First lady Michelle Obama spoke passionately about the importance of education to the African-American community in a commencement address Friday, urging more than 600 graduates of Bowie State University to honor the school's history and to pass their commitment to education on to future generations.

WASHINGTON — The Energy Department on Friday gave Freeport LNG conditional approval to broadly export domestically harvested natural gas, marking only the second time a U.S. company has won that authority and putting the Obama administration on track to grant similar licenses later this year. A federal law dictates that the Energy Department must affirm proposed exports are in the public interest before granting licenses to sell the fossil fuel to countries that don't have free-trade agreements with the United States — a benchmark that tilts in favor of the foreign sales. While industry leaders cheered Friday's decision, energy analysts cautioned it still was unclear how quickly the Energy Department would vet the 19 remaining applications to export roughly 25 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas to countries that don't have free-trade agreements with the United States. In a statement Friday, Dow offered tepid praise, calling the Energy Department's decision “a prudent step in pursuit of a measured and balanced approach to liquefied natural gas exports.”

South San Independent School District board members are feuding again after taking no action on a recommendation by their relatively new superintendent to fire a middle school principal. Board president Helen Madla and trustee Trinidad Mata accused other trustees of reaching a backroom deal to assemble the votes to strip Madla of her position in exchange for protecting the principal's job.

June A. Walbert, who died Tuesday at 55, was a widely recognized spokeswoman for USAA who helped customers with her financial planning skills.

A malfunctioning stop light at Texas 151 and Loop 1604 is causing traffic delays for morning commuters. Bexar County deputies could be heard on scanners about 7 a.m. saying the broken light was causing a traffic hazard at the location and that traffic was piling up for miles.

When Elizabeth Logan "Liz" McDaniel wanted something, she didn't stand back and wait for it to happen. While her young husband was in navigator school during World War II, she took flying lessons because she planned on becoming a WASP, or a member of the Women Air Force Service Pilots, hoping to work close to him. “She was just a determined person,” long time friend Bill Moore said. “She never wasted her time, she was determined ... in anything she took on.”