Joseph Lord

Crews will need two to three days to repair a 20-inch water main that broke early Monday and caved in a section of Seventh Street between Magnolia and Hill streets, the Louisville Water Company said.

There are no cost estimates yet for the repairs to the broken main and road, said Kelley Dearing Smith, a water company spokeswoman. The Louisville Water Company will cover the costs.

Detours have been posted at the Old Louisville site. 

You can't say 2012 was uneventful for Louisville and the surrounding areas.

The year that (soon) was gave plenty of good news and some awful, terrible news, too. Here's an incomplete list of the big things that happened in 2012.

Each week, members of the WFPL news team spotlight interesting stories we've read and enjoyed, for your weekend reading pleasure:

The Louisville Cardinals men's basketball team on Saturday defeated the Kentucky Wildcats the first time since 2009 in a game that featured the return of center Gorgui Dieng, who was sidelined in November with a wrist injury.

That didn't take long.

A New Albany gun buyback program ended in less than two hours Friday after police accepted about 250 firearms and ran out of money.

"We had a big turnout," said Maj. Keith Whitlow, a New Albany Police spokesman.

"If we do it again in the future, we can learn from our mistakes ... and try to get more people involved."

People were lined up hours before the buyback began, he said.

WFPL will have NPR's live coverage beginning at 3 p.m. Friday of discussions between President Obama and congressional leaders on the impending "fiscal cliff" -- the automatic tax increases and spending cuts set to go into effect next week.

Obama is meeting at 3 p.m. with  Sens. Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid, the Senate minority and majority leaders, respectively, and House Speaker John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Jan. 19 is the last day to file a detour-mileage claim with the Paducah & Louisville Railway stemming from the Oct. 29 train derailment in southwestern Jefferson County.

P&L Railway has made 5,000 reimbursements to people affected by the train derailment for out-of-pocket expenses for matters such as mileage, childcare and relocation, P&L said. The rail company has also reimbursed first-responders and schools for some costs.

Louisville may get as many as three inches of snow overnight through Saturday, leading to travel difficulties.

A Winter Weather Advisory will be in effect from 7 p.m. Friday to 7 p.m. Saturday. At first, rain will begin falling in the Louisville area on Friday afternoon, but the precipitation will change over to a rain/snow mix after sunset and then all snow around midnight, the National Weather Service said.

Kentucky Youth Advocates have released the annual 2012 Kids Count County Data Book, which offers a county-by-county breakdown of "the path that Kentucky students follow starting from birth to the transition to adulthood based on educational outcomes at each of those stages."

Among the suggestions are the implementation of a state-level earned income tax credit. 

The 12.7 million people who visited Louisville in 2011 spent $1.4 billion locally, creating $173 million in tax revenues and sustaining 22,100 jobs, the Louisville Convention & Visitors Bureau says. Meanwhile, the LCVB said its marketing efforts on behalf of the city increased room occupancy of leisure travelers by about 25 percent.

Those figures come from a study released Thursday conducted by the Urban Studies Institute at the University of Louisville.