PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Sept 11

Sept 11 (Reuters) - The following were the top stories in The Wall Street Journal on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

* Morgan Stanley (MS.N) tapped brokerage chief James Gorman as its next chief executive, ushering out a tumultuous boom-and-bust period under its current CEO, John Mack.

* UBS AG (UBSN.VX) emails that emerged in a Connecticut lawsuit provide a window into how the Swiss bank allegedly scrambled to find ways to alleviate the financial pain from the deteriorating mortgage market.

* General Motors Co [GM.UL] agreed to sell a majority stake in its European operations to a group led by Canadian auto parts maker Magna International Inc MGa.TO, a deal that capped months of wrangling among bidders and government officials and created tension between GM's board and top managers.

* The recession has slashed families' earnings, increased poverty and left more people without health insurance, according to the Census Bureau's annual snapshot of living standards.

* Bloomberg LP is considering a bid for BusinessWeek magazine as the deadline for offers approaches, according to people familiar with the matter.

* Chrysler Group LLC is preparing to resume auto leasing, according to a dealer briefed on the plans, more than a year after the auto maker was forced out of the business and three months after it emerged from bankruptcy.

* A huge project to tap natural-gas reserves in a remote corner of Australia promises to cement the nation's status as a major energy producer and underscore Asia's emergence as the key growth market for the oil-and-gas industry. Chevron Corp (CVX.N) and its partners, Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) and Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L), will announce within days that they have given final approval to the project after years of delays, people in the industry say.

* It's a tie in the Harvard-Yale investment game. Both schools were thrown for colossal losses. The universities on Thursday said their endowments, higher education's two largest, each lost 30 percent of their value in the year ended June 30. Combined, the pair of investment pools shrank by a staggering $17.8 billion.

* Bernard Madoff's two remaining federally seized properties, in New York and Palm Beach, Florida, were listed Thursday for $9.9 million and $8.5 million, respectively. His oceanfront home in Montauk, on New York's Long Island, was listed Sept. 1 for $8.75 million.

* Real-estate mogul Stephen Ross and the two other partners in his company, Related Cos, have been granted preliminary approval by regulators to charter a new bank, a move that would allow them to bid on failed institutions seized by the government.

* Some large companies are objecting to proposed limits on the kinds of debt money-market mutual funds can buy, saying it could hurt companies' ability to raise money at a time when banks are unwilling to lend.