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In the wake of helping to avert the fiscal cliff, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is making the rounds on three of the top Sunday political talk shows this weekend.

The GOP leader will be on ABC’s "This Week with George Stephanopolous," CBS’s “Face the Nation,” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He is expected to discuss the agreement he made with Vice President Joe Biden, which passed both chambers of Congress earlier this week.

Kentucky Fourth District Congressman Thomas Massie introduced his first bill in Congress on Friday that would repeal the federal ban on guns in school zones. 

The measure is dubbed the Citizens Protection Act of 2013, which was initially proposed by former Congressman Ron Paul six years ago. It would repeal the Gun Free School Zones Act of 1990 and comes in the midst of the gun control debate sparked by the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre in Connecticut.

Coal company Alpha Natural Resources announced today it will idle four underground mines in Harlan and Letcher counties. Two hundred miners will lose their jobs, while about sixty people will be moved to other positions or other mines.

At its height, the General Electric Plant in Louisville employed 23,000 people. That was in 1973.

After that, the plant began to shrink — laying off more and more employees. Like other manufacturing giants, it followed the outsourcing trend, sending jobs overseas, and especially China.

By 2011, GE bottomed-out with less than just 1,900 jobs in the Louisville plant.

But in February of 2012, something began to change. New jobs were created. A new assembly line opened — the first since 1955.

University of Louisville students living in the Miller Hall dorms that were displaced last year after mold was discovered will move back into the dorms this weekend.

Last October around 270 freshman students were forced to relocate after mold spores were found in a 80 percent of dorm rooms. U of L officials said mold was also found in other complexes and would be treated appropriately.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer says he's leaning toward running for a second term — and he will not run for the U.S. Senate again.

Downtown Louisville would benefit from casinos, Mayor Greg Fisher told WFPL on Thursday.

The market would determine where a casino would be built — but downtown Louisville seems like a logical spot, Fischer told WFPL's Gabe Bullard during an interview.

"That could change a whole lot of the dynamics downtown," Fischer said.

It's "premature" to discuss precisely where a casino may be built in downtown Louisville — or anywhere else — because they're not legal in Kentucky, said Fischer spokesman Chris Poynter, responding to a series of follow-up questions.

In an interview broadcast live Thursday on WFPL, Mayor Greg Fischer covered a broad array of topics —violence prevention, charter schools, the NBA and more.

You can listen to a podcast of the interview below, and we'll have more stories Wednesday morning on a couple of specific topics. Here are some of the other highlights.

Calling for lawmakers to rise above partisan politics, U.S. Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., announced Thursday he has been selected to serve on a number of key Senate committees in the 113th Congress.

Now the Hoosier state's senior senator, Coats will serve on the Appropriations, Select Intelligence, Commerce, Science, and Transportation panels, as well as the Joint Economic Committee.

"These important committee assignments will allow me the opportunity to continue the fight to rein in out-of-control government spending and strengthen our economic and national security," Coats said in a news release. "At a time when the greatest challenge facing our nation is excessive spending, I look forward to working on efforts to restore our fiscal health through my new role as the ranking Republican member of the Joint Economic Committee."

Incoming U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-In., is hoping to launch a new coalition of moderate lawmakers in the 113th Congress.

Donnelly is among a number of new senators sworn-in Thursday, and he steps into the seat previously held by longtime Sen. Dick Lugar.

During the 2012 campaign, the former congressman ran as a centrist and on bringing "Hoosier common sense" to an unpopular Congress.

Donnelly says he wants to work with lawmakers from both parties to find solutions because of Indiana's history of bipartisan cooperation.