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In my Morning Edition story today, I look at expectations — specifically, how teacher expectations can affect the performance of the children they teach.

Fans of Portlandia may recall a recent episode in which its main characters (played by Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen) get a good look at their new cleaning lady. They think the cleaning lady might be — and realize that it actually is — the singer-songwriter Aimee Mann.

East Africa is a tough place to do business. Want to open shop in Kenya? Prepare for a month of paper work, surly officials and bribes. To the west, in Rwanda, it's a different story.

"Registering a business takes just a matter of hours. It no longer takes months, weeks, as it used to be," says Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

For many people, the phrase "Scandinavian food" probably doesn't bring much to mind beyond the Ikea food court. For those who do have a connection with these Northern European countries, the mental image is probably smothered in gravy with a side of potatoes. But if you're coming to Copenhagen's noma restaurant expecting the same old meatballs and pickled fish, think again.

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GUY RAZ, HOST:

It's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.

Polls can be unstable. Up until the last moment, Jimmy Carter was leading Ronald Reagan in 1980. And in the past two weeks, President Obama has started to pull ahead of Mitt Romney.

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(SOUNDBITE OF CLOCK TICKING)

GUY RAZ, HOST:

Just a reminder now that Round 9 of our Three-Minute Fiction Contest is open. It's where we ask you to write an original short story that can be read in about three minutes, so no more than 600 words. In each round, we have a judge with a new challenge. And this time, it's novelist Brad Meltzer, and he's come up with this.

BRAD MELTZER: Your story must revolve around a U.S. President who can be fictional or real.

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GUY RAZ, HOST:

And if you're just tuning in, this is WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.

A very important, somewhat political convention took place here in Washington this past week.

STEVE KELLEY: Fantastic. Oops. I hit the little button again. If you hit the button here...

RAZ: It was on the campus of George Washington University where we found New Orleans Times Picayune cartoonist Steve Kelley trying out a digital drawing board.

Pennsylvania's politically split Supreme Court is considering a challenge to a lower court ruling that upheld the state's polarizing voter identification law.

The law requires a state-issued photo ID card to vote, and supporters say it will help prevent voter fraud. Voting-rights activists have now shifted strategies from attempting to overturn the law, to instead putting up to a million state-issued photo ID cards in the hands of residents.

State officials recently estimated it is possible nearly 200,000 Philadelphia residents alone don't have proper ID.

We've heard much about big money pouring into some of the congressional races around the country, and now some of that money is breathing new life into the campaign of one unlikely candidate.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of books such as Kosher Sex and Kosher Jesus, and the host of Shalom in the Home, a reality show that worked with struggling couples, is running for Congress in New Jersey's 9th District.

Boteach is hoping to unseat Democrat Bill Pascrell in a district that is overwhelmingly Democratic.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Iranian nuclear program was "in the last 20 yards," and denied he was taking sides in the U.S. presidential election.

"They're in the last 20 yards, and you can't let them cross that goal line. You can't let them score a touchdown," he said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. "Because that would have unbelievable consequences, grievous consequences for the peace and security of us all."

The new ban on the sale of soft drinks in large containers in New York City is arbitrary and insulting.

Just because something is bad, that doesn't mean you should ban it. Bad is something that people need to decide for themselves, for the very simple reason that no one has a monopoly on knowing what bad is.

Update at 8:03 p.m.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says he wills seek a court order to end the teachers strike, and that the strike is illegal under state law.

The Homo sapiens imagination runs wild: A 4-D Mammoth Hunters ride? An Ice Age-themed roller-coaster?

Pure fantasy only, these ideas flew to mind when I scanned a report this morning about a Neanderthal park that may be established on the Rock of Gibraltar within a few years.

Four U.S. service members were killed by an Afghan police officer and a NATO airstrike killed eight women in separate attacks in Afghanistan on Sunday.

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Of course, the Homestead Act was born during troubled times in American history. It passed during the Civil War, but just barely. And it came at the expense of Native Americans, who were displaced from lands they have settled for generation. We spoke to Jonathan Earle, an associate professor of history at the University of Kansas, and asked him why the Homestead Act was so difficult to pass.