Donald Trump considers issuing new travel ban

Donald Trump is considering a new executive order to ban citizens of certain countries from travelling to the US after his initial attempt was overturned in the courts.

Trump told reporters on Air Force One that a "brand new order" could be issued as early as Monday or Tuesday.

It comes after an appeals court in San Francisco upheld a court ruling to suspend his original order.

It barred entry from citizens from seven mainly Muslim countries.

It is unclear what a new US immigration order might look like.

Trump said that it would change "very little", but he did not provide details of any new ban under consideration.

On Thursday, the appeals court said the administration failed to offer "any evidence" to justify the ban, which the president said was necessary to keep the US safe from terror attacks.

However Trump insisted that the executive order was crucial for national security and promised to take action "very rapidly" to introduce "additional security" steps in the wake of the court's decision.

He spoke as Virginia state lawyers argued in court that his policy "resulted from animus toward Muslims".

Their challenge focuses on the travel restrictions imposed by the ban, rather than the four-month suspension of refugee admissions.

But lawyers for the US government in Virginia wrote that "judicial second-guessing" amounted to "an impermissible intrusion" on Trump's constitutional authority.

The appeals court ruling means that visa holders from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen can continue to enter the US, and refugees from around the world, who were also subject to a temporary ban, are no longer blocked either.

But the ruling does not affect one part of Trump's controversial executive order: a cap of 50,000 refugees to be admitted in the current fiscal year, down from the ceiling of 110,000 established under his predecessor, Barack Obama.