Excellent! My precioussssssss 

The article stated only that PJ will be Executive Producer. I wonder if he will direct too or leave that duty to somebody else...

The notion of a bridge involving Tolkien's other writings just won't happen as outlined above.  The film rights for those things are still in the estate and grumpy Christopher Tolkien won't sell them for any amount of money.  There are actually so many events crammed into The Hobbit that it's likely it will indeed take two movies to cover it---Tolkien rather glosses over The Battle of Five Armies but you know Jackson is going to want to do it up big, big big.  And that's okay; I'd rather that the movies had room to breathe rather than just be a 'greatest hits' approach.  We'll get a chance to see areas of Middle Earth we've not seen before.  Will McKellen and Weaving reprise their roles?  Will Arwen show up?  Might Aragorn be lurking about in Rivendell?  It's too bad Ian Holm probably won't be able to do Bilbo....No idea who they will get for it, though Ewan McGregor wouldn't be a bad choice.

I don't think Jackson really wants to direct it...he has other irons in the fire and doesn't really have time to shoot another major project on this timeline.  But considering how hands on he is (some would say control freak) I expect to see his hobbity footprints all over the place.