Spin-polarized density functional theory has been used to study the properties of vacancies in a graphene sheet and in single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). For graphene, we find that the vacancies are magnetic and the symmetry of the sheet is broken by the distortion of an atom next to the vacancy site. We also studied vacancies in four armchair SWNTs from (3,3) to (6,6) and six zigzag SWNTs...