A cat has been shot with an arrow, dozens of cats have gone missing, and dogs have been poisoned in what police fear could be a co-ordinated attack on Wanganui pets.

One person is in hospital suffering from smoke inhalation from a house fire in Whanganui this morning.

Three more charges have been laid against a man who allegedly sparked a police manhunt in the central North Island last month.

A young girl who went missing from her home in Wanganui has been located by police.

Police have named the who died after he was thrown from his motorcycle on Whanganui Beach yesterday evening.

Police were called by a member of the public to Victoria Ave just after 8pm tonight.

Sophie Langston and her partner, Simon Thomas, weren't looking forward to their drive back to Auckland after a family funeral in Whanganui.

Heavy rain is expected to drench the South Island tomorrow and then make its way up the country - possibly hitting the Whanganui and Taranaki region hard.

A convicted murderer has been transferred out of Whanganui Prison after assaulting two prison officers.

Red Cross is launching an appeal to help those affected by the weekend's floods - a disaster the organisation has labelled the worst to strike New Zealand since the Canterbury earthquakes.

Millions of dollars in Government relief will be pumped into the flood-ravaged lower North Island, as authorities warn it could take weeks to clean up.

It was a paramedic's "horror story" - trying to get a woman apparently in labour to hospital in the middle of a flood.

Home suffers severe flooding after being hit by fifth landslip in five years and two years after owner spent thousands of dollars on new drainage and retaining wall.

Flooding caused road and bridge closures, cut power to homes and forced people to spend night in emergency accommodation or with friends and family.

Roads closed by extensive flooding and slips in the lower North Island are reopening tonight, but transport authorities are warning motorists to take care.

The Whanganui River has burst its banks, and the public are being warned to stay away from the river.

A lightning strike has closed a school in Whanganui this afternoon.

Pulitzer-winning journalist Gene Weingarten tells Morgan Tait why he strongly believes parents should not be prosecuted in 'forgotten baby' circumstances.

A woman is calling for her street to be made safer after a car crashed through her front garden - the fifth time it has happened in about a dozen years.

A Wanganui police officer ended up clinging to a speeding car as it careered along Victoria Ave.

A falling meteor may have caused the spate of unexplained fires in Wanganui forest and bush.

A man found dead in a Wanganui park was a former Mongrel Mob gang associate who was jailed over the death of toddler Jhia Te Tua in a drive-by shooting in 2007.

A man's body was recovered from the Whanganui River about 6.30am today.

A man who punched his partner and her mother and threw a metal pole at her sister has been sentenced to community detention.

'I wasn't involved,' says a man - jailed for a hostel fire in Australia which killed a tourist - whose house has been hit twice by fire in Wanganui.

A 14-year-old boy had to leap for his life in Wanganui yesterday as a car crashed through the fence he was standing in front of.

Holidaymakers heading home this weekend will be hoping a 5km queue of traffic near Whangarei yesterday will not recur.