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		</div><p>Six female students from war-torn Afghanistan who had hoped to take part in an international robotics competition in the US will have to watch via video link after their visa applications were denied twice.</p>
<p>The girls wanted to show the world that Afghans could also construct a hand-made robot.</p>
<p>But of 162 teams who planned to take part, the Afghan girls are the only nation&#8217;s team to be denied visas by the US and must simply watch from their home town in western Afghanistan.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;When we heard that we were rejected we lost hope,&#8221;</i> said 14-year-old Sumaya Farooqi. <i>&#8220;We applied again for the US visa and we were rejected again.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Farooqi and her teammates had already faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles to even get to a point where they could seek permission to attend.</p>
<p>It took them six months to prepare, often working seven days a week, as they constructed a robot that sorts balls, has the ability to recognise orange and blue colours, and can move objects to put them in their correct places.</p>
<p>The girls travelled from their homes in Herat after convincing family members to let them go &#8211; no small feat in a country where young girls are often discouraged from pursuing academic study, especially in subjects like science and maths.</p>
<p>They made the 500-mile journey to the US Embassy in Kabul twice because their applications were denied a first time, even though the embassy was targeted by a lorry bomb on May 31 in which more 150 people were killed and more than 400 others wounded.</p>
<p>Afghanistan is not part of US President Donald Trump&#8217;s order to temporarily ban travel from six Muslim-majority countries.</p>
<p>Yet teams from Syria, Iran and Sudan &#8211; who are on that list &#8211; were granted visas to compete.</p>
<p>Members of the team from Gambia were granted visas after initially being denied. The applications of five teams were still in process.</p>
<p>The US State Department declined to comment on why the Afghan team&#8217;s visa applications were denied, saying &#8220;all visa applications are adjudicated on a case-by-case basis in accordance with US law&#8221;.</p>
<p>The competition from July 16-18 in Washington DC is an initiative by First Global, a not-for-profit charity that holds the annual international robotics challenge in hopes of sparking a passion for science and technology among high school students around the world.</p>
<p>First Global&#8217;s president, Joe Sestak, said in a post on the organisation&#8217;s Facebook page that he was &#8220;saddened&#8221; by the US decision.</p>
<p>Although the Afghan girls were denied entry into the country, the team&#8217;s robot was not.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;How can someone accept that a robot makes it through customs and those difficult processes, but the inventors of the robot who have made and own it can&#8217;t make it?&#8221;</i> said Mohammad Reza Rezayee, director of the Afghanistan Robotic House Institute in Herat.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;It is really a question to be answered.&#8221;</i></p>
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