(AP) — Authorities say a 62-year-old man was killed after falling 60 feet in a rock climbing accident in Colorado.

Karlyn Tilley, a spokeswoman for the Golden Fire Department, said the man was climbing with his two adult children while using technical gear at a popular cliff about 20 miles west of Denver. She says he fell at about 1 p.m. Saturday.

About a dozen climbers who were nearby helped with the rescue and brought the man off the mountain within an hour of the fall.

Tilley says the man was unresponsive and not breathing when paramedics arrived.

Police have arrested a 59-year-old Lincoln man, saying they suspect him of bugging his 90-year-old mother’s phone.

Richard Stamler was arrested Thursday night on suspicion of unlawful interception of communications.

Police spokeswoman, Officer Katie Flood, says the man’s sister called police on March 28 to report that she had found a recording device connected to her mother’s phone line and recognized her brother’s voice recorded on the device.

Police say a letter written by the man to his sister demands documentation of his mother’s savings and threatens the sister with legal repercussions if she stands between him and his mother.

A misconduct charge has been filed against Grand Island Mayor Jay Vavricek, who was recently arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in nearby Howard County.

Councilman Mike Paulick filed the charge Friday with City Attorney Bob Sivick.

The misconduct charge cites Vavricek’s drunken driving arrest on March 2. He pleaded no contest to reckless driving and was fined $500.

Paulick says he brought the charge at the urging of constituents.

The misconduct charge will be forwarded to the full Grand Island City Council for a vote Tuesday. If approved by the council, a hearing to unseat the mayor is expected April 19.

Vavricek could not be reached for comment on Saturday.

Vavricek is also the owner of Hometown Family Radio, which operates three radio stations in North Platte.

A Lincoln man charged in the stabbing of a family member over an argument about music has been given probation.

A judge sentenced 47-year-old Todd Zellers Friday in Lancaster County. The sentence includes 60 days in jail at the end of two years of probation, unless it is waived. Zellers also has been fined $500.

Police say Zellers stabbed the man in the crotch with a butcher knife last August. They had been arguing about music in Zellers’ apartment.

Zellers pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of third-degree assault.

Court documents say Zellers’ family member was taken to a local hospital and doctors used multiple staples to close the wound.

A northern Illinois woman has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for leaving her newborn daughter to freeze to death in 2004.

Winnebago County Judge John Truitt on Friday handed down the sentence to 32-year-old Katie Stockton. The infant became known as Baby Crystal around the Rock River Valley after her frozen remains were found.

Truitt allowed testimony about skeletal remains of two other infants found years later in the trunk of Stockton’s car.

That testimony wouldn’t have been allowed at trial. Stockton in February pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the infant’s death.

Stockton hid her pregnancy and gave birth to the baby in secret in December 2004, then stuffed her into a shopping bag and left her along a roadway.

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Nebraska’s state auditor says the wasteful state spending his office reported earlier this week is but a drop in the budget bucket.

Auditor Mike Foley says Monday’s report on the misspending of nearly $8 million by the Department of Health and Human Services is the sort of waste and fiscal mismanagement that could be found through state and local government agencies.

Foley told members of the Beatrice Rotary Club in Beatrice on Thursday that he thinks the state could trim spending 5 percent across the board. That would amount to about $182 million for this fiscal year alone.

Foley says the alarms his office sounds about public spending haven’t made him and his staff many friends in government offices. He says his department is “making new enemies every day.”

A Nebraska state senator known for his mastery of legislative rules is trying to force a vote on his proposal to repeal a city sales-tax measure.

Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha filed a rare motion to pull his bill out of the Legislature’s Revenue Committee, where the measure has stalled. He failed to bring lawmakers to a vote on Friday, but vowed to try again.

Chambers wants to repeal a state law that allows Nebraska cities to increase sales tax rates by as much as a half-cent, with voter approval.

Sen. Galen Hadley, the Revenue Committee chairman, says the law was vigorously debated over the course of two years. Other lawmakers said bringing the vote to the floor would undermine the committee process.

The Grand Island City Council president says concerns about the behavior of Mayor Jay Vavricek have prompted the council to consider his removal.

After a community meeting Thursday night, council President Bob Neimann said the council would use a section of city code that allows an elected official to be removed from office for misconduct or malfeasance.

Several people at the meeting expressed concern or recounted their embarrassment over Vavricek’s recent arrest on suspicion of drunken driving in nearby Howard County. Resident Grady Erickson called the incident “an eyesore.” On March 21 Vavricek pleaded no contest to a charge of reckless driving and was fined $500.

A 40-year-old U.S. Army reservist in Lincoln has lost his appeal of his conviction for groping a co-worker at the U.S. Army Reserve Center in Lincoln.

Court records say Lancaster County District Court Judge Paul Merritt Jr. denied the appeal of Christopher Hoyt. Hoyt had been convicted in September of misdemeanor sex assault. The woman involved was a civilian at the time.

Authorities say the 21-year-old co-worker testified that Hoyt groped her and made sexual comments at work even after she complained. He said she groped him in return. She was a civilian at the time.

In November Judge Gale Pokorny sentenced Hoyt to six months in jail. Hoyt appealed, saying there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. Judge Merritt disagreed and earlier this week affirmed the jury verdict.

A Lincoln man who was shot by the father of his girlfriend has been charged with domestic abuse.

Twenty-one-year-old Jeffery Stotler Jr. was released from a hospital on Wednesday and arrested by Lancaster County sheriff’s deputies. He was freed later.

Sheriff Terry Wagner says Stotler already was on probation for domestic assault.

The county prosecutor has decided not to charge the man who shot Stotler, 50-year-old Michael Kinney. Prosecutors say Kinney was acting in self-defense when he shot Stotler on March 20. Investigators say Stotler kicked in the back door of Kinney’s home in Bennet toward the end of a dispute with Kinney’s daughter.