The Northern Territory's Police Commissioner and soon-to-be federal police chief admits some of his officers inappropriately accessed the private medical records of a public servant.

The NT Government gives the green light for famers to grow industrial hemp, with an outback cattle station expected to be the first one to start planting.

The nation's vast network of outback tracks may hold a special place in the hearts and minds of intrepid Australians, but many are shocked by the litter.

The custody notification system, designed to help prevent Aboriginal deaths in custody, has been rolled out in the Northern Territory but there are concerns the people most at risk of harm have been excluded from its operation.

Residents in Mount Isa, Cloncurry, Longreach, Barcaldine, Blackall, Karratha and Kalgoorlie can expect to benefit from the new scheme, pricing airfares to the nearest capital city at a maximum of $800.

Christopher Malyschko was serving a life sentence for arranging the murder of his mother's partner in Katherine in 2011. On Tuesday morning he was found dead in his cell in Darwin's prison.

A proposed merger between two of Australia's biggest rural retailers is a step closer to reality after the competition regulator said it would not oppose the plan.

Two young South Australian entrepreneurs launch their own social enterprise selling sanitary products whose profits will go to disadvantaged women fighting period poverty around the world.

In the remote Northern Territory community of Ampilatwatja, paintings show the prescriptions for thousands of years of traditional healing.

Authorities are trying to find a 59-year-old man buried under soil and rock after a wall collapsed at a manganese mine in the central Northern Territory.

A 59-year-old employee of the company that operates the Bootu Creek mine was killed when a wall of soil and dirt collapsed on him on Saturday afternoon, the Singapore-based parent company says.

The NT has historically performed very poorly in NAPLAN testing and the improvement in results is impressive considering almost half of students speak English as a second language. But a pay battle for teachers could derail future successes.

NSW resident Sonia Smallacombe says she was racially targeted by a police auxiliary stationed outside a bottle shop who demanded she produce hotel receipts to prove where she was staying.

The 41-year-old man from a remote Central Australian community was found guilty of two counts of "sexual intercourse without consent" for a sustained assault in which he raped and punched his aunt and then brandished a shovel at her as she tried to flee.

Australians suffering acute mental health episodes in rural and remote areas are increasingly having to travel far from family and friends for life-saving treatment, leading to calls for more specialist clinicians in the country.

While new laws block predominantly Aboriginal people from buying takeaway alcohol in Alice Springs, the local casino has been overwhelmed with patrons, and has been fined by a court for not ejecting drunk patrons.

The program sees Indonesian agriculture students immerse themselves in NT cattle stations, learning how to ride horses, handle cattle, and conduct bore runs.

The Northern Territory Government is trying something new to entice remote school students back to class at the start of Term 3 just in time for the head-count that determines how much school funding comes from Canberra.

In the 12 months to June this year, there were 2,472 residential break-ins reported to police across the Northern Territory the highest annual figure since 2008.

The financial, emotional and psychological effects of the crime on the business directors of Alice Springs Helicopters and their families was significant, the prosecutor says.

Tengentyere Council chief executive Walter Shaw says police auxiliaries followed him to a friend's house and then back to his town camp, where he says they pepper-sprayed his dog and searched his car before acknowledging he had no alcohol.

The legalisation of marijuana has boosted tourism and created jobs in parts of the United States, and it could do the same in the Northern Territory, an economist says.

The national anthem has been rewritten and performed for the first time in Alice Springs by a group that says it should be more inclusive of all Australians.

Aboriginal leaders on South Australia's remote Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands should consider suspending their manager Richard King while an investigation is carried out into the use of Commonwealth funding, an independent report has found.

A heavily pregnant Alice Springs woman is sentenced to five years and three months in prison for stealing $486,000 from her former employer, leaving the business almost bankrupt.

African performer Nyapal Lul is making music again in her new desert home of Alice Springs after fleeing war-torn South Sudan in 2013, leaving five children behind.

AFL might be the highest-profile sport in remote Indigenous communities, but no community in Central Australia is complete without a softball diamond.

A veteran helicopter pilot recalls the rescues from Uluru he took part in and says he is surprised the climb has not been closed sooner.

An inquest into the deaths of Linden Kunoth and Jordan Allen, who died by suicide, finds that neither man should have been granted leave from the Alice Springs mental health ward.

Airlines around the world grounded their Boeing 737 MAX 8 passenger planes after two crashes which killed 346 people. Now, as investigations continue, six of the planes are flown to Alice Springs for storage.

Bushwalkers and map sellers say the decision by Geoscience Australia to stop printing and selling topographic maps will put people's safety at risk and impact on our understanding of remote Australia.

An Aboriginal artist is commissioned to design a new sanctuary window for a Central Australian Catholic church in celebration of reconciliation.

As people flock to Uluru in their thousands to make the ascent while they still can, tour operators are finding new ways for people to enjoy the area after the climb is closed for good next weekend.

Participants in this horticulture program say they are growing in confidence as they are growing fruit and vegetables.

An Alice Springs social worker who has given a voice to Aboriginal women and a Darwin doctor who oversaw the RAAF Cyclone Tracy evacuations have been honoured.

A people-powered revolution is taking place in north-east Victoria with the region's first community-led energy network going live.

A pet deer fatally attacks a man and injures his wife during feeding. The couple's son had to beat the animal with a lump of wood to save his mother, the ABC has been told.

Josh Meredith lives with Down syndrome and is helping change community attitudes towards disability in the workplace.