UO E-clips, Nov. 16

Three women assaulted in campus area (Daily Emerald): Eugene police are encouraging students and visitors to the University area to take extra precautions after three women were grabbed during evening and night hours near campus. The first incident occurred Oct. 24 at 12:50 p.m. near the Phoenix Inn Suites Hotel at 850 Franklin Blvd. A woman was grabbed from behind while walking outside the hotel. She was able to fight back and get away. Nov. 11 at 11:21 p.m. a different woman was grabbed from behind while walking through a parking lot near East 15th Avenue and Kincaid Street. The suspect attempted to pull her backwards but she fought him off and got away. A third incident occurred Nov. 12 at 9 p.m. at East 15th Avenue and Hilyard Street. A woman walking home from the library was grabbed by a man who was following her. He tried to knock her down, but she was able to escape.

The Greatest Givers (Business Week): Whittling down a lifetime of earnings -- a prospect most of us would like to avoid -- is the goal of many of the billionaires and multimillionaires in BusinessWeek's (MHP ) annual ranking of Most Generous Givers. If their megagifts to causes ranging from cancer research to civil rights to the prevention of meth addiction are any indication, they're making good progress. Sixteen of the 50 U.S. philanthropists on our list gave north of $100 million this year, nine donated $200 million or more, and one towered above them all with $723 million in gifts. … Sometimes the back story to a gift comes from a childhood experience. That's how it is for Lorry Lokey, 80, the founder of Business Wire, a newswire that distributes press releases for thousands of companies, and which Lokey sold to Warren Buffett in 2006 for an estimated $600 million.

Examining fair trade (Eugene Weekly): Can the fair trade movement have a significant impact on how products are grown, marketed and sold around the world? Organic coffee available in the U.S. during the 1980s was not too tasty, so the Eugene-based coffee company Café Mam was created in 1985 to export coffee from a farmers' cooperative in Chiapas, Mexico, said Brad Lerch, who co-owns Café Mam with his uncle dahinda meda and cousin John Lerch. Their first lesson in fair trade, a movement seeking more equitable pay for workers in developing countries, came a few years later, when they had to pay more to compete with the cooperative's European customers, Lerch explained at a UO panel discussion on fair trade Nov. 1. … UO economics professor Bruce Blonigen said the main goals of fair trade are to improve the salary and working conditions of workers in developing countries and to ensure environmentally friendly business practices in developing countries.