.

'There's no will to deal with this issue in Keighley' he said.

'What chance have these kids got if that's the attitude of the police?'

There is a culture 'which assumes that once a girl gets to 14 she's beyond hope of intervention - it's too late,' a source told The Times.

Police and care agencies often say that they cannot take action against suspects without the victim's co-operation. 

However, a 2008 protocol established by the force and West Yorkshire's five local authorities states: 'Adults involved in child sexual exploitation... should be treated as child sex abusers and subjected to the full rigour of the criminal law.'

NICOLA'S STORY

Nicola is the only case in six who was groomed by a gang of white men. 

The abuse began when she was 12 after a visit to Leeds from her family home in Bradford.

Nicola had thought they were 'really nice people' but by 13 she was doing drugs - 'everything but heroin'.

She was raped twice. The first time she was 'drugged up to the eyeballs' and remembers being dragged into a bedroom and gang raped.

Afterwards her mother took Nicola to the police station, only to be told that 'we don't deal with that here'.

In desperation Nicola's mother took her daughter to New Zealand and away from the gang.

She let her return four months later. 

Nicola did return to her old haunts but discovered it wasn't really what she wanted.

'I used to think it was so exciting,' she told The Times. 'But after New Zealand, it was like seeing them with another pair of eyes.'

She hasn't been back since.

Children's minister, Tim Loughton, suggested two weeks ago that the plan will call on councils to act with a 'much greater urgency' to identify victims of sexual exploitation while taking 'robust action against those who commit these appalling crimes.'

As well as the gang rape case of the girl in Leeds, five new cases have been highlighted by The Times' investigation.

No one has been prosecuted for sex exploitation in any of them. Only one of the girls in the six cases had been in care. 

One was groomed by white students, but in all the other cases, the perpetrators were Asian, mostly of Pakistani origin.

This pattern of abuse at the hands of male Asian gangs in the West Yorkshire area has been highlighted before, but never formally acknowledged.  

In January the Asian ringleaders of a gang in Derby, who brought a ‘reign of terror’ to a city’s streets, targeting and grooming young girls for horrific sexual abuse, were jailed.

Abid Saddique and Mohammed Liaqat were told they would serve a minimum of 11 years and eight years respectively before they could be considered for release.

A DfE spokesman refused to reveal the contents of the National Action Plan but said: 'We are publishing an action plan this week and that will draw on work around the country to prevent sexual exploitation, identify those at risk and support victims.

'It will address the challenge of securing prosecutions and the need for robust action against perpetrators.

Don't just book it, Thomas Cook it. So runs the slogan. Would you

 

Don't just book it, Thomas Cook it. So runs the slogan. Would you? Here's interim (that's reassuring) chief executive Sam Weihagen doing his safe-as-houses routine: "It's business as usual. We are trading within all our covenants. We have all the protection in place like any other travel company, and customers should not worry at all." Well, not quite like any other travel company. Thomas Cook of course holds an Air Travel Organisers' Licence from the Civil Aviation Authority which means customers should get their money back in the event of calamity. But the simple fear of being stranded a week after passengers of Austria's Comtel Air had to bribe pilots with £20,000 just to return to Birmingham is bound to unsettle would-be customers. There's a circle at work here and it is vicious. Given the choice between a similarly priced holiday with Thomas Cook or, say, Thomson, why would you risk the former? To counteract this, Thomas Cook might have to slash prices. That will eat into margins, cut profits and put banking covenants at risk. It might very quickly find it needs to borrow even more money. The company insists: "This is a robust business that has a strong future". We'll see.

Gang targets wealthy diners

 

Diners at some of the city's most popular restaurants had their credit card details stolen by waiters working for gangs, who targeted customers with American Express black cards, then spent millions of dollars on expensive clothes and vintage wine, it is alleged. The cards of wealthy customers at Smith & Wollensky, the Capital Grille and Wolfgang's Steakhouse restaurants were allegedly "skimmed" and used to buy Rolex watches, Jimmy Choo shoes and Chanel handbags. Almost 30 people have been charged with crimes, including racketeering, conspiracy and grand larceny, after the alleged fraud ring was broken by police in Manhattan. Seven waiters at the restaurants are alleged by prosecutors to have been recruited by Luis Damian "D.J." Jacas, the 41-year-old alleged ringleader, and equipped with card-copying devices. They were instructed to focus on customers with premium credit cards, including the American Express black card, so that expensive purchases would not trigger alerts to customers. "The thieves were very selective, waiting until they were handed cards with extremely high or unlimited credit," said Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance.

private jets waved through customs and immigration checks

Home Secretary Theresa May (Pic:PA)

THERESA May was fighting for her job last night after damning new documents fuelled the scandal of lax security at our borders.

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Leaked emails showed that thousands of private jet passengers were allowed into the UK without going through immigration or customs.

They also revealed the Home Secretary relaxed checks at airports on at least 2,500 occasions this summer.

And the Mirror can reveal passport applications are being secretly subjected to a controversial new “postcode lottery” trial scheme.

The High Risk Applications scheme is based on fraud statistics. Staff were given a list of postcodes to check against every new passport application or renewal. Applicants in areas deemed to be higher risk face several weeks additional delay in getting their passports.

In London, the only areas which get virtually no checks are postcodes that begin with WC and EC – the most central and prosperous areas. Meanwhile applications from women aged 50 and over are often waved through.

A source said: “It’s a classic Tory policy, and it discriminates against those they deem to be living in ‘poor’ areas.

“The whole thing smacks of elitism and snobbery. A lot of people are very unhappy with the process.”

These revelations come on the day ousted Border Agency official Brodie Clark gives evidence to MPs on how he was pushed out by Mrs May.

Borders boss Brodie Clark

Labour yesterday released the leaked emails showing UK Border Agency staff were told NOT to check passengers arriving in the UK by private jets – at the instruction of the Home Office.

From March 2, 2011, anyone on a private charter did not have to show their passports and could avoid customs. Figures show there are between 80,000 to 90,000 private flights each year, carrying two to three passengers.

The emails show an unnamed official at Durham Tees Valley Airport warned the UK Border Agency that the policy was putting the UK’s security at risk.

He said that staff “continue to feel uneasy about an instruction that is at odds with national policy and is creating an unnecessary gap in border security which, if exploited by the unscrupulous, could bring the Agency into disrepute”.

He also warned there was no way of checking if the number of people arriving in the country was the same as they had been advised.

His manager at the UK Border Agency’s Border Force said the “no checks policy” was part of a “new national strategy”.

In a further blow to Mrs May, other leaked documents showed how Britain’s borders were abandoned on hundreds of occasions over summer.

The Home Secretary ordered a pilot scheme, which ran from July to October this year, under which Border Agency staff could relax checks on passengers. It meant people arriving from the European Economic Area did not have the biometric chip in their passport checked, while children under 18 could be waved through.

These “level 2 checks” were used on at least 2,600 occasions. The relaxed regime was used to speed up queues at immigration control.

According to an email from a Border Agency Border Force official, the checks were relaxed 100 times in the first week of the trial and more than 260 times in the sixth week.

We revealed last week that officials warned Mrs May the easing of border checks could lead to a rise in child trafficking.

Mrs May admits to bringing in the pilot scheme without informing MPs. But she claims that Mr Clark went further by extending it to include passengers from outside Europe.

Mr Clark, who resigned last week, denies he acted without ministerial authority. His testimony to the Commons select committee could prove very damaging to Mrs May.

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said last night: “This is startling new information about the scale of the borders fiasco.

“Ten days on there are even more questions than answers about what on earth was going on at our borders.

“Last week the Home Secretary told us no one had been waived through without checks. But these documents show passengers on private flights weren’t even seen.

"Last week the Home Office wouldn’t admit to having figures about how often checks were downgraded. Now we know those figures exist and that checks were downgraded 260 times in one week alone.

“The Home Secretary needs to show she is capable of sorting this fiasco out rather than making it worse.”

Last night, the Home Office refused to comment on the trial.

The UKBA said: “It is not true that we don’t carry out ­passport and warnings checks on private flight passengers and will deploy officers to airfields where we have concerns.”

I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! contestant Freddie Starr has been taken to hospital after suffering a severe allergic reaction in the jungle

I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! contestant Freddie Starr has been taken to hospital after suffering a severe allergic reaction in the jungle. According to the Daily Mail, Starr started feeling sick after completing the Greasy Spoon Bushtucker trial with The Only Way Is Essex star Mark Wright and doctors were called to assess the 68-year old's condition. An ITV spokesman has since confirmed the comedian's illness, stating: "Freddie Starr was taken unwell in the jungle. He was immediately attended to by on-site medics and taken to hospital where he was assessed by doctors." They added: "He will remain in hospital overnight as a precaution, and further tests continue. However, Freddie is in great spirits and keeping nursing staff entertained." A show-insider Down Under also explained to the newspaper that Starr's bout of ill-health has nothing to do with his well-documented heart problems, explaining: "Doctors have told us that it’s highly unlikely that what’s happened is related to any pre-existing condition, cardiac or otherwise." "They think he’s had a severe allergic reaction, but they may not be able to pinpoint the cause. The reaction could be due to a spider bite, he might have reacted badly to a leech or a tic, or even a snake he hadn’t noticed." They continued: "He might have reacted badly to the bark of a tree he leant on, or a leaf he touched in passing. Doctors are testing all of these things. The jungle is an alien environment for most of us, but the show is always prepared for all eventualities and this is no exception." "The unpredictability of the jungle is what sets this programme apart from other shows. The element of jeopardy is always there. However, the  celebs are watched 24-hours a day by a huge team of people." The Mail's source added: "There are dozens of cameras on the celebs, as well as 24-hour security in the camp and a huge crew around them. There are also on-site medics around the clock." As for weather the gruesome bug eating task was to blame, the mole claimed: "The foods are all tested on people before they reach the celebrities." "Extreme precautions are taken and bush tucker like the cockroaches are all bred hygienically. It’s unlikely that this is the cause of his reaction, but tests are continuing and we can't rule out anything."

I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! contestant Freddie Starr has been taken to hospital after suffering a severe allergic reaction in the jungle. According to the Daily Mail, Starr started feeling sick after completing the Greasy Spoon Bushtucker trial with The Only Way Is Essex star Mark Wright and doctors were called to assess the 68-year old's condition. An ITV spokesman has since confirmed the comedian's illness, stating: "Freddie Starr was taken unwell in the jungle. He was immediately attended to by on-site medics and taken to hospital where he was assessed by doctors." They added: "He will remain in hospital overnight as a precaution, and further tests continue. However, Freddie is in great spirits and keeping nursing staff entertained." A show-insider Down Under also explained to the newspaper that Starr's bout of ill-health has nothing to do with his well-documented heart problems, explaining: "Doctors have told us that it’s highly unlikely that what’s happened is related to any pre-existing condition, cardiac or otherwise." "They think he’s had a severe allergic reaction, but they may not be able to pinpoint the cause. The reaction could be due to a spider bite, he might have reacted badly to a leech or a tic, or even a snake he hadn’t noticed." They continued: "He might have reacted badly to the bark of a tree he leant on, or a leaf he touched in passing. Doctors are testing all of these things. The jungle is an alien environment for most of us, but the show is always prepared for all eventualities and this is no exception." "The unpredictability of the jungle is what sets this programme apart from other shows. The element of jeopardy is always there. However, the  celebs are watched 24-hours a day by a huge team of people." The Mail's source added: "There are dozens of cameras on the celebs, as well as 24-hour security in the camp and a huge crew around them. There are also on-site medics around the clock." As for weather the gruesome bug eating task was to blame, the mole claimed: "The foods are all tested on people before they reach the celebrities." "Extreme precautions are taken and bush tucker like the cockroaches are all bred hygienically. It’s unlikely that this is the cause of his reaction, but tests are continuing and we can't rule out anything."

Gaga may once again have offended the pious as she emerged as a decapitated corpse from a confession box

Gaga may once again have offended the pious as she emerged as a decapitated corpse from a confession box, and that too with a crucifix in the background. No doubt the elaborate attire came off as she began to perform and came to a more natural avatar of fishnet stockings and a black lace bodice.

The Grammy-winner was clearly excited about performance when she tweeted earlier, "So excited to perform Marry The Night on X Factor UK tonight! Will sing my head off for England!! Almost time X-FACTOR! Also get ready monsters cuz #MarryTheNight officially impacts radio next week! Thanku to stations that added it early!"

Now we realise she meant it quite literally!

 

 

THE mother of missing Madeleine McCann said yesterday she still wished she could “stop time”.

03:44 | THE mother of missing Madeleine McCann said yesterday she still wished she could “stop time”.

 

Poignant: Kate McCann

 

Kate McCann, who marked the fourth anniversary of Maddy’s disappearance in May, said she and husband Gerry would not give up on finding their little girl.

In a poignant message on the Maddy search website, she wrote: “My grandparents always said the years pass more quickly the older you get. It certainly feels that way. I still dream of being able to stop time.

“Our only alternative however is to continue doing as much as we can to the best of our ability to enhance the search for Madeleine. So that is what we’ll do.”

She added: “It is a big relief that our Government finally agreed to a review. It will be lengthy and difficult but definitely a major step.”

Maddy was nearly four when she vanished from her family’s holiday flat in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007.

Ex-policeman jailed over VAT fraud

 

former police officer who admitted his part in a £365 million VAT fraud has been jailed for 10 years and three months. The conspiracy that Nigel Cranswick directed has taken the equivalent of 25 years of work to investigate, Judge Brian Forster said. The 47-year-old ex-South Yorkshire Police officer was a director of Ideas 2 Go, and, despite its modest base in a Sheffield business park, he claimed it bought and sold £2 billion worth of goods in just eight months. He has since admitted that the firm's trading, largely in mobile phones and computer software, was fictitious, and the aim was to generate paperwork from fake sales in order to claim back a fortune in VAT from HM Revenue and Customs. Judge Forster, sitting at Newcastle Crown Court, said: "This case concerned planned dishonesty resulting in the loss to the Revenue in the region of £365 million. "There were purported sales of billions of pounds. "The prosecution rightly described the case as an unprecedented attack on the Revenue. "The case has taken 25 man-years to investigate." Cranswick was recruited to play his role in the MTIC (missing Trader intra-community) fraud by others. Also known as carousel fraud, it involves importing goods from other EU states which are then sold through contrived business-to-business transactions. Cranswick, of Danby Road, Kiveton, Sheffield, admitted conspiracy to cheat HMRC at a hearing last month. After the sentencing, Exchequer Secretary David Gauke said: "This Government will not tolerate dishonest people stealing public money. "This sentence shows that those who try to commit fraud need to think again - HMRC will find you and the courts will punish you. "The additional £917m we have invested in HMRC will see more cases like this successfully prosecuted, sending a clear and powerful message." The judge said the sentencing exercise was to punish the offending and deter others. "The figures in this case are astonishing, they reveal the blatant nature of the fraud," he said. Between June 2005 and February 2006, I2G supposedly carried out almost 6,000 deals, with a turnover of £2.4 billion. Sentencing Cranswick, the judge said: "You were immediately before this fraud a serving police officer. Almost unbelievably you retired from the police force and became the organiser of this fraudulent operation. "You set up the company, you clearly accepted the direction of others - the organisers who are not before this court." Outside court, HMRC said Cranswick went "from rags to riches" soon after retiring, having been heavily in debt as a police officer. A spokeswoman said: "He made lavish improvements to his home, rented a luxury apartment in the Spanish town of Marbella and paid for private schooling and tennis lessons for his children. "Cranswick claimed that in the first six weeks of trading Ideas 2 Go had turned over more than £527 million. "The company had traded over £47 million before they even got round to opening a bank account for the business." HMRC assistant director for criminal investigation Paul Rooney said: "As a police officer Cranswick knew full well that he was breaking the law, yet, motivated by greed, he chose to overlook it for the opportunity of making what he wrongly assumed would be easy money. "He now has to pay a very high price for his poor judgment and lack of integrity. "This was a sophisticated fraud designed to steal hundreds of millions of pounds of tax, but it started to unravel when our investigations identified sales for more than 50,000 mobile phones, which the manufacturers hadn't even begun producing in their factories." Cranswick nodded as the judge passed sentence, and gestured to members of his family in the public gallery as he was led away. Also sentenced after admitting conspiracy to cheat the Revenue were Thomas Murphy, 27, of Dinnington, who was jailed for four and a half years; Cranswick's brother-in-law, Darren Smyth, 42, from Beech Road, Maltby, and Brian Olive, 56, from Buttermere Close, Doncaster, who were sentenced to three years and four months each; and former housing officer Andrew Marsh, 28, from Sheffield, who was jailed for two years and eight months. Cranswick's 44-year-old sister, Clare Reid, married to Smyth, was handed a nine-month sentence, suspended for 18 months, and ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work after admitting two counts of false accounting. Cranswick styled himself as a singer-songwriter and can be seen on his website strumming a guitar to a song called Hit And Miss with the opening lines: "I'm in trouble, falling down a hole. How I got here, I won't ever know." He was lead singer with an indie band called Not The Police.

How a Financial Pro Lost His House

 

ONE night a few years ago, when the value of our home had collapsed, our debt was out of control and my financial planning business was shaky, I went to take out the trash. He wrote a book based in part on lessons learned by losing his Las Vegas home in the housing crisis. There was this enormous window that looked right in on the kitchen table, and through it I could see my wife, Cori, and our four children eating dinner. It was dark outside, so they couldn’t see me, and I just stood there looking at them. After a while, I pulled up a bucket and I sat on it, just watching my children eat. I found myself wishing that I could get back there, connected to the simple ordinary stuff of my family’s life. And as I sat and watched, filled with longing and guilt, two questions kept arising: How did I get here? And how am I going to get out of this? There are many stories these days of people who lost their financial bearings during the housing boom and the crisis that followed, but my story is a bit different from most. I’m a financial adviser. I get paid to help people make smart financial choices, and I speak and write about personal finance issues for this publication and others. My first book comes out in January, “The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things With Money” (Portfolio, a Penguin imprint). The thing that few people know, though, is that I learned a lot of this from experience. I made a bunch of mistakes, the very same ones that I now go around warning people to avoid. So this is the story of how I lost my home, the profound ethical questions that arose along the way, and what my wife and I learned from the mistakes that led us to that point. It made me better at what I do, but it wasn’t much fun getting there. Like most financial stories, this one is personal. It starts with me getting into the financial services industry more or less by accident. I answered an ad in 1995 that I thought was for a job related to “security” (as in security guard) but was in fact related to “securities.” That’s how little I knew about the stock market. A few months later I found myself working a phone at a Fidelity Investments call center. Things went well, and by 1999 I was a Merrill Lynch financial adviser and a certified financial planner. By then, we also owned a house in Salt Lake City. We’d bought it two years earlier, with a $25,000 down payment. A few years later, an opportunity arose to form a partnership with a successful Merrill adviser in Las Vegas. The place was on our top 10 list of never-move-to cities because we had always associated it with the Strip. But Cori and I were looking for an opportunity to have an experience somewhere else, and we met some great people when we visited the city. I took the job, and we moved down there. That was May 2003. Housing prices were already crazy, so we rented. But our neighborhood had zero character and lots of cookie-cutter houses. Within a few weeks, we were looking for a place to buy. I felt we could afford around $350,000. We called a real estate agent named Mitch, who had signs on all the bus stops: Talk to Mitch! He picked us up in a gold Jaguar, and suddenly we were looking at houses that listed at $500,000 or more. It felt a little crazy to be shopping for houses that cost half a million dollars, but my income was growing rapidly. Everywhere I looked, people were being rewarded for buying as much house as they could possibly afford, and then some. There was this excitement in the air, almost like static. I started to think that if I didn’t buy a house right then, I would never be able to afford one. At moments during our house hunt, I felt in my gut that something wasn’t right. We’d go to open houses for $400,000 homes and see lines of couples in their late 20s — younger than we were — waiting to get inside. I kept wondering where all the money was coming from. How did all these people make so much?

BOTTOM five most hated airports

5. Ninoy Aquino International, Manila, Philippines

 

Wear a helmet -- the first collapsed ceiling in 2006 at Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

Beleaguered by ground crew strikes, unkempt conditions, soup kitchen-style lines that feed into more lines and an overall sense of futility, NAIA brings the term “Stuck in the 1970s” to a new level.

 

At Terminal 1 all non-Philippine Airlines remain crammed despite serious overcapacity issues and a new and underused Terminal 3 is occupied by a few minor carriers. 

A rash of bad press this year (including a “Worst in the World” ribbon from Sleeping in Airports) was capped by a collapsed ceiling in T1, a paralyzing ground service strike at T2, and the usual charges of tampered luggage, filthy restrooms, seat shortages at gates, re-sealed water bottles sold in retail shops and an Amazing Race-style check-in routine spiked with bureaucracy, broken escalators, lengthy Dot Matrix passenger lists and creative airport departure fees. 

Read more on CNNGo: World's busiest airports announced

4. Toncontín International, Tegucigalpa, Honduras

 

Over-priced corn chips will be the least of your worries.

When do the most common airport gripes about inefficiency, uncomfortable gate chairs, dirty floors and lousy dining options suddenly become irrelevant? When you’re preoccupied about whether your 757 will actually be able to stop before the runway does. 

 

Nestled in a bowl-shaped valley at 957 meters above sea level, Toncontín’s notoriously stubby, mountain-cloaked landing strip was recently lengthened another 300 meters following a fatal TACA aircraft overshoot in 2008.

Not enough though to avoid being named the “second most dangerous airport in the world” by the History Channel. 

Nepal’s hair-raising Tenzing-Hillary Airport in the Himalayas is the top seed, but receives fewer gripes from its thrill-seeking Everest-bound clientele.

Read more on CNNGo: Shanghai Pudong International Airport: Fifth best in the world

3. London Heathrow, London, England

 

"You'll fly through departures -- at the speed of a penguin."

Depending on which of Heathrow’s five terminals one is funneled through, the average experience at the world’s third-busiest airport ranges from mildly tedious to "Fawlty Towers" ridiculous. 

 

With its rash of -- as they were politely called -- “teething problems” in bright and airy T5 (remember that riotous grand opening with 34 canceled flights?) and nicely matured problems in Ts 1, 2 and 3, the issues passengers are beset with run the gamut.

Parking messes. Busted baggage carousels. Deadlocked security lines. Long walks (or, more commonly, runs) between gates to a frenzied soundtrack of “last call” announcements. Realizations that getting out of Heathrow took longer than actually flying here from Madrid. 

In the airport “where the world changes planes,” it all boils down to a chronic inability to cope with this many people. Plans for a sixth terminal should help sever even more nerves.

2. Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, United States

 

It's not even a good spot for celebrity sightings.

If the world’s seventh-busiest flight hub was an old ballpark resting on the stale reputation of its Dodger Dogs and that great 1959 series, LAX might have some endearment value. 

 

But it’s an airport -- a dramatically undersized and moribund one with the architectural élan of a 1960s correctional facility and several publicized concerns about how its 1,700 takeoffs and landings a day can be sustained in a facility a fifth the size of healthier cousins like Dallas/Fort Worth. 

The unsupportive donut-shaped design -- it’s been called “eight terminals connected by a traffic jam” -- makes dashing between airlines feel like a diesel-scented cardio test. 

Plunked in the middle is the airport’s landmark Jetsons-style restaurant and only mentionable amenity, Encounter, but how does one actually get inside this place -- at least before being nailed for a petty traffic violation by some of the most ticket-hungry airport cops west of the Mississippi?

Read more on CNNGo: World's most terrifying airports

1. Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Paris, France

 

Don't expect to make friends during a storm closure.

“A great country worthy of the name,” President Charles de Gaulle once opined, “does not have any friends.” 

 

True or not, it’s this sort of attitude that has helped CDG become the most maligned major airport on earth. What’s fueling it? 

Grimy washrooms with missing toilet seats don’t help. Nor do broken scanning machines and an overall lack of signage, gate information screens and Paris-worthy bars, restaurants or cafés.

The baffling circular layout is worsened by warrens of tunnel-like structures, dismissive staff and seething travelers waiting forever in the wrong queue. 

The worst part may be this airport’s aura of indifference to it all. “Waiting for a connection here,” notes one commuter, “is like being in custody.”  

If you’re actually staying in Paris, you may be okay. If you have the gall to just be passing through between Malaga and Montreal, you can cut the spite of this place with a cheese knife.

Top five most hated Airports

10. São Paulo-Guarulhos International, São Paulo, Brazil

 

Whether it's 9 a.m. or 9 p.m. this airport experiences round-the-clock rush hour.

Why is this place on our list after scoring third best airport in South America at the 2011 World Airport Awards? 

 

Because, shockingly enough, it turns out that corporate medal ceremonies aren’t always in sync with what people are thinking when they're standing in two-hour immigration lines, suffering routinely unannounced gate changes and paying through the teeth for a stale Brazilian cheese roll and beer inside an understaffed and over-aged aviation facility. 

In a country where flight delays (departing or arriving) are just part of the deal, some recent numbers would give pause to the most unflappable traveler at Brazil’s largest airport.

Just 41 percent of all flights leave on time. Only 59 percent of flights arrive on schedule, according to Forbes.  

São Paulo-Guarulhos has announced plans to add runways and terminals -- what airport hasn’t? -- but with nearly 30 million passengers traipsing through every year (the figure has reportedly doubled in under a decade) the urgency is palpable and, sadly enough, unsolved by upping prices at musty duty-free shops.

But does this really constitute bronze medal status? When the best unofficial advice for surviving Brazil’s pin-up airport is to try and learn a little Portuguese and not lose your temper, something’s gotta give. 

Read more on CNNGo: World's biggest airport planned

9. Perth Airport, Perth, Australia

 

Kick a dog while it's down: The Qantas strike didn't help PER's reputation.

If there’s one thing Australians love, it’s hating their airports.

 

But while the big guns in Sydney, Melbourne and also-rans in Darwin, Cairns and Hobart get routinely lambasted for various inefficiencies and rip-off tactics, passengers in Western Australia have a special place in their spleens for Perth. 

“The only advantage over some other airports is the lack of nearby combat,” notes one of several miffed passengers on airportquality.com. 

With a reviled pair of domestic terminals (home of two-hour taxi-line queues, atrocious check-in lines, overpopulated gates and meager lounges) and a slightly more palatable international terminal five kilometers away, Perth’s brittle facilities can be overwhelmed just by a trio of aircraft arriving within 20 minutes of each other. 

Now that an ambitious “billion-dollar” redevelopment project has been significantly scaled back, who would ever want to leave Changi for this place? 

Read more on CNNGo: Transit hotels: How to get to sleep during your stopover

8. Tribhuvan International, Kathmandu, Nepal

 

Don't look the officers -- or the dogs -- in the eye.

For a small airport in a pretty country, Tribhuvan has it all: the interminable weather delays of Boston Logan, the shoddy restroom maintenance of a Glasgow sports bar, the departure board sparsity of McMurdo Airfield and the chronic chaos of a kids' soccer match. 

 

Some airport improvements have been underway for the Visit Nepal 2011 tourism campaign, including things most passengers don’t much care about (e.g., the new helicopter base). 

The most serious beefs with Nepal’s only international airport revolve around its primitive yet officious check-in procedure, starring a roulette wheel of underpaid security agents. 

“Departure is an endless game of body searches and silly questions,” notes one passenger.

“Those who didn’t have their e-tickets printed out had to argue their way in,” says another, who was checked seven times and scolded for not having a baggage tag on a carry-on before eventually boarding. 

Never mind. The city’s markets and surrounding mountains are lovely.

7. John F. Kennedy International, New York, United States

 

Fans flooded the airport to welcome the 1964 British Invasion, but it seems they never left.

You’d think it would be one of the greatest humiliations any major airport would never allow itself to live down -- getting routinely abandoned by fed-up folks opting to fly out of Newark (Newark!) instead, where at least the ground staff cop less attitude and fewer people outside are pretending to be cab drivers.  

 

But, nah, JFK really couldn’t really care less.

Every year, more than 21 million passengers stumble through worn, mid-century terminals that peaked when The Beatles arrived in the United States and rooftop parking was all the rage; JFK proudly remains the world’s busiest international air gateway.

So if you’re not into a dim, surly, unbearably congested airport reeking with attitude and unapologetically long immigration lines -- good riddance. 

“JFK had a piece of my luggage sitting in a little detention room for bags -- for over a year,” notes one passenger. “No one noticed it was there, until finally an observant Air France employee wondered what the dusty little green bag in the corner was.” 

Read more on CNNGo: Secret Report: Singapore's Chiangi Airport world's favorite 

6. Jomo Kenyatta International, Nairobi, Kenya

 

Can't be disappointed if you're not expecting much.

“As African airports go, it’s not that bad -- but as an international hub, it may be one of the worst out there.” 

 

This is the common refrain among travelers through JKIA, who either don’t have the heart or the expectations to give this dated aviation facility the kind of pounding reserved for the JFKs and Charles de Gaulles of the world. 

Saddled with a 1958 blueprint designed for 2.5 million passengers, JKIA receives close to twice that many. Hence the airport’s 2005, Three Phase, US$100 million expansion project which has seen long delays (something about the rain) and has been spinning its tires somewhere in Phase Two for the last few years. 

For now, that means business as usual: cramped spaces; long lines; inadequate seating; frequent power outages; tiny washrooms hiding up several flights of stairs; shabby duty free shops; overpriced food outlets; and business class lounges worthy of a shelter in mid-city Los Angeles.

Sure, it’s a breeze compared to Lagos. But it could be so much better. The confusing result: grateful disappointment?