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.

It's takes more than the worst recorded flood in Whanganui history to put Riverside Bar regulars off a night at their favourite watering hole.

Three days after the floods hit Whanganui, there's no word yet on when residents evacuated from their houses can return.

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.

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 cyclist has been taken to hospital after it is believed he was hit by a car on St John's Hill.

A woman who joined in an attack on strangers in the street and yelled “that’s what you get for being white” has been sentenced to community work.

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 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.

The Wanganui man charged with helping convicted murderer and child molester Phillip Smith get a false passport met him in prison seven years ago.

Last Friday, Whanganui District Health Board members voted 9-2 to spell the name of their hospital correctly as Whanganui with an "h".

Whanganui man pleads not guilty to rape

A woman who spent 14 hours alone with the wreckage of her car after she crashed down a bank had to set her car on fire to attract attention.

A driver was stabbed by a hitchhiker he picked up near Wanganui at the weekend, police say.

A Whanganui woman who took two and a half years to complete just one hour of a 200-hour community work sentence has been hauled back before a court.