BREAKING NEWS

US officials arrive in Australia to assess asylum seeker resettlement in US

US officials have arrived in Australia to begin assessing asylum seekers held on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island and Nauru for resettlement in the United States, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Saturday.

Australia announced last week it had reached a deal in which the United States would take a substantial number of the 1,200 refugees held at the Australian-funded offshore processing centers, although the election of Donald Trump has injected uncertainty into the agreement.

Trump started campaigning for the presidency by advocating a blanket ban on Muslims entering the United States, but later adjusted his stance to propose that the ban should apply to people from nations that had been "compromised by terrorism."