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Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday as a devastating Category 5 storm, tied for the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane in history.While the extent of the destruction is not yet known, relief organizations are already mobilizing to help across the northern Caribbean. As is typical in disasters, nonprofit groups told The Associated Press that cash is the best way to help, since unsolicited goods donations can overwhelm already strained systems. Experts recommend using sites like Charity Navigator or the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance to check out unfamiliar charities before donating.Here is some of the work being done and ways to support people impacted by Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica and beyond. Locals supporting locals: United Way of Jamaica The 40-year-old nonprofit has a history of supporting Jamaicans after disasters, especially the country’s farmers.Last year, United Way of Jamaica mobilized help for female farmers hit hard by Hurricane Beryl, helping them replace farm equipment, repair roofs, and pay tuition fees for their kids right as the school year began.The Kingston-based group accepts cash donations. Doubling your dollars: American Friends of Jamaica The AFJ has donated to Jamaican charitable organizations since 1982, supporting education, economic development and health care. Its disaster relief fund helped repair nearly 800 roofs after Hurricane Beryl, according to the group.The New York-based organization’s board of directors is currently matching donations to its Disaster Relief Fund, up to $1 million. Immediate relief and rebuilding: CORE CORE ‘s local staff is already responding in Haiti and will arrive in Jamaica when airports reopen to deliver relief items like hygiene kits and tarps, conduct medical assessments an distribute immediate cash assistance.The group, which was active in Jamaica after Hurricane Beryl in 2024, will also help households remove debris and rebuild homes.The Los Angeles-based nonprofit is accepting cash donations to its Emergency Response Fund. Installing backup power systems: Footprint Project The solar-energy nonprofit supplies communities and first responders with temporary power equipment to aid their response and restore communications.Footprint Project is shipping 150 portable solar and battery power stations from Florida to Jamaica, and deploying mobile microgrid equipment from Puerto Rico and Barbados, working with local partners like Jamaica Renewable Energy Association to ensure the systems are deployed where they are most needed.The New Orleans-based group is accepting cash donations to support staffing and logistics, as well as in-kind donations of “turn-key” renewable power technologies that can be rapidly shipped. Equipment donations can be coordinated through give@footprintproject.org. Transporting cargo for relief groups: Airlink Airlink works with major airlines like United and American, using their underbelly cargo space to move critical aid to disaster zones.It is moving cargo to Jamaica on behalf of 16 NGOs including World Food Programme and Mercy Corps. It will also charter at least two planes to move more goods for its partners, free of charge.The Washington, D.C.-based group accepts cash donations and donations of United frequent flyer miles. Medical aid: Direct Relief The humanitarian organization supports the Caribbean year round with medicines and other supplies, and has delivered more than $3 million in medical aid in the last month to areas now under threat.Direct Relief will support health facilities, many of which it says are in coastal and low-lying areas vulnerable to flooding and power outages. The group also sent 100 field-medic packs for Jamaica’s National Health Fund, and is working with the Pan American Health Organization to preposition supplies for Cuba.The Santa Barbara, California-based group is accepting cash donations and said that all contributions specifically designated for “Hurricane Melissa” will go directly to those efforts. High-quality supply donations: Good360 Good360 connects corporate donors who have surplus, high-quality supplies with nonprofits that need those items.The group has prepositioned supplies at a Florida warehouse and will partner with local groups to deliver what’s needed. It is anticipating demand for generators, tarps and hygiene kits.Good360 is accepting cash donations to support delivery of these supplies. Long-term recovery: Center for Disaster Philanthropy While the immediate needs will be vast, CDP focuses on long-term recovery, an often underfunded aspect of disaster response.The group will give grants to local organizations that are most in tune with the needs, focusing on the most at-risk residents and emphasizing solutions that leave communities better prepared for future climate events.The Washington, D.C.-based organization is accepting cash donations to its Atlantic Hurricane Season Recovery Fund.Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy. Gabriela Aoun Angueira, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
Its rare for a company to give up more than a decade of brand recognizability for a new name. Its even rarer for said company to trade their name for the name of a younger, less well-known company. But thats exactly what Grammarly, the writing and grammar assistant tool with 40 million daily active users, is doing. Starting today, Grammarly is rolling out a massive, all-encompassing rebrand to become Superhuman. Naming a company is like naming a kid, says Grammarly CEO Shishir Mehrotra. Renaming your 16-year-old is, like, 10 times harder. Swapping the name of your 16-year-old and your 11-year-old is 100 times harder. Thats probably what we’re doing. Grammarly’s new name is pulled directly from the AI-powered email platform Superhuman, which Grammarly acquired back in January. The swap is intended to signal a new beginning as the brand repositions itself from a writing helper to an all-in-one work productivity tool. Despite the fact that, by Mehrotra’s own admission, Grammarly currently has a “higher brand awareness” than Superhuman, he believes this change is necessary to help consumers buy in on the company’s potential. The trouble with the name ‘Grammarly’ is, like many names, its strength is its biggest weakness: it’s so precise, Mehrotra says. People’s expectations of what Grammarly can do for them are the reason its so popular. You need very little pitch for what it does, because the name explains the whole thing . . . As we went and looked at all the other things we wanted to be able to do for you, people scratch their heads a bit [saying], Wait, I don’t really perceive Grammarly that way. [Image: Superhuman] So . . . what the heck is Superhuman? Grammarlys transformation into Superhuman is so extensive, even the team behind it has some trouble describing exactly what Superhuman is. To start, here are the basics: Grammarly’s new overarching brand is called Superhuman, but the product at its core is called Superhuman Go. The email app that was once just Superhuman is now Superhuman Mail. From a naming standpoint, it’s definitely confusing. And on the product side, it’s not much easier to grasp what Superhuman actually does. When I asked Collin Whitehead, Grammarlys head of product and design, to describe Superhuman Go in as few words as possible, he took a full 10 seconds to gather his thoughts. Essentially, what we’re trying to do is build an agentic platform where users can get the power of AI everywhere that they already work, he says. [Image: Superhuman] For context, Grammarly has been an AI-powered company since its inception in 2009, building a writing and grammar tool that used natural language processing to offer edits to users. Over the past few years, its been introducing generative tools that not only improve users own words, but help them draft new original text, as well as offering more subjective writing suggestions for better clarity and impact. More recently, Grammarly has embarked on a spending spree to acquire additional AI companies that expand its scope. In December 2024, Grammarly acquired Coda, an AI-powered work platform thats like a combination of Google Docs, Airtable, and Notion. (Mehrotra actually founded Coda, and became CEO of Grammarly post acquisition). Then, in June 2025, Grammarly also acquired Superhuman. The terms of both deals were undisclosed, but Coda and Superhuman were last valued at $1.4 billion and $835 million, respectively, in 2021. Now, Grammarly is using those new investments to turn Superhuman into a much more all-encompassing work tool. [Image: Superhuman] Mehrotra explains it like this: Grammarly has always run on the AI superhighway, meaning that, instead of living on its own platform, Grammarly travels with you to places like Google Docs, email, or your Notes app to help improve your writing. Superhuman will use that superhighway to bring a huge new range of productivity tools to wherever you’re working. We bring AI right to where people work, Mehrotra says. The analogy is, we only run one car on that highway, and that’s the one with your high school grammar teacher in it. But the idea is, what if it could be all the different agents and assisants that you would like? [Image: Superhuman] Updating Grammarly to Superhuman Starting today, Grammarly users can turn on Superhuman Go by clicking on the Grammarly icon in their browser and toggling the product on. From there, theyll get a step-by-step onboarding to Superhuman Go. Users can look through a library of dozens of productivity agents and choose which theyd like to use. Options include a Gmail agent, which can draft and send new messages from any other workspace and summarize insights from emails; a calendar agent that can help schedule meetings from anywhere; and a Reader Reaction agent that can break down the most likely reader responses to whatever you might be working on. Several writing-based agents with the former Grammarly branding will also be available. With so many moving parts, Whitehead says, Superhuman needed a new identity that was versatile enough to introduce users to its capabilities. That started with picking a name. [Image: Superhuman] That is definitely something that we heavily debated, Whitehead says. I was leading that naming process, and we were coming up with names that have never existed before; names that were fully abstract and totally made up, but had a nice mouth feel. The name, he adds, had to be powerful, unique to the user, and human-centricsomething that would make the user feel better for having used it. As the abstract naming process continued, nothing was clicking. Elevating the user was such a key part of the brief that, when we got notice about the potential [Superhuman] acquisition, it was like an earwormwe couldn’t unsee the connection between that Superhuman name and what we were going for, Whitehead says. Even before acquisition talks were closed, Superhuman kept reemerging as the best brand name for the company. Eventually, Whitehead says, it became the obvious choice. [Image: Superhuman] The two kinds of AI companies The design agency tasked with bringing Superhuman to life was Smith & Diction, the same team behind the branding for Perplexity AI. Grammarly began briefing the Smith & Diction team on the rebrand in early 2025, but the company didnt officially select its new name until late June, when the Superhuman acquisition was completed. For Chara and Mike Smith, the couple behind Smith & Diction, that meant there were only about three months to fully realize Superhumans branding. In Charas experience, there are two kinds of AI companies. The first leans into the idea of automating tasks. Companies in this category have become recognizable for amorphous, abstract branding, like Open AIs intertwined circles, Google Geminis ombre sparkle, or even Perplexitys own swirling pages (which, Mike says, has given Smith & Diction a reputation for designing the butthole logo). The second category of AI companies is centered instead on how the user is in control of the tool, rather than the other way around. [Image: Superhuman] From the beginning, we definitely wanted to sit in that second camp, Chara says. Like, you’re the one with the ideas, you’re the one steering the ship. Its almost like the Iron Man super suit. You put that on, and Iron Man is still in there, guiding it, making the decisions. But Iron Man can do so much more because of this super suit. Its obvious that, with its new productivity platform, Grammarly wants to bill itself as an unobtrusive, human-centric tool. Mehrotra says Superhuman should feel super subtle and invisible. In essence, its an AI helper thats not out to steal your job, but to help you get better at it. To sell that concept (even to potential AI naysayers), the company needed an extremely friendly, unintimidating brand. To that end, Superhumans branding all hinges around one cute icon-slash-mascot named Hero. Hero serves a number of functions for Superhuman, including acting as the brands logo and guiding users through the UI experience. Its primary goal, though, is to make Superhuman feel trustworthy. [Image: Superhuman] Transforming the Grammarly logo into a Superhuman Heros look is essentially Grammarlys iconic cursor (which looks a bit like a triangle with a chunk missing), topped with a round head. The simple-yet-versatile character can represent an A or an i (for AI, naturally), a cursor, and a superhero. Where it really comes alive, though, is through animation. We imagined it kind of taking the place of an explainer video, Mke explains. [Image: Superhuman] When Hero is thinking of an answer, its head bobs; when its writing, it turns into ellipses; and when it needs to get your attention, it springs upside down. All of these details might seem small, but Mike says they serve the dual purpose of helping users to understand how to use Superhuman and making the product feel more like an actual assistant. If your logo is the thing that helps you through the product, then you’re going to build brand equity super quickly, he adds. To compliment Heros personality, Chara and Mike swapped Grammarlys signature green for a warm palette of purples and maroonsa choice that stands out in a tech branding space saturated with blue and black. The result is a brand that feels both authoritative and warm. This was a product-first rebrand, Whitehead says. It was not about how this shows up on a billboard. This was, How can the user connect with this brand on a more meaningful level? The mark itself is intrinsic to the user experience. [Image: Superhuman] Naming a company is like naming a kid Logos doubling as mascots are nothing new in the branding space. But, with the exception of the Chinese company DeepSeek, Superhuman is one of the first AI companies to weave this kind of living mark into the user experience. In a moment when fears around the potential misuse of AI tend to dominate the cultural zeitgeist, the approach makes a lot of sense. Still, for a company with as much brand equity as Grammarly, its an inherently risky move. Theres always the possibility that moving toward an AI-centric brand narrative invites backlash, considering that companies including Duolingo and Klarna both came under fire this year for touting their AI-first approaches. However, the greater possibility is brand confusion, and even the cost of brand equity. Mehrotra says he’s well aware that some customers simply won’t adopt the name “Superhuman” when they refer to the company formerly known as Grammarly. While the Grammarly brand will still exist as an agent within the Superhuman platform, the company is certainly making a calculated trade-off by swapping the brand. If you think about gaming platforms, there’s many cases where the scale of the game outshines the name of the platform. And that’s totally fine, Mehrota says. I think for many people, they’re gonna seek out and install what they perceive to be Grammarly and happen to get Superhuman Go along the way, just like when you know when you want to play Call of Duty and you end up with a gaming console.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Federal Reserve is expected to cut its short-term rate Wednesday for the second time this year despite an increasingly cloudy view of the economy it is trying to influence.The government shutdown has cut off the flow of data that the Fed relies on to track employment, inflation, and the broader economy. September’s jobs report, scheduled for release three weeks ago, is still postponed. This month’s hiring figures, to be released Nov. 7, will likely be delayed and may be less comprehensive when they are finally released. And the White House said last week that October’s inflation report may never be issued at all.The data drought raises risks for the Fed because it is widely expected to keep cutting rates in an effort to shore up growth and hiring. Fed officials signaled at their last meeting in September that they would likely implement rate reductions in October and December, and financial markets now consider a cut in December to be a near-certainty.Yet should job gains pick up soon, the Fed may not detect the change. And if hiring rebounds after weak job gains during the summer, further rate cuts may not be justified.On Tuesday, payroll processor ADP released a new weekly measure of hiring by businesses, using payroll data from millions of clients. It shows that in late September and earlier this month, companies resumed adding jobs, after shedding workers in July and August.Still, a key reason rate cuts are so widely expected is that most Fed officials see its key rate, which is now about 4.1%, to be high enough that it is restraining the economy’s growth. Under this view, the Fed can cut several more times before reaching a level that might provide unnecessary stimulus to the economy.Before the government shutdown cut off the flow of data Oct. 1, monthly hiring gains had weakened to an average of just 29,000 a month for the previous three months, according to the Labor Department’s data. The unemployment rate ticked up to a still-low 4.3% in August from 4.2% in July.Meanwhile, last week’s inflation report released more than a week late because of the shutdown showed that inflation remains elevated but isn’t accelerating and may not need higher interest rates to tame it.The government’s first report on the economy’s growth in the July-September quarter was scheduled to be published on Thursday, but will be delayed, as will Friday’s report on consumer spending that also includes the Fed’s preferred inflation measure.Fed officials say they are monitoring a range of other data, including some issued by the private sector, and don’t feel handicapped by the lack of government reports.Also on Wednesday, the central bank may announce that it will no longer reduce the size of its massive securities holdings, which it accumulated during and after the pandemic and after the 2008-2009 Great Recession. The change could over time slightly reduce longer-term interest rates on things like mortgages but aren’t likely to have a major impact on consumer borrowing costs.The Fed purchased nearly $5 trillion of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed bonds from 2020 to 2022 to stabilize financial markets during the pandemic and keep longer-term interest rates low. The bond-buying lifted its securities holdings to $9 trillion.When the central bank buys a Treasury note, for example, it pays for it with newly-created money that is deposited into reserve accounts banks hold at the Fed.In the past three years, however, the Fed has reduced its holdings to about $6.6 trillion. To shrink its holdings, the Fed lets securities mature without replacing them, reducing bank reserves. The risk is if it reduces its holdings too far, short-term interest rates could spike as banks borrow money to top-up their reserves.In 2019, the Fed was reducing its balance sheet and caused a sharp, unexpected spike in short-term rates that disrupted financial markets, an outcome they want to avoid this time.The Fed currently is reducing its holdings of mortgage-backed securities by up to $35 billion a month and Treasuries by just $5 billion a month. Powell said two weeks ago that the Fed would consider ending the rolloff “in coming months,” but analysts now expect it to happen sooner because of recent signs that banks are running low on reserves. Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
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