Witnesses describe a horribly heartbreaking scene Sunday at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium after a 2-year-old boy fell into an exhibit housing wild African dogs.

A law degree used to pretty much guarantee a stable job. But journalist Elizabeth Lesly Stevens reports that thousands of law students are going into an industry that no longer has room for them. Stevens discusses her article with host Michel Martin, and they hear from NPR Facebook fans about whether a law degree is still worth it.

Election Day 2000 ended in a stalemate and weeks of finger-pointing and legal battles. Host Michel Martin looks at whether the country has learned the lessons from that crisis in time for Tuesday's vote. She speaks with Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute, and Robert Pastor of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University.

Nearly a week after superstorm Sandy pummeled the East Coast, thousands of Americans are still without basics like power and clean water. Host Michel Martin speaks with New York Times reporter Michael Wilson about how some New York Public Housing residents are facing unique challenges in the storm's aftermath.

Arab-American voters strongly supported President Obama in 2008, and polls show most are doing so this time around as well. But some of those voters are concerned about the way Obama has handled issues important to their community — even if they still intend to cast their ballots for his re-election.

At the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Arab American Institute, the walls are full of red, white and blue signs in English and Arabic urging people to vote.

Another significant storm is looking likely for New York and New Jersey, forecasters are warning.

The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang says the computer models have come into agreement, forecasting a Nor'easter to begin forming election night and then move up the east coast on Wednesday and Thursday.

The Capital Weather Gang reports:

Some schools don't have heat. Others are serving their students shelf-safe milk.

But today, most of New York City's 1,700 schools reopened for the first time since Sandy devastated the northeast. NPR's Margot Adler has been working her way through Manhattan. She visited PS-41 in Greenwich Village and reports everything was great. But then, as she walked west on Houston St. all the way to East River, she stopped by Bard High School Early College.

Let's hope what happened in Florida over the weekend is not a prelude to Election Day.

Just take what happened at a polling place in Miami-Dade County in South Florida: After early voting on Saturday was plagued by long lines — some voters waited up to six hours — officials decided to allow voters in one location to request and turn in absentee ballots.

Shortly after that polling place opened, it was shut down on directions from Republican Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

In upstate New York, Maraleen Manos-Jones, who cultivates a butterfly garden, discovered the late-bloomer in its chrysalis. She'll travel with the monarch on a plane to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, where it can join other monarchs on their epic migration to Mexico.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Asking voters to raise taxes on themselves is a tough sell, but there are initiatives around the country doing just that. In Missouri, it's the cigarette tax. Missouri has the lowest cigarette tax of any state, and some of the highest smoking and lung cancer rates. St. Louis Public Radio's Veronique LaCapra reports.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

The U.S. economy has been slowly recovering, but economists warn it could plunge back into recession if Congress does not take action to avoid what's become known as the fiscal cliff.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

That is the name that some clever communications specialist gave to the combination of expiring tax cuts - in other words, tax increases - and broad, mandatory spending cuts aimed at reducing the deficit. The two are set to go into effect at the end of the year.

The final days of an election cycle bring an obsession with the short term — the very short term. Daily tracking polls. A relentless get-it, post-it, blog-it news cycle. Trending topics on Twitter telling us something (though it's not always clear what).

But for just a moment, let's slow it down, look at what's happening over a somewhat longer time frame, and see what it tells us about what the country will look like for the winner of the presidential race.

The Long View

Lianne La Havas was pretty much unknown until she appeared on the influential TV show in Britain called Later with Jools Holland. It was just her, singing and playing guitar. Her voice was clear, pure and soulful. The song she performed — called "Age" — was both jazzy and sassy.

"Time seemed to stand still," wrote one critic of La Havas' live performance. There were much more established artists on the music show that day, but Alison Howe, the producer, says La Havas was the standout.

As relentlessly as the candidates have courted voters, they've also shown their love to donors.

A report by the Center for Responsive Politics places the total cost of the 2012 elections at an estimated $6 billion, which would make it the most expensive election in U.S. history

The process for which Utah elects members to the State Board of Education is shrouded in controversy. So much that two lawsuits have been filed against the state calling for an end to the method altogether. Some say it has manufactured a conservative group of education bosses that don’t represent the community. But those who support the system say candidates are better qualified for the job than ever and more willing to collaborate with state lawmakers to make tough choices.

The final poll released Sunday by the Pew Research Center ahead of Tuesday's election shows President Obama has a 3 percentage point lead over Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney just two days before the general election.

Obama leads Romney 48 percent to 45 percent in the poll of 2,709 likely voters, which has a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points. The poll was conducted Oct. 31-Nov. 3.

Here's more from the Pew news release:

Here's what's happening today in the New York-New Jersey area, nearly a week after Superstorm Sandy devastated the region:

-- New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said tens of thousands of people whose houses were damaged by the storm will need other places to live because of the falling temperatures.

Election Day is promising many firsts — and not just the obvious ones.

Yes, the country could get its first Mormon president if Republican Mitt Romney is elected. And of course, it could get its first two-term African-American commander in chief if President Obama is re-elected.

But Tuesday offers a smorgasbord of other potential "first" opportunities across the nation — from New Hampshire, which could end up with the nation's first all-female congressional delegation, to Arizona, which could elect its first Hispanic U.S. senator.

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ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: I'm Ari Shapiro, traveling with the Romney campaign. And here's a summary of Romney's final sprint: a rally in New Hampshire, a flight to Iowa for another rally, a flight to Colorado, two rallies there with a long bus drive in between then back to Iowa for a few hours' sleep in Des Moines. And that was just yesterday. Romney means it when he says:

MITT ROMNEY: We've had some long days and some very short nights.

New York City's canceled marathon left thousands of runners who had traveled to the storm-damaged city with nothing but free time and a good pair of shoes.

The result: Sunday morning's hastily arranged mercy run in which hundreds of would-be marathoners are expected to jog through Staten Island with backpacks full of food and other supplies.