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Australia's biggest maritime mystery has been solved 80 years after the sinking of the warship HMAS Sydney.

The Royal Australian Navy announced today that DNA testing has uncovered the identity of the 'Unknown Sailor', the only body recovered from the cruiser after it sunk with all its crew in World War II.

Able Seaman Thomas Welsby Clark, 21, was posted to HMAS Sydney four months before it was destroyed on November 19, 1941.

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All 645 crew aboard the Australian warship died.

Three months after HMAS Sydney sank, his body washed ashore in a life raft off Christmas Island. For decades afterwards, it was known as 'the unknown sailor'.

Able Seaman Clark had trained as an accountant in Brisbane, then served in the army before being transferred to HMAS Sydney.

He was buried on Christmas Island but the remains were exhumed in 2006 and samples of bone and dental collected before reinterment at the war cemetery in Geraldton, Western Australia.

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Able Seaman Clark was identified as the 'Unknown Sailor' after advances in testing that enabled a trace through the paternal line of a family, known as Y-DNA.

The painstaking research involved experts from the Royal Australian Navy and the Australian Federal Police.

The discovery has brought Able Seaman Clark's niece, Leigh Lehane, some closure however she said it was "still upsetting".

"I will never erase the memory I have of him in that lifeboat at the scene of the battle then drifting for almost three months exposed to the elements and the sea birds.

"I'm glad the truth was found out."

The chief of navy, Rear Admiral Michael Noonan, has today paid his respects to Able Seaman Clark.

"Today we pay our respects to Thomas Welsby Clark and after 80 years we return him the dignity of his name."

The sinking of HMAS Sydney was the largest loss of life in the RAN, the biggest Allied warship lost with all hands during World War II, and a major blow to Australian morale.

With no survivor testimonies, the cruiser's loss has attracted speculation for decades, with many historians believing she was ambushed by the German vessel.

Just how the heavily-armoured and powerfully gunned Australian vessel was lost to an armed merchant vessel has been the subject of debate over decades.

The official Australian Government inquiry concluded that both ships were travelling at 14 knots when Kormoran, disguised as a Dutch freighter, de-camouflaged, showing her battle flag before opening fire.

In March 2008, the Australian Government announced that the wreckage of both ships had been found, approximately 112 nautical miles off Steep Point, WA.

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Prime Minister Scott Morrison has doubled down on his call for state and territory governments to "step back" as COVID-19 vaccination rates rise.

State leaders and members of the Federal Government have been swapping barbs after Mr Morrison criticised Western Australia and Queensland for maintaining more stringent vaccine rules than required by the national plan.

Protests have taken place this week in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, including threats to politicians.

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Mr Morrison did condemn the threats and violence conducted by some protesters in Melbourne.

"I completely and totally and continue to denounce any violence, any threat, any intimidation," he said.

"And any suggestion that I have not done that is completely false.

"What I'm also very clear about is our national plan.

"What I'm also very clear about is it's important that governments keep their side of the deal."

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Mr Morrison said he sympathised with Australians fed up with ongoing restrictions.

"I have sympathies for Australians who have had a gutful of governments telling what to do over the last two years, and I think that they have been very clear on keeping their side of the deal," he said.

Mr Morrison said "frustration" was felt by a broader swathe of Australians than represented by the protesters.

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"I think that you're making an assumption that the frustration that Australians feel, is only limited to a small group of people who have engaged in violence and threats and intimidation, and have worked against the vaccination program," he said.

"I have no sympathy with that agenda."

He said the Federal Government had consistently only called for the imposition of mandatory vaccines for people working with the country's most vulnerable people, including in aged and disability care.

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"We said in the rest of the economy, that should be up for businesses to decide," Mr Morrison said.

"It's their business and they can decide these issues. We don't think that governments should be telling them who should come in and out of their business."

He claimed that the restrictions imposed by National Cabinet during the pandemic had been "regrettably necessary", but were no longer needed when states had passed 80 per cent vaccination.

Chinese coast guard ships blocked and sprayed a powerful stream of water at two Philippine boats carrying supplies to troops at a disputed South China Sea shoal, prompting Manila to order Beijing's ships to back off and warn that its supply vessels are covered by a mutual defence treaty with the United States, Manila's top diplomat said Thursday.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr said no one was hurt in the incident on Tuesday, but the two supply ships had to abort their mission to provide food to Filipino forces occupying Second Thomas Shoal, which lies off western Palawan province in the Philippines' internationally recognised exclusive economic zone.

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Mr Locsin said in a tweet that the three Chinese coast guard ships' actions were illegal and urged them "to take heed and back off."

It was the latest flare-up in the long-simmering territorial disputes in the strategic waterway, where China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have overlapping claims.

China claims virtually the entire South China Sea and has transformed seven shoals into missile-protected island bases to cement its assertions, ratcheting up tensions and alarming rival claimants and Western governments led by the US.

The Philippine government conveyed to China "our outrage, condemnation and protest of the incident," Mr Locsin said, adding that "this failure to exercise self-restraint threatens the special relationship between the Philippines and China" that President Rodrigo Duterte and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, worked to nurture.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said China's coast guard had upheld China's sovereignty after the Philippine ships entered Chinese waters at night without permission.

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National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon told reporters in Manila that two Chinese coast guard ships blocked the two wooden-hulled supply vessels.

A third coast guard ship "water cannoned the two for one hour," he said, adding that the outrigger of one of the Philippine ships was displaced by the impact.

A water cannon is a device on firetrucks that shoots high-velocity water for firefighting and crowd control but has also been installed on Chinese coast guard ships to drive away what China considers intruders in the waters it claims.

The Philippines plans to deploy coast guard and Bureau of Fisheries vessels instead of navy ships to back up its forces and enforce its fishing laws at Second Thomas Shoal, which Filipinos call Ayungin and China refers to as the Ren'ai reef, Esperon said.

The number of Chinese surveillance ships has increased in recent weeks in the far-flung shoal and also around Thitu, a larger Philippine-occupied island in the Spratly archipelago in the South China Sea's most hotly contested area, he said.

Philippine forces won't be deterred from traveling again to the shoal following the incident, he said.

"We will continue the resupply and we do not have to ask the permission of anybody because that is within our territory," Mr Esperon said.

The Philippine military deliberately ran aground a World War II-era warship, the BRP Sierra Madre, at the submerged shoal in 1999 to fortify its claim and provide a shelter to a small contingent of Filipino marines.

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The Sierra Madre is now effectively a rusty shipwreck but the Philippine military has not decommissioned it. That makes the ship an extension of the government and means any attack on the ship is tantamount to an assault against the Philippines.

In 2014, the Philippine military invited more than a dozen journalists, including from The Associated Press, on a resupply mission to the shoal in a bid to draw global attention to what Philippine officials have called China's bullying tactics.

Two Chinese coast guard ships then tried to block the slow-moving, military-chartered vessel carrying the journalists, with one cutting dangerously through the Philippine ship's path twice. The Chinese coast guard warned the Philippine vessel by radio to turn back, saying it was illegally venturing into Chinese territory.

The Chinese ships blew their horns intimidatingly, but the boat managed to manoeuvre toward the Sierra Madre through shallow waters dotted with rocky coral outcrops, preventing the Chinese ship from pursuing.

Washington has no claims in the busy waterway but has patrolled the region with its Navy ships and aircraft to assure its allies, including the Philippines, and protect freedom of navigation and overflight.

China has repeatedly warned the US to stay away from the disputed waters and not meddle in what it says is a regional issue.

President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, have repeatedly assured the Philippines that the US will honour its obligation under the nations' Mutual Defence Treaty if Philippine forces, ships or aircraft come under attack in the region.

Bettina Lerman was on a ventilator in an American hospital for weeks after getting COVID-19 and hadn't responded to doctors' efforts to wake her from a coma when her family made the difficult decision to take her off of life support.

They made funeral arrangements and picked out her casket and headstone as they prepared to say goodbye, her son Andrew Lerman told CNN.

On the day they planned to remove her from life support, Mr Lerman said, he got a call from one of her doctors at Maine Medical Center in Portland.

"He's like, 'Well, I need you to come here right away.' I was like, 'OK, what's wrong?'" Mr Lerman said.

"He goes, 'Well, there's nothing wrong. Your mother woke up.'"

Mr Lerman said he dropped the phone when he got the news.

More than 768,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention says 58.9 per cent of the US population is fully vaccinated.

Mr Lerman said his mother, who turns 70 in February, had a number of health conditions, including diabetes, and had a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery a couple of years ago.

She started showing COVID-19 symptoms in early September, was diagnosed when she went into the hospital September 12 and went on the ventilator on the 21st, he said.

She was not vaccinated but had been planning to get her shots when she got sick, he said.

Her condition deteriorated and doctors told the family she wasn't expected to recover.

"We had a family meeting with the hospital because my mother wasn't waking up. No matter what they (did), they couldn't get her to wake up," Mr Lerman said.

"They said that her lungs are completely destroyed. There's irreversible damage – that it's just not going to happen."

It's been about three weeks since she woke up on October 29, and a hospital spokeswoman told CNN she's in serious condition.

The hospital could not release any additional information because of privacy laws.

Lerman said his mother didn't suffer any organ failure and no one really understands how she's doing so well.

"My mother is very religious and so are a lot of her friends, and church, and everything else and they've all been praying for her," he said.

"So they can't explain it on the medical side. Maybe it's on the religious side. I'm not that religious, but I'm starting to believe that there's something that helped her. I don't know."

Mr Lerman said he talked to his mother for hours Wednesday, and she's able to move her hands and arms and can breathe on her own for a few hours at a time with some oxygen support, instead of the ventilator.

"She knows where she is, who she is – she's as sharp as a tack," Mr Lerman said.

"Usually, when somebody comes out of a coma like that, they say that the patients have delirium where they're very confused. From day one, she hasn't experienced any of that."

He said she's not out of the woods yet, and could still have setbacks, but the medical staff is looking at getting her on a list for rehab to help her regain her range of motion.

She's already getting physical therapy to help rebuild the muscle strength she lost during the ordeal.

Mr Lerman and his mother live in Florida, but they'd both been coming up to Maine a lot to care for his father, who has stage 4 cancer.

Mr Lerman's father got COVID-19 at about the same time as Mr Lerman's mother but has recovered.

Mr Lerman and his wife also got COVID-19, and he said they're going to get vaccinated in a few weeks when they're eligible.

When they didn't think she would recover, Mr Lerman said, the family gave up his mother's Florida apartment, collected important family items and donated the rest of her things to other residents in her building.

His sister set up fundraising campaign to raise money to help her mother as she recovers.

Mr Lerman said his mother told him she was praying while she was in the coma and remembers people visiting and talking to her.

"So the words of encouragement that I have is not to give up hope, and when you do visit your family members in this situation, talk to them because they can hear you," he said.

He also said every COVID-19 case is different and he knows not everyone will be able to recover like his mother.

"She's a miracle," he said.

The International Space Station remains at increased risk from orbiting debris following this week’s Russian weapons test, NASA says.

On Monday, Russia launched a missile to destroy a satellite orbiting just above the space station.

NASA said late Wednesday that the highest threat to the station and its seven residents was in the first 24 hours.

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Hatches between many of the station compartments were closed as a precaution, but they were reopened on Wednesday.

The US Space Command is tracking more than 1500 satellite fragments, but hundreds of thousands of pieces are too small to see.

NASA and the State Department have condemned the missile strike, saying it also puts satellites and China’s space station at risk.

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NASA said it’s reviewing an upcoming spacewalk and other station operations, to assess the risks before proceeding.

The spacewalk to replace a bad antenna is targeted for November 30.

The space agency also plans continued inspections for potential damage.

The space station currently is home to four Americans, two Russians and one German.

Waterfall Way on the New South Wales Mid North Coast has lived up to its name after a brief but ferocious downpour.

Footage shared in a local weather group on Facebook shows raging brown water cascading down Sherrard Falls at Dorrigo Mountain, about 20km south-west of Coffs Harbour.

Several cars pass cautiously through what appears to be a shallow but fast-flowing stream of water over the road.

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"Take it easy on the mountain folks. Just got through at 4:00 pm today," Toni Bourne said, in Dorrigo Mountain Weather Watch.

The top of Dorrigo Mountain copped a drenching of 48mm about 4pm, according to the Bureau of Meteorology, with very little rainfall in other parts of the Bellinger River catchment or throughout the rest of the day.

Some residents commenting on Facebook even said they didn't get significant rain in nearby Dorrigo, while others noted this wasn't unusual.

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Several said the road was clear soon after.

On Thursday afternoon, the weather bureau warned a deep low pressure system expected to cross NSW over the weekend would potentially bring widespread rainfalls on Sunday, in turn sparking possible flooding.

"The exact impacts really depends on which catchments and which parts of the catchments the rain falls, keeping in mind that it is a developing situation so it is early days in terms of knowing the exact details," senior hydrologist Cynthia Robinson said, in a video released by the bureau.

"What I can tell you is that in New South Wales, catchments are saturated dams are full and flooding does continue in several inland rivers.

"So, if we do see heavy rainfall develop on the weekend, it's possible that we will see renewed river level rises and flooding."

The Lachlan River, which burst its banks at Forbes this week, is an area of concern.

Heavy rain closed Waterfall Way in December last year, forcing locals to take a long detour.

Incredibly, footage taken at the time showed kayakers braving the gushing falls.