Five presidential candidates appeared at the opening day of the Values Voter Summit in Washington Friday, but the speech getting the most attention was one by a pastor from Dallas who introduced Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Every year in Washington, social conservatives from across the country gather for the summit, an event sponsored by the Family Research Council. In presidential years, the summit is a must-stop for GOP candidates.

In this week's essay, host Scott Simon reflects on the life of Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs who died this week.

The State Department is considering whether to issue a permit for a controversial oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Environmentalists oppose the project, but defenders say jobs are at stake. NPR's Jeff Brady reports.

New jobs numbers came out Friday, reporting employers added more than 100,000 workers to their payrolls. That's better than many forecasters were expecting, but not good enough for the 14 million Americans who are still out of work. NPR's Scott Horsley reports on what the numbers tell us about the economy and what they mean for President Obama.

Egyptians were glued to their television screens when the trial of ousted leader Hosni Mubarak began late this summer. The trial has lost much of its appeal since then, and not just because it's no longer televised. Merritt Kennedy reports from Cairo.

Many migratory birds travel thousands of miles every year, over land and sea and, sometimes, through hurricanes. Host Scott Simon talks to Dr. Bryan Watts from the College of William and Mary, who used satellite transmitters to track shorebirds as they flew through Hurricane Irene.

While people were talking about the religion of former Gov. Mitt Romney at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, Romney was wrapping up a two-day swing through South Carolina. Romney finished fourth in this state's primary in 2008, and his Mormonism was one of the issues seen as holding him back. This time around, there's been less talk about religion and more about policy, but Romney still has a tough row to hoe in this early-voting state. NPR's Ari Shapiro explains why.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, host: In Joplin, Missouri, runners are gearing up for the city's marathon tomorrow. Some local runners say they have a goal to help them carry on, after they lost everything in last May's devastating tornado.

From member station KBIA, reporter Jacob Fenston joined a few runners training for the race.

JACOB FENSTON: Its 5:30 in morning, pitch-black out as a dozen members of the Joplin Road Runners head down Main Street. It's actually the first week the street lights are back on since the tornado struck four months ago.

Darryl St. George has served his country both in and out of uniform. He left his high school teaching job on Long Island in 2010 to become a U.S. Navy corpsman, a medic for the U.S. Marines.

"I loved teaching. It was a great job, but I felt like something was missing. I kind of — I felt compelled to serve," he told NPR's Tom Bowman in July.

At the time, he was at a dusty combat outpost in southern Afghanistan. St. George had one month left in his deployment to Afghanistan, and said that when he came home, he planned to visit the school where he had taught.

In downtown Cape Town, worshippers gathered Friday for a morning Mass at St. George's Cathedral. During apartheid, the massive stone church was an epicenter of resistance against the South African government. On Friday, a service was held to honor the man who led that resistance, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.