Whanganui could be inundated with Black Power members this weekend, as gang associates arrive for the city chapter leader's tangi.

A explosive found by a Turakina dairy farmer will be detonated this afternoon and police are urging people to stay away from the area.

It's been put into the name of the river and the city - and now the H will enter the name of the Wanganui District.

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.

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.

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

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 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.