Media Digest (9/19/2012) Reuters, WSJ, NY Times, FT

Alibaba buys back half of the stake owned by Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) for $7.6 billion, of which $6.3 billion is cash. Yahoo! will return most of the money to shareholders. (Reuters)

James Bullard of the St. Louis Fed says QE3 will begin too soon. (Reuters)

A study by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reports that 50% of Americans will be obese by 2030 unless eating habits are altered. (Reuters)

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) names Harvey Schwartz as new CFO. (Reuters)

Shares of Research In Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM) rise when Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) announces it will license file storage technology for the Canadian company. (Reuters)

FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) expresses doubts about China’s export growth. (WSJ)

Mortgage rates reach a 16-year low. (WSJ)

Microsoft raises its dividend by 15%. (WSJ)

The SEC will examine whether exchanges allow high-speed traders to execute orders more quickly than those for normal traders. (WSJ)

American Airlines flights are slowed and cancelled as new labors rules began. (WSJ)

Senator Jay Rockefeller sends a letter to large company CEOs asking them about their cybersecurity practices. (WSJ)

Recent IPO Manchester United (NYSE: MANU) posts a loss due to a drop in TV revenue. (WSJ)

IKEA will double the rate at which its opens stores between now and 2020 as it moves into China. (WSJ)

IPO shares of JAL rise modestly. (WSJ)

China cuts mining permits for rare earths, which could leave other nations without a key component for electronics markets. (NYT)

American real estate investors put more money into Europe. (NYT)

Saudi Arabia will ship extra oil to large consuming nations to offset what appears to be an ongoing increase in prices. (FT)

BP PLC (NYSE: BP) may sell a Texas refinery to Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: MPC). (FT)

Money pulled out of banks in Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece may hurt the region’s common financial system. (FT)

Douglas A. McIntyre