New Zealanders have been barred from entering the Cook Islands for 72 hours with a flight to the destination cancelled. It comes as Aucklanders are sent back in level 3 restrictions for a full week and the rest of New Zealand…

The first shipment of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine has landed in Australia today, ahead of the third week of the country's overall inoculation rollout.

The shipment landed just before 9.30am at Sydney airport, on an Emirates flight.

A total of 300,000 doses were included, which will now be batch tested by the Therapeutic Goods Administration to ensure they meet Australian standards.

READ MORE: Fears vaccine hubs could be 'targeted' as online chatter spikes

"We will now be able to scale up the vaccination rollout to our priority groups, including our most vulnerable Australians and to our frontline border and health workers," Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

"Most Australians will receive the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, with the rollout of these due to commence from 8 March 2021 – provided they clear the TGA's rigorous batch testing process.

"Australia is in a unique position because importantly this vaccine gives us the ability to manufacture onshore. Every Australian who wishes to be vaccinated will be able to receive a vaccine this year."

Australia has secured 53.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which will supplement the 20 million doses from Pfizer.

READ MORE: 'Too soon' for states to take over vaccine responsibility

A total of 50 million of those AstraZeneca doses will be manufactured in Australia.

"As the rollout begins, the people in priority groups who need the most protection will receive a vaccine first. This includes aged care and disability care residents and workers, frontline healthcare workers, and quarantine and border workers," Health Minister Greg Hunt said.

"Having AstraZeneca available in Australia provides an easier avenue for distribution across the nation, meaning people in rural, regional and remote areas will not have to travel as far to receive their vaccine."

The AstraZeneca vaccine is administered in two doses, 12 weeks apart.

Mr Hunt also slammed anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists but said he did not anticipate they would disrupt the rollout of the escalated vaccination program.

"Some of these anti-vaxxers are peddling, frankly, false and clearly irresponsible views. Whether it is about 5G and Bill Gates and mind-control – ludicrous, ludicrous things," he said.

"It is absolutely a matter for the police, if, in any way shape or form there were any protests aimed at the vaccination centres."

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A fireball has erupted on a quiet Gold Coast street overnight, with a luxury car going up in flames in what's suspected to be a targeted attack.

A white hot glow engulfed the Tesla on a Broadbeach Waters driveway overnight.

Neighbours were woken by loud bangs and filmed the fire on their mobile phones.

READ MORE: First shipment of AstraZeneca vaccine lands in Australia

"I hope this guy knows it's been exploding," one could be heard saying.

Fire crews received calls for help about 2.30am on Sunday.

Graeme Stoner from Queensland Fire and Emergency Services said the incident was being investigated.

"There are suspicious circumstances, Queensland Police have been made aware and the matter is under investigation," he said.

As daylight broke, the true extent of the damage was made clear.

Shattered glass, the back of the car turned to ash, the entire vehicle now a molten wreck.

Part of the logo of the owners' new business, Fitness Cartell, is now barely visible.

The owners were out of town for the night, believed to be in Noosa for a party, and told neighbours they were concerned when they left that something might happen.

READ MORE: NSW Police widen search for Melissa Caddick's remains

It is not the first time a luxury car at the home has been targeted.

A McLaren was vandalised in November, spray painted with the word "dog".

Police say an arson investigation is underway.

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The windows blew open. The building shook. At 1:30 a.m. local time Friday, a resident of al-Bukamal, a city near the Syrian-Iraqi border, was jarred from his sleep.

Speaking under the condition of anonymity for security reasons, he said the explosions were unlike anything he had heard before.

What he likely heard was the sound of seven 500-pound bombs slamming into a compound near the border. The compound, according to the Pentagon, was used by two Iranian-affiliated Iraqi militias, Kata'ib Hezbollah and Kata'ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada.

Before-and-after satellite images released by Maxar Technologies, a space technology company, show vividly just how much destruction those bombs wrought.

The "before" image shows a compound, just over a third of a kilometre from the Iraqi border, containing around a dozen buildings of various sizes. In the "after" image, almost all the buildings have been destroyed, and the dirt in and around the compound blackened by the blasts.

It's unclear how many militiamen were killed. Kata'ib Hezbollah acknowledged only one dead, without specifying where on the Iraqi-Syrian border he died. A US official said "up to a handful" were killed, while other reports claim anywhere between 17 and 22 people died.

The Pentagon says the strike was intended as a US response to a series of recent rocket and mortar attacks on US and coalition positions in Iraq.

On February 15, a volley of rockets fell within the grounds of Erbil's international airport and in residential parts of the city, killing a contractor while wounding several US personnel and Iraqi civilians.

The Green Zone in Baghdad, where the American embassy is located, has been a regular target for mortar and rocket fire. Kata'ib Hezbollah has repeatedly denied any involvement in these attacks, and did so again in a statement released Friday.

Pentagon officials told CNN the compound it targeted was not linked to these attacks but Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he was "confident" it was used by the same militias targeting US and coalition forces in Iraq with rocket attacks.

The armed groups allegedly using it, Kata'ib Hezbollah and Kata'ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada, are just two of a myriad of militias that came to prominence during the war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, filling the void left by an Iraqi army that was in full retreat.

I spent large stretches of time in 2015 and 2016 with some of those militias as they battled their way north from Baghdad. Some were well organised and disciplined, others radical and volatile.

Their commanders were never shy about the support they received from Iran.

"Yes, we declare to the world, we have Iranian advisers," Hadi Al-Amari, a senior commander of the pro-Iranian Iraqi Badr Brigades told me in 2015 on the front lines outside the city of Tikrit, then under ISIS control. "We're proud of them and we thank them deeply for participating with us."

Nearby, I ran into an Iranian in combat fatigues, who told me in broken Arabic he was a volunteer.

One militia commander told me told me at the time, "it was better to have four Iranian advisers on the front line than 400 American advisers sitting in the Green Zone in Baghdad."

But that was a different time. The Iranian nuclear agreement was being negotiated. The US and Iran were working, not together but in parallel, to support the Iraqi government in the fight against ISIS.

Since then, the Iraqi militias backed by Iran have grown ever more powerful, while relations between Washington and Tehran have dramatically deteriorated.

The US pulled out of the nuclear agreement under the Trump administration, slapped ever more draconian sanctions on Iran, and on several occasions was on the brink of war, most starkly after the US assassinated in January 2020 Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, deputy head of the Iran-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, one of the leaders of the Badr Brigades and a founder of Kata'ib Hezbollah, near Baghdad's airport.

Now the US finds itself in a situation where it hopes to make it clear it won't tolerate more attacks by Iranian-backed militias on its positions in Iraq, but at the same time wants to reopen a dialogue with Iran. Sending that message without burning the bridges it's trying to build to Tehran will be no easy task.

Friday's strike was the first known military action taken by the Biden administration, making it the seventh US administration in a row to use military force in the Middle East.

Administrations in Washington come. Administrations in Washington go. Some things, however, never change.

As many as 10 death row inmates in Oklahoma, more than one-fifth of the state’s prisoners condemned to die, could escape execution because of a recent US Supreme Court ruling concerning criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country.

The inmates have challenged their convictions in state court following the high court’s ruling last year, dubbed the McGirt decision, that determined a large swath of eastern Oklahoma remains an American Indian reservation.

The decision means that Oklahoma prosecutors lack the authority to pursue criminal charges in cases in which the defendants, or the victims, are tribal citizens.

Among the inmates likely to get a new trial in federal court is Shaun Michael Bosse, 38, who was convicted and sentenced to death in the 2010 killing of Katrina Griffin and her two young children. The victims were all found inside a burning mobile home near Dibble, about 56km south of Oklahoma City.

Dozens of other inmates convicted in non-death penalty cases also are seeking to have their convictions tossed, which is expected to result in a dramatic increase in the workload of federal prosecutors.

Although Bosse is not a tribal citizen, the court determined that Griffin and her children were Native Americans and that the crime occurred on land inside the Chickasaw Nation’s historic reservation.

The decision is particularly frustrating to District Attorney Greg Mashburn, whose office prosecuted Bosse.

“He’s benefiting from the people he killed,” Mashburn said. “It would be a travesty of justice if he got anything less than death.”

Mashburn said another trial would also re-victimise Griffin's family, who were pleased with the outcome of the state trial.

“Unfortunately, the law doesn't ask their opinion," Mashburn said.

Stephen Greetham, an attorney for the Chickasaw Nation, said Griffin’s family has reached out to the tribe with concerns that Bosse could escape his death sentence. But he says the tribe has no say in that case because Bosse is not American Indian.

“He’s not subject to our jurisdiction, so it’s entirely at the discretion of the federal prosecutor,” Greetham said.

The cases of Bosse and nine other death row inmates are being re-examined in district court to determine if the defendant or victims are enrolled members of a federally recognised tribe and if the crime occurred on a tribal reservation, according to the attorney general's office.

If those conditions are met, it's likely the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals will toss the convictions and force the cases to be retried in federal court where obtaining a death sentence is much more difficult.

Although federal prosecutors have the authority to pursue the death penalty under certain circumstances, if the killing is determined to have occurred on tribal lands, the tribal nation must also agree to allow the death penalty.

While some Oklahoma-based tribes have indicated they're considering that option, only one tribe — the Sac & Fox Nation of Oklahoma — has explicitly authorised the death penalty in federal cases.

“The Sac & Fox Nation has always been a law-and-order tribe," said Carter Truman, an American Indian law expert and former prosecutor with the Sac & Fox Nation.

“Our position was, if one of the most serious federal crimes was committed and you had a dangerous individual defendant accused of committing that crime, the death penalty should be an option."

But none of the crimes committed by the death row inmates seeking to have their convictions thrown out took place on Sac & Fox land. U.S. Attorney Trent Shores said having to retry these cases, particularly some that are decades old, could pose unique challenges because of fading witness memories or stale evidence.

“In theory, a blueprint is there for how to present this case and how to successfully convict this individual, but it’s not without inherent problems because of the time that has passed since the original crime," Shores said.

Maria Kolar, an Oklahoma City University professor with expertise in capital punishment as both a prosecutor and defense attorney, agreed retrying cases in federal court will be a challenge for federal prosecutors.

“I think it’s going to be a tall order for a lot of these cases, and the older the case, the bigger the challenge," Kolar said. “They’ll get into issues like witness availability, witness memory."