The holidays are finally wrapping up. So after you repack the twinkly lights, and the tinsel goes into the trash, what should you do with that once beautiful spruce standing in your living room? Why not drink it?

Well, not exactly as is. The needles, shoots, light-green tips and inner bark of the popular conifer have been used for centuries to brew forest-scented tea, soft drinks and beer. And it seems that fresh evergreen flavor may be making a comeback.

In France, a team of scientists says that a piece of cloth that was reputedly dipped in the blood of Louis XVI is genuine. Louis XVI was executed 220 years ago this month, during the French Revolution.

The handkerchief had been stored for years in an ornately decorated gourd, as Tia Ghose writes at Live Science.

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.

Voting for this year's Oscar nominations was supposed to have closed today — but it's been bumped a day, in the wake of complaints about the new online voting system put in place by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Hollywood Reporter analyst Scott Feinberg tells NPR's Audie Cornish that the system was supposed to make life easier for academy members.

"Going to e-voting would allow voters to vote from anywhere in the world, if they're on vacation or whatever during the holidays, and just make the process itself more streamlined and efficient."

There were 155,000 jobs added to public and private payrolls in December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday morning.

That's right in line with economists' expectations and is another sign of steady, though modest, growth in employment. In November, employers added an estimated 161,000 jobs. The average monthly gain in 2012 was 153,000 jobs, BLS says. That's the same average as in 2011.

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."