Category: Business Insider

• Squatters occupying a Gordon Ramsay pub have said they've struck a deal to stay.
• "We've made a deal. With the owner, not Ramsay," they said, per The Telegraph.
• The pub is listed for sale for £13 million, which is around $16 million.

A group of squatters that took over a Gordon Ramsay pub in London's affluent Regent's Park area have said they are staying put, The Telegraph reported.

The squatters occupied the York & Albany gastro-pub last week, saying they aimed to create a "community space" with the building.

"It seems only fitting that £13 million properties that most locals would never be able to afford to visit should be opened up to all," the group said.

Lawyers for Gordon Ramsay Holdings International Limited (GRHI) secured a court order for the possession of the property earlier this week.

But a set of the orders, which had been taped to the pub's door, were taken down on Saturday, with one of the squatters claiming they had "made a deal" with the owner.

"We've made a deal. With the owner, not Ramsay. We're still here, and we're going to carry on staying here. We're going to be security for him," they said, per The Telegraph.

The Grade II listed building has been part of a legal battle between Ramsay and film director Gary Love, who acquired the freehold in 2007.

Ramsay, a celebrity chef, restaurateur, and television presenter, had leased the pub from Love under a 25-year agreement.

However, attempts to terminate the lease in 2015 were unsuccessful.

The building is now up for sale for £13 million, or around $16 million.

London's Metropolitan Police department told Business Insider at the time the squatters moved in that it was "aware" of the situation and that it would "take action when appropriate."

Business Insider contacted Gordon Ramsay's team for comment.

It's not the first time that squatters have made headlines this year.

In New York City, a couple was unable to move into the $2 million home they purchased in Queens after a squatter refused to vacate the property.

The couple sued the squatter in an attempt to evict him, but he countersued for harassment.

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• The US is set to sanction an IDF unit following reported human rights abuses, Axios reports.
• The Netzah Yehuda battalion was implicated in the death of an 80-year-old US citizen in 2022.
• Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decried the US decision, calling it  "a moral low."

The US is poised to sanction a controversial battalion in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for reported human rights abuses, Axios reported.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to announce sanctions against the Netzah Yehuda battalion for alleged human rights violations in the occupied West Bank.

It would be the first time the US has imposed sanctions on an Israeli military unit. The battalion is composed of over 900 soldiers.

The news of the possible sanctioning of the IDF unit came as the House of Representatives on Saturday passed a bill that includes more than $14 billion in military aid to Israel as well as $9 billion in humanitarian assistance, much of which will go to Gaza.

The unprecedented sanctions will prohibit the battalion and its members from receiving US military assistance or training.

The imposed measures are in accordance with the 1997 Leahy vetting policy, which forbids US foreign aid and Defense Department training programs from going to foreign security, military, and police units credibly alleged to have committed human rights violations.

In 2022, the State Department requested the US embassy interview Israelis and Palestinians about the battalion's conduct in the West Bank following reports of abuse of Palestinians, the Israeli outlet Haaretz, reported.

Last month, a State Department panel recommended that Blinken disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units operating in the West Bank from receiving US aid, ProPublica reported.

Blinken confirmed on Friday that he had made determinations based on this investigation and stated, "You can expect to see them in the days ahead" regarding the sanctions, per Axios.

Senior members of the Israeli government pushed back at the potential sanctions move against the Netzah Yehuda battalion.

"Sanctions must not be imposed on the Israel Defense Forces," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on X.

"At a time when our soldiers are fighting the monsters of terror, the intention to impose a sanction on a unit in the IDF is the height of absurdity and a moral low," he wrote.

Minister of Defense Benny Gantz wrote on X that the Netzah Yehuda battalion was "an inseperable part of the Israel Defence Forces."

Radical settlers

The Netzah Yehuda unit, part of the Kfir brigade, was originally set up in 1999 to accommodate the religious beliefs of recruits from ultra-Orthodox and national religious communities, including those from extremist settlements.

All of its members are men. The unit has a reputation for recruiting some radical settlers who are not accepted by other IDF formations, said Axios.

Historically, the Netzah Yehuda battalion has been primarily deployed in the West Bank, gaining notoriety for its treatment of Palestinians.

Notably, soldiers from the unit were accused in the death of Omar Assad, an 80-year-old US citizen, who died of a heart attack in 2022 after being detained, bound, gagged, and abandoned by members of the battalion.

While Israel has deployed the Netzah Yehuda battalion out of the West Bank since the incident, the unit has continued to serve— primarily in the country's north and in the Gaza Strip during the ongoing conflict with Hamas.

Business Insider contacted the State Department for comment.

Washington gives $3.8 billion in annual military assistance to Israel and has remained a steadfast ally throughout Israel's military campaign against Gaza, which has killed over 30,000 Palestinians.

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• Israel used a "Rampage" missile in its strike on Iran, Israeli media reported.
• The supersonic missile is designed to strike ground targets such as military bases.
• Its manufacturer describes it as "a long-range, air-to-ground" missile.

Israel used a long-range, supersonic missile in its strike on Iran earlier this week, Israeli broadcaster Kan reported, per The Times of Israel.

US officials said Israel carried out a missile strike on a military base near the city of Isfahan, Iran, on Friday. Israel has not confirmed the reports, while Iran has sought to downplay the incident, only referencing small drones used in the attack, which its foreign minister said were "like toys our children play with."

While it remains unclear what weapons were used in the strike, Kan reported that Israel used a "Rampage" air-to-surface missile, claiming it was identified in photos and that damage caused by the attack was consistent with a Rampage strike, per The Times of Israel.

The Rampage missile was designed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for use against targets such as "communication and command centers, air forces bases, maintenance centers and infrastructure," according to the company's website.

The company describes the missile, which weighs 1,250 pounds, as "a long-range, air-to-ground, seekerless, precision strike weapon."

It has the ability to fly at 1,250 mph with a range of up to 190 miles.

It can be fired from an aircraft or as a stand-alone system and uses GPS/INS guidance navigation and anti-jamming capabilities, it adds.

It has a blast fragmentation or general-purpose warhead.

A video shared on the company's YouTube channel simulates a strike by the missile.

Two Western officials said that the Israeli strike on Iran, which was launched in response to Iran's attack on Israel last week, was intended to show Tehran that it could evade its air defense systems undetected, The New York Times reported.

Business Insider contacted the IDF and the IAI for comment.

It was reported last year that the UK's Royal Air Force was considering buying the advanced Israeli weapon to replenish its missile stocks after having donated many of its own Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine.

The Rampage is considered an economical alternative costing hundreds of thousand of dollars versus the $3 million cost of each Storm Shadow, reported The National.

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• The Portugal-based carpentry company Madeiguincho began building tiny homes for European customers in 2016.
• The company's eco-friendly designs are now for sale in the US, with the first tiny home shipped to Queens, New York.
• Take a look inside a variety of their tiny homes, ranging from $58,619 to $74,535 in price.

Craftsmanship runs in Gonçalo Marrote's veins.

His father was a carpenter, and so was his father before him. In 1990, the Marrotes founded Madeiguincho, a Portugal-based, family-run woodworking company specializing in furniture.

Drawing from his architectural education and inspired by his travels to places like Berlin, New York, India, and Nepal, Marrote steered the company toward a new frontier in 2016: tiny homes.

"Some people would say, 'Why would you change something that is already good?' but I wanted to do something connected to my studies and my love for tiny houses," Marrote told Business Insider. "I made one, people liked it, and then I made two, and the company started to grow."

So far, the company has built 25 tiny homes, with prices starting at €55,000 (about $58,600). The homes vary in size, ranging from 10 meters (about 108 square feet), 12.5 meters (about 135 square feet), to 17.5 meters (about 188 square feet).

Marrote, with a deep appreciation for nature, designs each custom-built home — no two are alike — to feel like an extension of its surrounding natural environment.

"About 90% of our product is sourced from wood," he said. "The tiny homes are designed to make you feel at one with nature."

In 2019, Madeiguincho, which constructs the tiny homes in Portugal, collaborating with local builders and architects, began shipping to the US. The first home landed in a Queens, New York backyard, where it is being used as an Airbnb property.

Take a look inside some of Madeiguincho's tiny homes.

When a home is purchased from Madeiguincho they pre-build on-site in their workshop in Portugal.

Homes destined for the US are pre-assembled in Portugal before being transported in containers to their final destination. Once they arrive in the US, they are assembled on-site. The entire process, from transaction to delivery, typically takes about 10 months, according to Marrote.

Beginning in early 2025, the company intends to divide the construction process, with half of the work carried out in Portugal and the other half completed in the US.

Madeiguincho's tiny homes are eco-friendly and use sustainable construction methods.

Some of Madeiguincho's tiny homes use well water systems and electricity from neighboring properties, while others are designed to operate independently from conventional utility systems.

These homes, in essence, operate off-grid, free from connections to public electrical grids or water mains. Instead, residents rely on sustainable methods like rainwater harvesting, and solar or battery-powered electricity.

"It's almost like an organism that doesn't need help to live," Marrote said.

Madeiguincho doesn’t offer pre-defined models for customers to select from.

Each home is custom-crafted and tailored to meet the unique needs and preferences of the customer.

Marrote said that some clients have requested features like saunas, skylights, or French doors — windows designed to be opened like a door — to be incorporated into their homes.

"Clients just tell us the specific things they want and then let us be freely creative," he said.

While each tiny home is unique, they are only available in one of three sizes.

Each home includes a bathroom, sleeping area, and kitchen space, with some offering additional features such as two sleeping areas, a living room, or even desk space.

All of the homes are mobile, mounted on trailers with wheels for easy transport.

The first tiny home purchased for US buyers was sent to Queens, New York.

The couple who purchased the tiny home paid €80,00 (about $85,200). Transported to the US in a container, it arrived after a couple of months.

It was the first and so far sole home dispatched to the US, but Marrote said that the company is working on various designs for US-based clients.

This tiny home named Ursa was built for a client in Sintra, Portugal. (All of Madeiguincho’s homes are named after Portuguese beaches).

The home measures 7 x 2.5 m (about 23 x 8 ft) and, excluding delivery costs, was priced at €70,000 (about $74,500).

It features a sleeping area, a lengthy desk serving as both a dining and workspace, a washroom, and a compact kitchen area equipped with a sink, stovetop, mini fridge, and shelves.

The Ursa also features solar panels, a horseshoe-shaped window, and an attached porch.

The window lets in an abundance of natural light, making it ideal for both stargazing under the night sky and enjoying the morning sunrise.

The Meco bears a resemblance to a treehouse.

The 7 x 2.5 m (about 23 x 8 ft) home also comes with a price tag of €70,000 (about $74,500 USD).

It was designed with a couple and their children in mind, serving as both a comfortable workspace and a playful retreat.

The tiny home features two bedrooms —one with a closet — a washroom, and a kitchen area complete with a spacious countertop that doubles as a work desk.

While compact, it provides two sleeping areas, including one in a loft space.

The ground-floor bedroom, pictured above, offers generous storage space and features a wood-burning fireplace to keep its occupants warm.

The Vigia tiny home also has a loft-style bedroom.

Strategically placing the bedroom above the bathroom allows the tiny home to maximize its floor plan.

Additionally, the kitchen demonstrates clever space utilization by including a cozy nook and seating area rather than a traditional dining table.

The tiny home is priced at €70,000 (about $74,500 USD).

Vigia's bathroom is crafted from locally sourced wood and features matte black fixtures.

Marrote believes in minimizing Madeiguincho's environmental footprint. The company prioritizes the use of natural materials for each project, tapping into the resources of its surrounding environment.

"We mainly use European wood," Marrote said. "But we like to work with wood that is close to the place where we are building."

The Adraga, a two-story home, has swing barn doors that welcome ample light, creating a warm and inviting vibe.

Its design blends indoor and outdoor spaces, allowing it to harmonize with its natural surroundings — it also maximizes the sense of space within the 17.5 square meter home.

The €70,000 ($74,535) tiny home was tailor-made to accommodate the preferences of a retired couple.

The 17.5 square meter (188 square feet) tiny house has one bedroom, a bathroom, and a small kitchen area.

In place of a secondary bedroom, the home offers a living room area, along with a small table.

Marrote said the couple chose this layout because they wanted a comfortable area for dining and entertaining guests.

This tiny boat, nicknamed Moura, is still a prototype and hasn’t yet been built.

While the Moura shares similarities with other Madeiguincho tiny homes, it stands out as the only model designed to be placed on a floating platform.

Crafted with lake and river enthusiasts in mind, the boathouse blends the artistry of a custom-built home with the allure of waterfront living.

The tiny home, measuring 5 x 2.5m (about 16 x 8 ft), is priced at €70,000 (about $74,500). It is still in the prototype stage and has not yet been built.

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• I was excited to study abroad in Florence and to take small, cheap trips while abroad.
• My classmates are not traveling cheaply; they are flying to luxury places like Dubai and the Alps.
• I wonder if they are just doing it for social media, but I'm still enjoying my time abroad.

As a third-year college student attending Colorado State University in Fort Collins, I jumped at the chance to study abroad. Trading in a semester of snow and freezing temperatures for beautiful architecture and centuries-old art was a no-brainer.

I was so excited that I filled out the application to study in Florence nearly a year before the day I would depart. Four months in Florence, Italy, was comparable to the cost of a semester at my state school. After talking to my parents and counselor, I believed the cultural experience and travel opportunities were worth it.

I knew that when I arrived, I would have to budget when traveling —doing so through communal hostel stays and low-cost airlines. I was prepared for overstuffed backpacks and bus tickets; upon arrival, though, it became clear that pinching pennies was not on everyone's agenda.

The other students are jet-setting every weekend to expensive locations

The first few days in Florence were comparable to a freshman welcome week. The time was full of activities, including hikes, dinners, and other various ventures to get students to meet one another. My roommates and I attended one of the dinners to make connections before classes began.

Standing among groups of strangers, I expected to converse about majors and hometowns; however, I witnessed a quiet competition between students on who would be going to the most places in the coming months.

Comments such as "I have every weekend planned and booked" or "I would go, but I've already been" were stacked on top of one another as my peers attempted to one-up each other. At this time, I had a total of zero trips planned. When caught in these conversations, I felt oddly pressured to also fill my calendar each weekend, accompanied by the feeling of stress due to not being able to afford travel every five days. I feared I would be left behind.

I've been here for over two months, and this conversation hasn't ended. Every Monday, I hear whispers about where my peers had jet-setted to days before. Places like Dubai and Morocco have been mentioned, leaving me just as shocked as that first dinner. I knew studying abroad was a privilege before getting here, but "a weekend in Dubai" was not what I expected.

Nobody is 'roughing it' like I thought they would be

My spring break was only three weeks into the start of the semester, and this was when I decided to take my first trip. When booking, I scoured sites, such as KAYAK and Skyscanner, but plane tickets and hotels were still extremely pricey. Eventually, my roommates and I decided to spend five days in Prague after finding affordable tickets on Ryanair. One of the greatest appeals of Prague was it was walkable, cheap, and had a good nightlife — my top three requirements as a traveling college student.

My three roommates and I booked a studio apartment for around $100 each for a total of five nights. It took us two trains, one bus, a plane, and some walking to get there, but the price was right. I was excited for the following week and felt satisfied with our trip and housing accommodations.

That was until I scrolled through Instagram to see my peers skiing in the Alps and skydiving in Copenhagen. It was almost unbelievable that the people I attend classes with could afford this style of travel while my school backpack was stuffed with a week's worth of clothes cause I opted out of the carry-on baggage fee Ryanair required.

I thought everyone at this stage made sacrifices when traveling, but I was mostly wrong.

I'm convinced people are traveling for the sake of their Instagram

I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that anyone can experience a new country in the span of 48 hours.

I do know, however, that people are really good at making their time away look like the best time ever on my Instagram feed. It's as if they're collecting comments like postcards or putting another notch in their belts by showing one another how many stamps they have accumulated in their passports.

Traveling while studying abroad is a competitive sport with a large price tag that no one told me to train for.

I've learned that such comparisons defeat the purpose of traveling. Maybe I haven't flown on the best airlines or stayed in an oceanfront villa, but my experiences abroad have been enriching and allowed me to engage with other cultures. Best of all? I didn't have to spend much money, and my Instagram still looks good.

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This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with 29-year-old Pete Ballmer, a standup comedian living in San Francisco and one of the sons of billionaire and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When I meet people, they usually don't know that my dad is Steve Ballmer.

It's a funny thing — my dad's at a very interesting level of famous where some people immediately make the connection while most people have no idea. I have some friends for whom it took a really long time — like many months — before they realized the link.

Some kids were actively mean about who my dad was

I don't think there was an exact moment when I realized just how rich we were, but at some point as a kid, I went from knowing that we were rich to realizing that it was something people brought up when they met me and knew about ahead of time.

There were a couple of kids who were actively mean to me about who my dad was. I was on a field trip once, and my mom packed my lunch in a to-go bag from an Italian restaurant. And this kid was like, "You got Pallino Pastaria for lunch??" I responded, "No, it's just a sandwich. It's just in the bag." It's not even an especially fancy restaurant, but he was looking to give me grief. Some kids tried to "get" me on stuff like that, like, "Oh, you're so spoiled."

I started noticing people treat me differently in college

When I was a kid, no one was nicer to me because of who my dad was. But in college, I noticed that some people were definitely nicer; they were more intently focused on me when I talked, and there was just a certain air of people treating me like we were better friends than we actually were.

Sometimes it was explicit; I remember this guy in my dorm (whom I didn't know very well) telling me, "It's pretty cool — I tell my family back home that I get to party with Steve Ballmer's son at school." I was thinking, what's the point of telling me this? The interaction made me uncomfortable and felt weird.

I didn't like that people would know about my family and how much money we had before meeting me, or how they would bring it up to me in a way that made my own identity seem secondary to what they saw me as: a kid from a wealthy family.

During Family Weekend my freshman year, my three suitemates and I had our dads come in and play beer pong with us and some of our other friends. Stanford used to have an unofficial "open-door policy" allowing students to drink freely as long as we left our doors open. So we set up a beer pong table in our dorm room and had a father-son game going on.

I was just having fun, but then I noticed people in the dorm coming up one at a time, just to peek in to look at my dad playing beer pong. That was kind of annoying, but I get it — it's a spectacle, whatever.

To some people, I'm only seen as an asset or connection

I can tell when some people consider me only as an asset, someone it'd be good to stay connected with.

A couple of people text me about the Clippers, which my dad owns, and those are the only text messages I receive from them. Those aren't the kinds of people I'm interested in being friends with at all.

There was this guy I used to be friends with who went out of his way to talk to me. I liked him at first and held off on assuming anything too soon, but his actions over time showed that he clearly just saw me as an asset.

I've made an active effort to kind of cut him out, although he still texts me sometimes. He's a venture capital douchebag — for lack of a better description — so I know he's thinking about how he can leverage his relationship with me because he wants to be close to tech money. He wants to have me be on display so that his friends can see that I'm a connection of his, and that sucks.

Of course, it feels weird to assume that someone has impure motives. But I feel like there have been enough times where it's like a sixth sense by now. I don't actively avoid people, but I'm mindful to keep at arm's length those who I think may have some kind of ulterior motive for being connected to me.

With my real friends, my dad's identity fades into the background

I think having good friendships is important, and I trust my read on the people I've gotten to know and become close with — I feel extremely lucky about my friends in general. I have a close-knit group here in San Francisco, and we have a lot of fun together. I'm also very fortunate to have a tight college friend group and close friends from high school. My comedy friends are also awesome, and my newest group of friends, my girlfriend's friends, are really cool.

You see articles about how people have fewer friends than they used to and that friendships are on the decline, but that's not been my experience at all (although I'm generally pretty gregarious and easy to get along with, which helps when you're trying to make friends!).

Over the course of my closest friendships, my dad's identity has faded into the background. It's not something to really talk about on a day-to-day basis, in the same way that most people don't talk a ton about their parents with their friends.

I never experienced anyone dating me for my money

Everybody thinks that my family background would have a massive impact on my dating life, but it really didn't. From an anonymity standpoint, dating apps were honestly pretty great because profiles only included a first name and sometimes a last initial.

I wouldn't talk about my dad or my financial situation during my dates, but at a certain point, it felt like I was lying by omission if I didn't bring it up.

I would only have the conversation once I felt like I had a sense of the person and a decent idea that I wanted to spend more time with them — usually on the second or third date. By that point, I felt like I knew they already liked me, so I wouldn't see a complete shift in how they approached me.

I actually never had the experience of someone trying to date me for my money or anything. I feel like it's kind of a two-way street. If someone is looking to date someone with a lot of money, they're most likely looking for someone who spends a lot of it. Since I'm not a big spender, I don't think anybody eyed me and thought, "I can probably get a ton of money out of him."

For me, I never focused on the other person's job or financial background. I had the privilege of not needing to consider someone's financial situation in either direction because I knew that I would be fine, and I don't think that a person's work defines them.

I was mainly concerned with how I felt hanging out with this person — do I feel comfortable? Am I having a nice time? Do I like talking to them?

My girlfriend and I have very similar approaches to money

I think that how someone approaches money is a byproduct of their general life philosophy. If you encounter someone who's very pragmatic, reasonable, grounded, and down-to-earth, it's unlikely that they'd randomly have a completely different approach to money than how they approach everything else.

So that's what I looked for: someone with a life philosophy that jived with mine and, usually, that extended to finances. For my girlfriend, it certainly did. We've been together for almost two years, and I feel very lucky we're aligned in our approach to money.

We live together in an apartment that's perfect for our purposes. It's a two bed, one bath — no bigger than it has to be. We're both pretty practical — we will occasionally do the late-night UberEats order even if we have food at home, but neither of us spends excessively.

I would be uncomfortable not splitting bills evenly

My girlfriend has worked hard in her career — she has a good job in tech — and worked hard on being responsible with money and wants to be financially independent.

While we're quite confident that we'll remain together indefinitely, neither of us wants to merge financially yet. One day, though, my money will become our shared money.

For now, we approach our finances pretty independently; house expenses, groceries, and everything else we share are evenly split. We never considered splitting bills and expenses proportionally. If I were dating someone who proposed proportional spending, I would feel a little miffed and feel that perhaps they saw part of the deal with dating me as a benefit to their lifestyle.

I've learned that my family background doesn't define me

As much as I've been cognizant of some people wanting something from me over the years, that has been a very small percentage of my experiences.

I'm still pretty open when meeting new people. I used to be concerned that once I left school, I'd be met with less empathy or grace because of all of the (rightful) negative rhetoric around rich kids. I understand why some people are pissed that people like me exist in this economic system, and I agree that there's a tragedy to that fact.

But while some people have questions, I've found the overwhelming majority of people don't seem to treat me differently than they do anyone else.

When you hang out with people, your presuppositions fall into the background pretty quickly, and instead, you just experience how it feels to spend time with them.

I've learned that my identity doesn't define me. I thought that I would have to work through more bias against the type of person I am or people's presuppositions about me to earn their favor, but at the end of the day, most people just want to get along with other people.

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• The Pentagon is expediting preparation for a military aid package, awaiting Senate approval.
• The $95 billion aid bill, expected to pass next week, designates $60 billion for Ukraine.
• The Pentagon said it can transport material very quicky: "We can move within days."

The Pentagon could rush vital air defense weapons and artillery shells to Ukraine within days if the military aid bill clears the Senate as expected and receives President Joe Biden's signature, said the Department of Defense.

The House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill on Saturday. The bill is widely expected to pass the Senate in the coming days. It generally mirrors a $95.3 billion national security bill passed by the upper chamber in February. President Biden has pledged to sign it into law.

With the Senate approval, officials told The Washington Post that preparations for the assistance package were well underway ahead of the anticipated legislative approvals.

Divisions within the Republican Party, exacerbated by opposition from far-right factions, have led to delays in advancing the funding bill. Indeed, a majority of Republicans voted against the bill, which passed by a 311-112 margin.

The aid allocation earmarks about $60 billion for Ukraine, with additional funds designated for allies, including Israel and key partners in Asia.

According to the Post's insider sources, The Department of Defense has expedited the assembly of this aid package in response to mounting concerns over Ukraine's ability to resist Russian advances.

Top US military officials have warned that any delay in providing support could result in significant territorial losses and devastating casualties for Ukrainian forces.

Russia has been outgunning Ukraine 10 to 1 on artillery

The new aid package addresses critical shortages of Ukrainian units, including 155 mm ammunition for NATO-standard artillery systems and medium-range rocket artillery.

The US could send certain munitions "almost immediately" to Ukraine, according to a US military official, per The Guardian.

Officials in Ukraine have voiced growing frustration over perceived inaction from Washington as the conflict escalates.

Recent setbacks, such as the retreat from Avdiivka and subsequent Russian advances, have left Ukraine needing bolstered support from its allies.

As Ukraine grapples with ammunition shortages, its forces have been rationing existing armaments, with reports indicating that the Russian troops possess a significant advantage in artillery firepower.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week that his army was facing a profound shell shortage, and Russia was firing 10 times more artillery than Ukraine.

Ukraine's president thanked the House for its decisive bipartisan action on Saturday in a statement on X.

Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said on Thursday that the Pentagon stands ready to rush crucial supplies to Ukraine after clearance from Congress.

"We have a very robust logistics network that enables us to move material very quickly; as we've done in the past, we can move within days," he said.

Earlier this week, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on allies to "speed up the delivery of missiles, artillery, and ammunition."

Ukraine is using the weapons we provided to destroy Russian combat capabilities. This makes us all safer."

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• Gordon Ramsay grew up with a disadvantaged childhood.  
• Today, he is a multi-millionaire and holds sway over a restaurant and TV empire. 

If Gordon Ramsay had a dollar for every time he shouted the F-word … he'd probably still be the multi-millionaire he is today.

The global celebrity chef places 19th on Forbes' list of the world's highest-paid celebrities and has amassed a substantial fortune. Ramsay's net worth isn't known, but estimates range from $220 million to $750 million.

But the star chef wasn't always surrounded by the trappings of success that he enjoys today.

Ramsay grew up in an abusive household and relied at times on handouts from neighbors. It was only through dedication and perfectionism that he made it to the top of his game.

"I'd like to be remembered for perfection. Because it's an absolute bitch to get right, but when it is, it's the most beautiful fucking thing on the planet," he told GQ.

This is how the foul-mouthed, Michelin-starred celebrity chef made his way up in the world.

Gordon Ramsay grew up in council housing on the outskirts of Glasgow

Gordon James Ramsay was born in Johnstone, a town on the outskirts of Glasgow, Scotland, in 1966.

His mother was a nurse, and his father, also called Gordon, was a swimming pool manager, welder, and shopkeeper.

In his autobiography, Humble Pie, Ramsay revealed that his father had abused and neglected his children.

'He hit us when he was drunk, things were thrown, we had to run for our lives. We spent many nights, weekends, hidden in DHSS rooms," Ramsay told the Daily Telegraph in 2008.

When Ramsay was nine, he moved with his parents and three siblings to Stratford-upon-Avon in England. He did not reconcile with his father, who died in 1997.

After an injury killed his hopes for a career in soccer, Ramsay pursued cooking

Ramsay had aspired to be a professional soccer player as a child and by the age of 12 had made it onto a national youth team. He had been training with the Scottish team Rangers for several months when a knee injury ended his career as a sportsman.

Instead, he turned to the kitchen, a decision which he later called "a complete accident."

After studying hotel management at North Oxfordshire Technical College, he started work as a commis chef in the mid-80s.

An apprenticeship under legend Marco Pierre White taught the young chef how to run a serious kitchen

When he was 19, Ramsay entered the kitchen of Marco Pierre White.

White was the first British chef to be awarded three coveted Michelin stars and is often called the first "celebrity chef." He ran the kitchen at his restaurant Harvey's in the high-pressure, cutthroat style notorious at the time, but now viewed as toxic by some restauranteurs.

White was known for being volatile and even made the famously tough Ramsay cry.

Though the two chefs had a long-running feud, Ramsay has credited White with instilling a perfectionist mentality in him and showing him he could reach for the impossible.

"I stood alongside Marco for two years. Side-by-side for 16 hours a day. It was relentless," he said in a 2023 episode of the High Performance Podcast.

"I was in that pursuit of perfection and this guy put food on a plate like Picasso. I wanted to get that level of discipline."

"I was hungry" — Ramsay worked his way through restaurants, reaching for Michelin star glory

After a couple of years at Harvey's, he moved to the 3-Michelin Star French Restaurant, Le Gavroche; and also apprenticed under French icons like Albert Roux, Pierre Koffman, Guy Savoy, and Joel Robuchon.

In 1993, he took on his first gig as head chef in the restaurant Aubergine in London. After just three years, Ramsay earned the restaurant a two-star Michelin rating, and in 1995, he was named Newcomer of the Year at the prestigious Catey Awards.

"I was hungry. I was in pursuit of something to better myself," Ramsay said in an interview with the High Performance Podcast.

By 1997, he had founded his first restaurant group, Gordon Ramsay Restaurants, and started gathering a handful more Michelin Stars. But it was in 2001 that he received the coveted accolade of three stars from the Michelin Guide for his flagship restaurant, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.

He was only the second British chef to be awarded three stars at the time, after White.

In 2005, Ramsay started appearing on American TV screens. He hasn't left since

After hitting the Michelin milestone, Ramsay began his journey into the world of TV.

After a brief debut on the British show "Boiling Point" in 1999, he started hosting the British versions of shows like "Hell's Kitchen," "The F-Word," and "Kitchen Nightmares."

In 2005, "Hell's Kitchen" made its way across the pond to the US, soon followed by "Kitchen Nightmares."

It was through the screen that his fans fell in love with his brash, profanity-laden persona and the occasional heartwarming pride he held for the chefs brave enough to sign up for his shows.

"Hell's Kitchen" is now in its 22nd US season and draws in millions of viewers.

According to Forbes, Ramsay's shows accounted for more than $150 million yearly in ad sales for Fox in 2020.

Alongside show business, Ramsay has continued building an empire of 58 restaurants

The chef's growing celebrity persona helped attract hungry fans to his growing network of restaurants.

From casual bars & grills to 3-Michelin star white table experiences that can set you back more than $1,000, Ramsay has built a sweeping empire of restaurants.

During the COVID pandemic, Ramsay said that his restaurants lost $80 million in turnover. But today, the British chef owns 58 restaurants in countries including the UK, the US, China, Malaysia, and France.

His signature establishment, and one of the most opulent, is Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in the affluent area of Chelsea, London. Other renowned favorites include Hell's Kitchen, The Fat Cow, Pétrus, and Le Pressoir D'Argent.

The Ramsay empire is still expanding and a second location of Gordon Ramsay Burger at the Flamingo Las Vegas was recently announced. The restaurant will cover 8,000 square feet and will be his seventh restaurant in Sin City, according to Eater.

Ramsay's family helped soften his fiery temper

Ramsay married his wife, Tana, in 1996 when he was 29.

Tana, a former Montessori-trained teacher, chef, and cookbook author had been engaged to someone else when she met Ramsay at a New Year's Eve party in London, she told the Guardian in 2008.

The couple initially struggled to conceive and went through in-vitro fertilization before welcoming their first child, Megan, in 1998.

Tana gave birth to their sixth child, Jesse, last November. They are also parents to twins Jack and Holly, 23; Matilda, 22; and Oscar, 5.

Ramsay, known for his fiery temper, told People that having children has "brought the emotion" out of him.

But he has compared having six kids to "running a restaurant where no one goes home."

Despite earning millions of dollars, Ramsay is still working hard today

Another milestone in Ramsay's rise to success came when he was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2006 for his services to the hospitality industry.

But despite his success, he has at times disparaged his celebrity persona.

"'Don't call me that. I am a chef who happens to appear on the telly, that's it. I am a grafter. I work my arse off. So it's wrong to give me that title," he told The Telegraph in 2008. "Being called a celebrity makes a mockery of how hard I have worked."

That hasn't stopped him from lining up a range of celebrity friends, including David Beckham and Gigi Hadid.

In recent years, Ramsay's TikTok career has also taken off, and he has 20 million subscribers on his YouTube account.

Ramsay has also dedicated time and money to supporting a range of charities and helping disadvantaged individuals

Having spoken out about the struggles of his disadvantaged childhood, Ramsay has also shared his wealth with a number of philanthropic causes, including those close to his own experiences.

For years, he has supported the charity Women's Aid, which runs refuges for victims of domestic violence, and supported his own mother in the past.

In 2020, Ramsay quietly donated $50,000 to help with the medical bills for a 14-year-old MasterChef junior contestant who had cancer.

He and his wife, Tana, also have a charitable foundation that has previously committed to raising $2 million for Make-A-Wish and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Recently, Ramsay helped a terminally ill woman fulfill her bucket list dream of meeting him and dining at one of his restaurants after spotting her viral video on TikTok.

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• The US is considering deploying more military advisors to Ukraine, officials have said.
• Additional troops would primarily support logistics and oversee US weapons sent to Ukraine.
• The move comes amid warnings that Russia is likely to intensify its offensive operations.

The US is considering sending additional military advisors to its Kyiv embassy as Russia continues its offensive operations in Ukraine, Politico reported.

Four unnamed US officials and another unnamed person familiar with the matter told the publication that the additional troops would primarily support logistics and oversee the weapons being sent to Ukraine by the US.

They would also assist the Ukrainian military with weapons maintenance, one of the officials and the person familiar with the plans said.

There was no confirmation of how many additional US troops would be sent to Ukraine, although two of the officials said it could be up to 60.

In a statement to Business Insider, the Department of Defense said: "Throughout this conflict, the DOD has reviewed and adjusted our presence in-country, as security conditions have evolved. Currently, we are considering sending several additional advisors to augment the Office of Defense Cooperation (ODC) at the Embassy."

"The ODC performs a variety of advisory and support missions (non-combat) and while it is staffed exclusively by DoD personnel, it is embedded within the U.S. Embassy," it continued, adding that "personnel are subject to the same travel restrictions as all embassy employees."

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the West against sending troops to Ukraine.

After French President Emmanuel Macron said in February that sending NATO ground forces to Ukraine "cannot be ruled out," Putin made his position clear, saying, "the consequences for possible interventionists will be… tragic."

It comes as the US House of Representatives on Saturday approved a bill to send more than $60 billion in additional aid to Ukraine.

The think tank the Institute for the Study of War said in an update on the conflict that Russia would now likely intensify its attacks on Ukraine in order to make the most of "abnormally dry spring ground conditions and persisting Ukrainian materiel shortages" ahead of the new package.

"The now expected arrival of US security assistance has likely emphasized these considerations for Russian forces," the report said. "The Russian military command will likely intensify offensive operations and missile and drone strikes to pursue operationally significant effects that will certainly become harder to achieve against well-provisioned Ukrainian forces."

It added that Russia will likely target areas where Ukraine's defenses seem relatively unstable or where they are close to achieving an "operationally significant objective," such as to the west of Avdiivka or near Chasiv Yar — both in the Donetsk region.

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Emily had a lot of fight in her.

The petite 7-year-old had blonde hair and blue eyes. She was also diagnosed with autism, and she had been struggling ever since her mother, Sarah, moved her and her brother hours away from their dad during the pandemic. After the move, Emily became increasingly frustrated with her inability to articulate her thoughts and began boiling over into rages that required interventions at the public school she attended.

So in August 2021, Sarah moved Emily to New Story, a private school in State College, Pennsylvania, dedicated to serving children with special needs, in the hopes that the teachers there would know how to keep her little girl calm. But at New Story, Emily seemed to be having even more meltdowns, and the school called Sarah to intervene when her daughter broke down. So Sarah left work, again and again, to comfort her daughter with bear hugs.

She would rather miss work than let New Story teachers use their preferred tactic: corralling the first grader with gym mats that Emily would fight and scratch so hard, she'd come home with foam lodged beneath her bloody fingernails.

Then one afternoon in April last year, Sarah asked a family friend to pick up Emily from New Story. When the friend arrived, the little girl was on the playground, pinned down under the weight of four adults.

That night, Sarah decided that this nightmare had to end. Emily would not return to New Story. A year later, her daughter still hasn't talked about the incident at home or in therapy. New Story calls itself a "safe, nurturing environment for our students and their families," but Emily has a different term for her old school: "the mean people."

After nearly two semesters of second grade at a public school, Sarah said her daughter has progressed faster, academically and behaviorally, than she did at New Story. When Emily has an in-class meltdown, public school staff discreetly shepherd her to a quiet sensory room to calm down.

"Now, at the very least, I know that she is safe and she can communicate that to me," said Sarah, who asked that we use pseudonyms to protect her daughter. Their identities are known to Business Insider.

Sarah didn't know it at the time, but when she enrolled Emily in New Story, she was unwittingly signing on to an experiment in American education, one that worries former staff, US senators, and special-education researchers alike: New Story is the country's first large-scale special-education-school network owned by a private-equity firm.

In 2019, the Boston-based private-equity arm of Audax Group, which manages $36 billion for investors, including the Kentucky Teachers Retirement System and the Pennsylvania State Employees' Retirement System, purchased a mid-Atlantic special-education-school network called New Story Schools for an undisclosed price. Under Audax, New Story has purchased other local school chains, like Pennsylvania's River Rock Academy, as well as various behavioral-services companies, and rolled them up under New Story's corporate umbrella. The deals have created what New Story calls one of the largest special-education companies in the US, serving children with autism, behavioral problems, and other issues.

Now, Audax is reportedly looking to flip the company. More than a quarter of private-equity-owned companies across industries are sold to other private-equity firms, so the new owners may look much like the current one.

To some, private equity's business model appears antithetical to special education. In a basic private-equity deal, a firm pools money from investors like public pensions to buy a business, improve it (or load it up with debt), and sell it. Fast expansion means the firm can sell the business, typically four to seven years after buying it, and make a profit of 15% to 20% or more. Private equity targets companies that can grow fast, often by acquiring similar businesses.

A private-equity firm also makes money well before offloading the business, including by collecting fees from its investors and charging the businesses it owns for management and advisory services.

Special-education schools bring in a reliable income stream, typically from public funds: School districts and states pay New Story anywhere from $27,000 to $95,000 per student, and some schools operate year-round. (The average public school district in Pennsylvania, where New Story operates the most schools, spends about $23,000 per child across all types of public education. Additional services, such as providing an individual aide or specialized therapy, can push those costs much higher.) And a fragmented nationwide market means that a company like New Story — which Audax grew from 15 schools to a network of 75 schools and centers across seven states — has plenty of opportunities for expansion.

This year, New Story expects to bring in $305 million in revenue, the analytics firm Mergermarket said. The company serves a few thousand students, a tiny slice of the 8 million Americans between the ages of 3 and 21 who receive special-education services each year — a 25% increase from 2011, according to government data. (In 2021-22, 2% of these children attended public or private schools dedicated to students with disabilities.)

Under Audax, New Story gutted departments focused on quality and education and struggled with turnover.

To understand how New Story changed under private-equity ownership and what private-equity takeovers could mean for the special-education landscape, Business Insider reviewed more than 3,000 pages of public records and spoke to 20 current and former New Story employees and parents. Many of them said that under Audax, New Story pushed to expand at the expense of student safety and academic progress. While parental complaints and even lawsuits alleging mistreatment are not uncommon at special-education schools, records of complaints and interviews with parents and educators show that New Story's focus on profit under private-equity ownership added an alarming layer of stress to special education.

Under Audax, New Story gutted departments focused on quality and education and struggled with turnover. The company's hiring practices grew so lax in some instances — including hiring an administrator who was fired from her previous school for failing to report suspected sexual abuse — that state regulators expressed alarm. Some parents, like Sarah, grew concerned about the inappropriate use of restraints and isolation.

Shanon Taylor, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, who studies privately run special-education schools, told BI that private equity's push to make big profits is fundamentally at odds with special education's mission. Since the schools are generally paid flat reimbursement rates by school districts or insurers, she said private-equity firms make money by cutting costs.

"They'll cut the number of employees. They'll pay employees less. They'll hire less-qualified employees so they can pay them less. They're going to defer maintenance on their facilities and not have the equipment necessary in those facilities," Taylor said, speaking about private-equity firms generally. "All of those things then are impacting the services to these vulnerable populations."

As a parent of two adults with special needs, Taylor said she would not have sent her children to a private-equity-owned school.

"Most people don't even realize that the school that you may be sending your child to — because you're looking for a specialized setting — may not be run with the best interest of your child at heart," she said.

Top policymakers are concerned, too.

"Private equity has no place in education — especially special education," Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio told BI. "From nursing homes to retail to housing, we have seen private equity kill too many jobs, dismantle too many businesses, raise prices, and hurt too many patients in our state, and I am deeply alarmed it is now working to undermine — and endanger — a student's fundamental right to a free and appropriate public education." New Story runs 12 schools and centers in Ohio.

Brown's colleague, Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, where New Story operates 27 schools, agreed. "Public education dollars should be spent ensuring that students with disabilities have their individual education needs met by qualified teachers and health professionals, not padding the pockets of wealthy private equity executives," he said. Casey chairs the Senate's Health Subcommittee on Children and Families.

'A moneymaking machine'

New Story was founded in 1997 by Paul Volosov, a certified school psychologist who created several for-profit businesses to support adults and children with special needs and other challenges.

Volosov wasn't a perfect owner. Before New Story was acquired by Audax, its schools were the focus of a handful of lawsuits alleging improper treatment of students and employees. And Volosov drew internal scrutiny for his erratic behavior and off-color remarks about women and religion, some former employees said. Volosov stayed on as New Story's CEO until January 2022, when he transitioned to chairman.

Audax filled the company's four C-suite roles with people who had no education or behavioral-health experience.

But former staffers said some of New Story's problems under Volosov were magnified with Audax's ownership. After the education and quality departments were slashed in summer 2022, staff said the disconnect between corporate objectives and the classroom widened. Audax filled the company's four C-suite roles with people who had no education or behavioral-health experience.

"Since the expansion, I think it's just a moneymaking machine," said Jim Grinnen, a former regional manager of education for New Story's central Pennsylvania region. He joined the company in 2018 and left in 2021. "Being a special educator, knowing why I got into it 25 years ago, it just makes your stomach turn when you're seeing these rich people give speeches in front of you with no clue what we're doing here."

Despite those concerns, some parents and educators have expressed satisfaction with the level of care New Story offered. For some families, New Story schools were a last resort, taking a difficult child when no one else would. In Pennsylvania Department of Education records, 11 superintendents and other public school administrators praised one arm of New Story, an 11-campus alternative-education school called River Rock Academy that enrolls disruptive students.

"It is a company that truly cares about the students and treats them as if they were their own. The company provides a high level of service," wrote the superintendent of one Pennsylvania school district in River Rock's application for relicensure.

In an October letter to BI, New Story's senior vice president of operations for Pennsylvania, Christina Spielbauer, highlighted the improvements the "deeply mission-oriented" company has made under Audax, including hiring over 221 new staff members last summer and investing $2 million last year into facilities. Spielbauer wrote that the company was "open to sharing more information" with BI.

Nathaniel Garnick, a spokesman for the company, subsequently declined to answer a list of questions or make New Story or Audax representatives available to interview. Garnick issued two statements, one on behalf of Audax and another on behalf of New Story. He wrote that the company has invested almost $50 million into New Story facilities and improved the student-teacher ratio.

"Rather than focus on the positive impact we have every day on thousands of students with severe emotional and behavioral issues, it is unfortunate that Business Insider has chosen to cherry-pick a handful of isolated incidents in an effort to sully the reputation of our hard working, dedicated team who put their hearts and souls into the work they do," Garnick wrote.

Speaking for Audax, he wrote that staff shortages mean schools are "ill-equipped to confront the escalating mental health crisis on their own."

"Our investment has enabled New Story to expand access and provide vital support to a significantly underserved population of students who often cannot attend traditional public schools," he wrote.

Trying to do more with fewer people

Craig Richards loves teaching and doesn't shy away from a challenge. The elementary-school teacher started a chess club in the Reading School District, one of Pennsylvania's poorest and worst-performing districts. He's also worked in a youth detention center, and his wife is a teacher.

In 2017, Richards joined River Rock Academy, which specializes in educating students who can't stay in their

Under its new owners, Richards told Business Insider, River Rock subordinated student care to profits.

public schools because of misconduct. He said staff members at River Rock were caring and tried their best to educate a group of students who often wanted to be anywhere else. Richards left the school after two years. While he was away, New Story bought the school. When he returned for the 2022-23 academic year, he found that the tenor had shifted: Under its new owners, he told Business Insider, River Rock subordinated student care to profits.

"Now since it's New Story, they're definitely more money-driven. They're trying to do more with fewer people," Richards said.

Several former staff members in Pennsylvania said New Story schools there chronically lacked substitute teachers. When Richards missed roughly a week of work during the last academic year for the flu and another three days to take care of his daughter when she broke her foot, behavioral staff — not teachers — covered his classroom.

Asking staff to double as subs might be reasonable if New Story expanded its staff for such needs. But Richards said the school employed fewer staff under New Story than during his first stint, putting extra pressure on teachers to work no matter what.

"It definitely made you feel a little less human. You're not allowed to be sick, your daughter can't have a problem, because we don't have enough people here," he said.

Teacher and staff turnover is a perennial problem for public and private schools nationally that was exacerbated by the pandemic. The people who spoke to BI said New Story turnover is high, even at the top levels. For instance, two Pennsylvania education directors left in spring 2023, according to records obtained by BI — one after just months in the role. Neither was immediately replaced. One Ohio school had four directors, including a 25-year-old, in 2022.

Such director turnover is highly unusual, Judith McKinney, a Virginia-based special-education advocate, said. In her five years evaluating private schools with Virginia's Department of Education, she said directors typically stayed at the same school for years, sometimes decades.

Several grad students working at Green Tree School were so deeply alarmed that they registered their concerns with the Pennsylvania Department of Education

At River Rock, Richards struggled with new curriculum demands under New Story's ownership. His school previously reimbursed teachers who bought worksheets and other items on a popular online marketplace called Teachers Pay Teachers. But last year, River Rock began directing teachers to upload their own worksheets or other material to share with colleagues across River Rock's 11 schools — a closed, unpaid version of Teachers Pay Teachers.

When Richards sought other curriculum resources, he was pointed to a school closet that contained donated materials.

"One of the manuals didn't even have the first unit — it was ripped out," he said. "I'm like, 'Can we look at getting something else?' I had ideas of books we could use. They wouldn't."

Though he loved his colleagues and some aspects of the job, when a position to manage a local running store came up, Richards eagerly took it. He left in June — just two semesters after his return.

(In state paperwork, River Rock said it offers teachers "a variety of textbooks and resources including a resource bank available to them to provide appropriate course content to students based on their individual need.")

Grinnen, the former Pennsylvania administrator, told BI that his schools also struggled with curriculum resources, including having to give 12th graders textbooks written for second graders. That surprised him since the company seemed to have deep pockets to open new locations. Some schools acted more like holding pens than educational facilities, Grinnen said.

Donnell McLean, who briefly ran a New Story campus in Virginia, said the school's lack of a standardized curriculum led to some students being warehoused.

There was "not a lot of challenging work, especially for the higher-functioning students," McLean said.

Last spring, several graduate students working at Philadelphia's Green Tree School were so deeply alarmed by what they saw that they registered their concerns with the Pennsylvania Department of Education. This, along with other complaints, prompted several visits to Green Tree by PDE employees in April and June. One state employee wrote to her supervisor that her visit's "purpose is to do a walk through to determine how much instruction is actually going on based on the complaints that were received." (Subsequent communication about employees' trips was redacted in PDE records obtained by BI.)

In Ohio, New Story administrators told BI they pushed back against the company's plans to increase school enrollment and convert some schools into centers with a half day for school and a half day for therapy. Such a switch would allow New Story to make more money per student by billing insurance companies for more therapy.

While enrollment data is difficult to come by across states, Ohio offers a window into how New Story has increased enrollment without similar teacher increases. Four New Story-branded Ohio schools collectively added 106 students from 2022 to 2024 — a 52% increase — but lost 31 licensed staff, per state data. (BI did not include a recently opened New Story school in this analysis.)

Private equity has been piling into other autism services and similar behavioral-health companies.

Meanwhile, huge additions to the ranks of support staff quickly changed New Story's employee composition. In 2022, support staff comprised 41% of New Story's staff — but 87% this year. For comparison, BI examined 19 other private, secular Ohio special-education schools' data. From 2022 through 2024, those schools' rosters were, on average, made up of about half support staff and half teachers. None had more than 75% support staff, who are generally paid less than teachers and have less training.

(New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia do not track staff numbers for privately run schools.)

New Story employees questioned other corporate changes. Some staff disagreed with a plan to give bonuses to administrators based on student enrollment, something the company discussed across states, two people said.

"Our rationale was we never wanted to create a financial incentive to enroll a student that we couldn't properly serve or to keep a student that was ready to return to their public school," said one of the employees who said they pushed back on the plan.

Not all teachers take issue with New Story's approach. Natalie Stoup teaches seven autistic and intellectually and developmentally disabled students at New Story's New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, campus. Stoup, who has taught for 27 years, said she has loved her two years at the school.

"I absolutely really have a strong respect for the program," she told BI. "I think they're doing wonderful things."

Blackstone's autism bet

While New Story is the first large-scale, private equity-owned special-education school network, Audax's bet comes as private equity has been piling into other autism services and similar behavioral-health companies. Many of the biggest private-equity players have snapped up autism-services providers in the wake of state and federal changes requiring more payments for mental-health and autism services.

That shift made the industry look much more profitable and scalable, magic words for private-equity players like the industry giant Blackstone. In 2018, the firm bought a majority stake in the behavioral-therapy provider Center for Autism and Related Disorders. Blackstone then put the business into bankruptcy proceedings in June, citing labor costs and lease obligations for centers it closed. Forbes reported last year that former employees attributed the company's challenges to a "model that put profits ahead of patient care." (New Story bought CARD's Virginia locations during bankruptcy, and the bulk of the company was sold back to the founder.)

When employee costs rise quickly, companies like CARD and New Story can't pass on the costs to their customers as fast as other businesses, like a restaurant raising menu prices. Insurance reimbursement and school tuition haven't kept pace with the post-pandemic economic landscape, increasing pressure on behavioral-health companies to make money by trimming costs and expanding.

NBC News reported that CARD's staff training decreased under Blackstone's ownership and many employees left after wages stayed stagnant for three years. (Blackstone claimed that it increased training, though staff documents reviewed by NBC News showed the opposite.) Like New Story, CARD's private-equity-installed CEO had no special education or behavioral-health experience.

Other private-equity-owned healthcare companies have recently come under intense regulatory scrutiny. The Biden administration is pressing for transparency for private-equity-owned nursing homes, while the Federal Trade Commission is suing an anesthesiology company and its PE owner for creating what it calls an anticompetitive scheme. PE's special-education and autism-related companies have, so far, largely flown under the radar.

Restraining kids without uniform policies

Educational and disciplinary data about privately run schools like New Story is virtually impossible to obtain — and New Story doesn't volunteer it. The schools are not required to publicly report testing data, attendance, or other markers of school success. And because of the varied student populations, such data would be difficult to compare to public or private schools. In Pennsylvania and Virginia, state Department of Education spokespeople said their agencies don't even keep track of how many students attend private schools.

Nickie Coomer, a Colorado College education professor who has written about the privatization of special education, told BI that this data gap is a major regulatory hole, one that private-equity companies are happy to exploit.

"There's not a lot of accountability about how we're adhering to the laws we have in place to protect kids with disabilities," she said. "There's no governance, no elected school board … It's the antithesis of what schools should be."

One key metric for student safety that's reported at public schools is restraint usage. In most districts, when a student could endanger themselves or others, staff may use restraints, including physically immobilizing the student or isolating them so they can calm down. As with other data, New Story's restraint usage is not publicly reported.

Parents BI talked to had a wide array of experiences, from Sarah's ordeal to others who say New Story's restraint practices have been appropriate and effective for their children. One father of a student who graduated State College's New Story school in 2022 told BI that his young adult son, who frequently needs to be held down at home to avoid self-harm, was always appropriately restrained and the incidents were properly documented.

Interviews with multiple staff members indicate that their training on how to handle challenging student situations varied from school to school.

Donnell McLean, the former Virginia school director, said he never received any restraint training through New Story. Instead, he relied on what he knew from his prior job. In Virginia, public schools are legally required to document any restraint use and notify parents — but McLean said he didn't always receive reports from his staff after they restrained students.

In 2022, an Ohio school director at a New Story school fired an employee who restrained an 11-year-old with such force that his parents sent photos of hand-shaped bruises on the boy's shoulder.

Shyara Hill, a parent of three students at the New Story-owned Green Tree School in Philadelphia, told the Pennsylvania Department of Education that she wasn't properly notified when one of her children was placed in isolation. In emails and phone calls to the agency last spring, Hill detailed other troubling incidents at the school. She reported that one of her children was hurt in a classroom fight but wasn't examined by a nurse; one was repeatedly bullied with no staff intervention; and one came home soiled after staffing shortages prevented them from visiting the restroom.

"The school has not followed the agreement, safety protocols, [or] parent notification plan and has not responded to several communications from myself and [my] child's attorney," Hill wrote in the email, obtained in a public records request from the state Department of Education.

(Neither Hill nor her attorney responded to requests for comment.)

Documents that River Rock sent to Pennsylvania's Department of Education state that restraints "will be used as a last resort" and will be reported to the agency.

A staffer with a criminal record

BI's review of records and litigation turned up alarming lapses in New Story's vetting of new hires as Audax rapidly expanded operations.

This summer, the company hired Amy Hall Kostoff to oversee student services across seven Pennsylvania campuses and serve as the educational director for one of them.

Hall Kostoff was fired in April 2022 from her tenured job as an assistant supervisor at a Pennsylvania county special-education center for failing to properly report suspected sexual abuse involving two students, one of whom is nonverbal. In March 2023, the state's acting secretary of education assessed that Hall Kostoff was dishonest during the subsequent investigation.

A representative for the public school that fired Hall Kostoff declined to comment, including about New Story's background check.

Hall Kostoff, who was still employed at New Story as of late March, declined to comment.

Pennsylvania Department of Education records show that employees were concerned about the hiring practices at Philadelphia's Green Tree School. One department employee wrote to her colleagues in April that staff records at Green Tree were "missing a lot of information," including about background checks and teacher certifications. That employee later wrote that her background check of one Green Tree staff member turned up convictions for public intoxication, disorderly conduct, and indecent exposure — the latter of which would legally prohibit employment at a school. BI was unable to corroborate the PDE employee's claims, and it's unclear if the charges stemmed from incidents in or out of school, or if that employee continued working for Green Tree. The staff member did not respond to requests for comment.

New Story has terminated other staff members accused of wrongdoing, including an occupational therapist in Pennsylvania who was arrested in 2022 and charged with attempting to solicit a minor for sex. A company spokeswoman told a local newspaper the charges did not involve a New Story student.

In 2022, the principal of a New Story-owned school in Rochelle Park, New Jersey, told police that graduates of the school had received sexually inappropriate messages from their former gym teacher, who was still employed there. The teacher wrote to the female students about how he "was sexually attracted to students while they attended the school," and he named specific students, a police report said. (The students told police that no inappropriate behavior occurred while they attended the school.) The teacher also asked another former student if they wanted to smoke weed and gave the former student his Snapchat handle. The police report said the teacher was placed on leave pending an internal investigation; it is unclear whether further action was taken. A detective advised against pursuing charges because the former students are adults, and the messages, "though inappropriate," were not illegal, he wrote. Asked if the teacher was still employed, New Story's spokesman declined to answer and the school's principal did not respond to a request for comment.

Love, Emily

In State College, Emily is thriving in public elementary school. She splits her time between mainstream and special-education classes, spending time with her peers in a way she never did at New Story, where she was the school's only young student.

(Researchers told BI that students miss out on building key social skills when they're sequestered in special-education programs.)

This year, Emily has attended a birthday party and playdates, the kinds of childhood interactions Sarah feared she'd never experience.

"I want my children to be sound, functioning, responsible adults, but I don't want to break their spirits," Sarah said.

She said that public school employees have been kinder — a New Story staff member once said Emily had a "nasty side" — and that Emily is behaving better.

She recently asked Sarah how to sign a card with "love, Emily."

Do you have a story to share? Email this reporter on a non-work device at mmorris@businessinsider.com.

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