Forest Majeure: Finland Orders Google Halt Work At 2 Data Centers Less Than A Month After €13B Splash

 The data center delay contagion has officially gone global.

Just hours after we laid out how Oracle's 1.3GW Wisconsin campus became the next domino to slip after the indefinite delay of the company's New Mexico-based, Project Jupiter, and on the same day Google locked up 3.6GW of Constellation's nuclear output in PJM, Finland's Supervisory Agency (LVV) ordered a halt to construction work at two planned Google data centers, in Muhos and Kajaani, after more than 300 hectares of forest were cleared without a mandatory environmental impact assessment. The sites are part of the €13 billion ($15 billion) investment Google announced less than a month ago, which it billed as its largest single investment in Europe.

Google’s data center in Hamina, Finland.Source: Google

For those keeping count, that's two of Oracle's flagship Stargate campuses, SoftBank's SB Energy, a statewide halt in Texas, PJM's emergency power auction and now Google's biggest European project, all in the span of about three weeks. Which is why, having flagged the first Oracle data center delays back in December, we can now say with some confidence that the bottleneck in the AI buildout is no longer the chips. It's the permits.

Below we walk through what Finland ordered, why the timing is awkward for Google, and why Morgan Stanley thinks the politics of compute could end up helping the hyperscalers (for now).

420 Football Fields, Zero Assessments

According to the BBC, which first reported the order, the LVV found that work at one of the sites went ahead without the mandatory environmental impact assessment, and ordered Google's project company, Tuike Finland, to suspend all measures that would "significantly alter the environment" by October 23. Tuike has until October 14 to explain itself and lay out how it intends to proceed, failing which the agency says it could start enforcement proceedings. The work in question, per the LVV's head of environment Tommi Muilu, included felling trees, stripping topsoil, building site roads and storage areas, and rerouting ditches. In other words, everything you do before you build a data center.

The Helsinki Times adds that the banned list also covers excavation, blasting and crushing, and that the bulk of the clearing, more than 300 hectares, took place at the Leppiniemi site in Muhos, a town of roughly 8,800. For scale, the AFP pegged it at about 420 football fields. Under Finnish rules, converting more than 200 hectares calls for an environmental assessment before the chainsaws come out, which is the order in which these things are generally supposed to happen.

None of this came out of the blue. The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation first raised the alarm in September, and the LVV opened an investigation on September 19, at which point Google insisted the trees had been felled in "full compliance with the Forest Act." Two and a half weeks later, the message has changed somewhat: Google now says it has "fallen short of our own high standards in this instance" and will follow the agency's guidance, while still maintaining it acted in good faith and promising to replant trees across 130 hectares at Muhos.

That's 130 hectares replanted for 300+ cleared. Net zero, Google-style.

Meanwhile, the public mood isn't helping: a citizens' initiative demanding stricter data center rules reportedly gathered more than 50,000 signatures in three days.

Europe's Biggest Google Bet... Paused

The timing could hardly be worse. When Google unveiled the Finnish plan on September 9, it was a showcase: at least €13 billion over 2027 and 2028 for new data centers in Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala plus an upgrade at its existing Hamina facility, a claimed 37,000 jobs supported during construction and an average €3.6 billion a year added to Finland's economy. The centerpiece was the power: a 22-year purchase agreement for up to half the output of Fortum's Loviisa nuclear plant, which extends the plant's life to 2050 from a previous 2030 shutdown date.

Which, as regular readers know, is exactly the kind of firm, carbon-free, dedicated power we have been pounding the table for. And yet here we are: the power was never the problem in Finland. The forest was.

It's also not the first time the Finnish plan has hit a wall. Back in October 2025, Alphabet put the expansion on hold while the government floated raising the electricity tax on data centers roughly 40-fold, from 0.05 cents to 2.19 cents per kWh. And the day after the €13 billion announcement, Finland's opposition parties told Reuters the country needs a national permitting system for data centers to head off power shortages and soaring prices, with the Centre Party's Antti Kaikkonen complaining that nobody is minding the overall picture. The Social Democrats, who lead the polls ahead of April's election, called electricity availability an internal security issue.

Put differently, the regulatory risk premium on Nordic data centers just got repriced, and the election hasn't even happened yet.

The irony is hard to miss: as we noted in July, Finland has the highest unemployment rate in the OECD at 10.8%, with youth unemployment at 23%. A country in that position just froze part of a project promising 37,000 jobs over two years. Principled, certainly. Whether Finland's jobless see it that way is another matter.

From New Mexico To Old Muhos

The Finnish order lands on top of what has been the worst three weeks for the data center trade since the AI buildout began. Recall that it started on September 21, when the $18 billion of loans backing Oracle's Project Jupiter slid below 90 cents. The next day Texas Governor Abbott ordered a halt to new data centers, and a day later SB Energy delayed the IPO meant to fund the world's largest data center. Then on September 24 Oracle declared force majeure on Jupiter, and its bonds plunged to a record low the next day. Barclays was among the first to spell out the knock-on effect for everyone selling picks and shovels:

Since then, PJM's emergency backstop auction for data center power was suspended by FERC for five months (a power auction for data centers... delayed), and Oracle's Project Lighthouse in Wisconsin saw its grid approval go back to square one, which as we detailed earlier today pushes full power to somewhere between October 2028 and April 2029. That's on a campus Oracle still guides to "customer delivery in the second half of 2027."

Finland is a different flavor of the same disease. In the US, it's grid hookups and local revolt. In Finland, it's environmental permitting. The result is identical: steel in the ground, nothing switched on, and a capex schedule that only goes one way.

"The Politics Of Compute" Goes International

The backlash itself is nothing new: we've covered 142 anti-data center rallies across 42 states this summer and why most Americans hate the idea of AI data centers next door. Last month, Morgan Stanley's Vishwanath Tirupattur put numbers on it in a Sunday Start note that we published in full (available for pro subs): a Gallup poll found seven in ten Americans oppose a data center in their community, roughly 500 US jurisdictions have enacted bans or moratoriums, and an estimated ~$156 billion of projects were cancelled or delayed in 2025, with another ~$130 billion hit in 1Q26. Support has been collapsing for a year:

Why it matters for the macro: Morgan Stanley's economists estimate that AI-related investment added 0.6pp to real US GDP growth in 2025 and 0.8pp in 1H26, roughly a third of all growth, and expect 0.85pp of the 2.6% they forecast for 2027.

But here is the counterintuitive part of the MS view, and it's worth quoting because it's also the bull case:

"Here, the constraints are political and regulatory, not insufficient demand for compute or a shortage of capital to fund it. Demand for compute already far exceeds available supply. A deceleration in capacity additions would intensify and prolong the existing shortfall in compute. For equity markets, this could strengthen the position of the 'merchants of compute' – hyperscalers – by increasing the scarcity value of their installed base and enhancing their pricing power."

Translation: every delayed data center makes the ones already running more valuable. Morgan Stanley even argues credit spreads could tighten if delays mean less AI debt issuance. Maybe so... for those who already own the compute. For those who borrowed against the promise of compute coming online on schedule (hello, Oracle, and most hyperscalers), the scarcity value of someone else's installed base is cold comfort. And Google, which reported yet another capex guidance hike this year, is now in both camps at once.

Bring Your Own Power... And Your Own Paperwork

We have been saying for almost a year that the only way through the grid crunch is to take the grid out of the equation:

Last week Goldman joined that camp, with Michele Della Vigna's team raising its behind-the-meter forecast to 67GW by 2030 and now expecting on-site gas and fuel cells to supply 25% of global data center power demand by 2030, versus "effectively 0%" in 2025 (in the Carbonomics report, available to pro subs). And Google has done everything right on that front in Finland: a dedicated nuclear plant, plus the 629MW of new wind and 94MW of batteries it lined up alongside.

The Finnish halt is the reminder that power is only one of the permits. You can bring your own reactor and still get stopped by the local park ranger (especially if he doesn't fully share your political and technological views). Behind-the-meter fixes the interconnection queue; it does nothing for environmental reviews, water rights, zoning boards or 50,000 angry signatures. And with every jurisdiction now watching the next one, the playbook for slowing a data center down has never been easier to copy.

Bottom Line

Taken on its own, a Finnish forestry dispute over two sites is fixable: Google files its explanation by October 14, does its assessment, and the 2027-28 timeline may well survive. But it isn't on its own. It's the latest entry in a list that started with one stressed loan in New Mexico three weeks ago and now spans two continents, four flagship AI campuses, a state government and the biggest US grid.

Morgan Stanley's verdict was that the backlash is real, but that it "remains unclear" whether it turns into a sustained capex slowdown. We'll make the call for them: the delays are the new normal, not a series of one-offs, and every 2027 capacity schedule, along with the revenue ramps and debt service built on top of it, is now a 2028 schedule until proven otherwise. The hyperscalers with installed compute may well benefit, as MS argues. Everyone who borrowed trillions in off-balance sheet SPV debt against compute that hasn't been switched on yet... not so much.

Next catalysts to watch: Tuike Finland's reply on October 14, and the October 23 deadline to put down the chainsaws.

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/forest-majeure-finland-orders-google-halt-work-two-data-centers-less-month-after-eu13bn

New Report Confirms Biden's DOJ Did Target Parents Who Spoke Out At School Board Meetings

 The Justice Department's Weaponization Working Group released a report Monday concluding that former Attorney General Merrick Garland's Oct. 4, 2021 school board memo grew out of pressure from the Biden White House and turned the department's law enforcement powers on parents.

The report describes how DOJ officials under President Joe Biden looked for ways to bring federal cases against parents and protesters who addressed school boards and school officials during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also contains the Working Group's formal acknowledgment that the prior administration's actions "chilled the exercise of parental and free speech rights, parents who lawfully exercised their parental rights and freedom of speech were often targeted by members of the educational establishment."

Garland addressed the memo to the FBI director, the assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, the director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, and U.S. attorneys nationwide. The memo told its recipients that "in recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence," even though, according to the report, he had seen very little evidence of actual violence or violent threats against school administrators or at school board meetings when he signed it.

The Working Group traces the memo's ideological origin to a letter the National School Boards Association sent to Biden on Sept. 29, 2021, five days before Garland acted. That letter asked the federal government to consider that "these heinous actions" "could be equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes."

Records cited in the report show that leadership at the Biden White House and the DOJ pressed for a memo that would locate a federal "hook" for prosecuting parents and charging protesters with federal crimes.

"Among the most egregious findings, exhibits show that individuals in the Biden White House and Attorney General Garland's advisors wanted to involve federal law enforcement and prosecutors in matters involving parents and school boards," a DOJ press release explains.

Further, the Memo established a task force to find federal enforcement options for investigating and prosecuting parents, and the FBI opened 25 "Guardian assessments" on parents. One FBI whistleblower disclosed that a mother was investigated because she "is a gun owner" and belonged to a "right-wing mom's group."

Internal communications and investigative records show that more than a dozen DOJ and FBI personnel raised concerns about the memo and its directive. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," one employee wrote. Another wrote that "they might as well rename the damn thing the Anti-MAGA Task Force." Several of the objections centered on the law. One staffer warned that the directive was "challenging from a First Amendment perspective," and another said it placed the department on "potentially dangerous ground." Other employees focused on how the directive would reflect on the department. One wrote that the memo "look[s] political." Another called it "a partisan exercise aimed at those who do not support the Administration," and a third cautioned that it would "tarnish reputation as an apolitical law enforcer." One described the effort as "very messy and political." Shorter reactions in the record include "ridiculous," "horrible," and "confusing."

Emails cited in the report show that Garland issued the memo over those objections and that White House officials influenced his decision.

The department announced a series of remedial steps alongside the findings. Parents and other school board meeting participants who became subjects or targets of a Guardian assessment because of the memo will have the opportunity to review their assessment. The FBI has closed or discontinued most of those files, and each one will now carry a disclaimer stating that the memo raised serious constitutional concerns and that readers should treat the assessment with caution.

The DOJ will also review the file of every person investigated under the memo. Where reviewers identify a constitutional violation, the department will issue a formal apology and adopt internal controls intended to prevent a recurrence.

Leaders of the DOJ and the Department of Education sent letters on parental rights to the attorneys general of all 50 states. The department said Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Trump administration have made securing parental and First Amendment rights a top priority.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-report-confirms-bidens-doj-did-target-parents-who-spoke-out-school-board-meetings

Caribou Biosciences explores strategic alternatives

 axes vispa-cel and CB-011 CAR-T programs, plans major cost and workforce cuts

https://finviz.com/stock?t=CRBU&p=d

Neogen beats, ups estimates on strong core growth, revenue guidance, EBITDA outlook

 

Neogen beats fiscal Q1 2027 estimates on strong core growth, raises FY27 revenue guidance to $885–$890M and EBITDA outlook

• Fiscal Q1 2027 revenue $222.8M, up 7% YoY with 8.1% core growth, ahead of analyst expectations.
• Food Safety revenue $163.2M, 8.1% core growth including ~400 bps benefit from timing and easier comparables.
• Animal Safety revenue $59.6M, 8% core growth, including ~100 bps benefit from favorable order timing.
• Adjusted gross margin 49.8%, up 30 bps; adjusted EBITDA margin 18.7%, expanding 170 bps year-over-year.
• Adjusted EPS was $0.08, up 100% YoY and above estimates; free cash flow $4.7M, improving ~$18M YoY.
• FY27 revenue guidance raised to $885–$890M; adjusted EBITDA to $181–$183M, with margins expected roughly flat.
• Neogen formed a strategic collaboration and equity investment with Hinalea Imaging for hyperspectral food safety inspection solutions.
• Management expects Q2 to be the lowest core growth quarter, with first-half core growth around 3.5%.
• Petrifilm manufacturing transfer begins next month; first SKU validated, duplicative costs expected to peak then ease.
• Indicator testing and culture media, including Petrifilm, grew 11%, while pathogen detection products delivered double-digit growth.
• Company paid down $30M of term loan; plans $140M genomics divestiture proceeds primarily for debt reduction.
• Main concern remains execution and margin risk from the multi-quarter Petrifilm manufacturing transition and ongoing investments.
• Strong quarter driven by better-than-expected core growth, early commercial improvements, and higher full-year guidance.

https://finviz.com/stock?t=NEOG&p=d

Nurse: Stillbirths Exploded After COVID Shots Hit Maternity Wards

 by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

A California labor-and-delivery nurse says her Fresno hospital went from a handful of stillbirths a year to more than 20 in a single month once COVID shots were pushed on pregnant women, then answered the pile-up with an email on how to handle the dead.

The same product is now sitting in a federal file parents were told not to worry about. An analysis of the National Health Interview Survey, published yesterday, finds COVID-vaccinated children had higher odds of autism, ADHD, anxiety and special-education use than children who never received the shot, and the authors say the shots in children should stop.

Michelle Spencer has worked the antepartum, postpartum and labor-and-delivery floor at Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno since 2017. In interviews that Children's Health Defense aired, she described the unit before the pregnancy rollout as a place that saw about four stillbirths a year. After the shots started going into pregnant women, she said, it became four a week, and it did not stop.

A total of 22 stillborn babies in 30 days against a baseline of four a year is more than the previous five years combined, on the order of a 6,500 percent jump in a single month. Spencer's July 30, 2025 complaint in Fresno County Superior Court used a baseline of one fetal death a month before spring 2021 and about 20 a month after, and calls the rise a statistically significant surge of more than 400 percent.

She has said she cannot pull the hospital's full record, so the monthly figure is her estimate from the floor. The document that is not an estimate is the email.

In September 2022, nurse manager Julie Christopherson wrote to nursing and technical staff about what the hospital called "demise patients."

"Well, it seems as though the increase of demise patients that we are seeing is going to continue," she wrote. "There were 22 demises in August, which ties the record number of demises in July 2021, and so far in September there have been 7 and it's only the 8th day of the month."

She told the bedside nurses the work was burying her other patients. "I know of a few more that are scheduled to deliver in the week ahead, so unfortunately the process is going to be very familiar with all of you." The note walked staff through handling remains after a dead fetus had been mishandled. It did not ask why the babies were dying.

Spencer's complaint says she "was gaslit by management who continued to make unsubstantiated excuses such as 'pesticides' as a more likely cause of the record high dead babies." The institution's documented move was procedural, not investigative.

When she leaked the email, the hospital opened an investigation into her, denied her a $5,000 retention bonus in December 2022 on the grounds she was no longer in good standing, and reprimanded her for telling patients about vaccine risk. Children's Health Defense is funding the suit.

Her lawyer, Greg Glaser, put the allegation in one line: "The hospital possessed vaccinated versus unvaccinated comparison data. The numbers proved the vaccines were causing miscarriages and more in the vaccinated group. We know hospital management analyzed the data because they said so, and we see they concealed it from regulators because that file requested by regulators is empty."

The complaint says one managing nurse told a staff member that nearly all of the stillbirths were in vaccinated mothers, and that fetal deaths in mothers who did not get the shot stayed at the old rate of about one a month. Spencer told The New American: "Healthy moms and healthy babies were suddenly being replaced by babies born dead, and nobody seemed to care. I saw a pattern, clear as day, and I couldn't stay silent."

The hospital has never accepted that framing. In 2022, after the email first leaked, Sarah Putman, then director of women and newborn health at Community Regional, said the memo was about policy, that fetal demise has many causes, and that "neither COVID-19 nor vaccines were mentioned."

The California Department of Public Health said at the time it had seen no significant statewide rise in stillbirths since the shots arrived, and no stillbirth certificate naming vaccination.

The case is still open. What the email itself records is the count, and the decision to train nurses on the bodies rather than on the cause.

The full interview with Spencer:

As we have previously highlighted, a Nobel laureate warned Anthony Fauci in February 2021 that COVID shot contents were reaching the placenta and the fetus and provoking an immune response in the amniotic fluid. Fauci told the public there were no red flags.

Meanwhile, yesterday's paper, posted on Zenodo by epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher, cardiologist Peter McCullough and colleagues, pools the 2022-2024 National Health Interview Survey Sample Child files: 21,990 children aged 0-17 with a recorded COVID vaccination status, and 19,882 aged 2-17 for the autism, ADHD and learning-disability items. "Unvaccinated" here means no COVID shot. It does not mean the child skipped the routine schedule.

Set against children who never received a COVID shot, COVID-vaccinated children had 32 percent higher odds of current autism, 26 percent higher odds of a lifetime autism diagnosis, 33 percent higher odds of ADHD, 23 percent higher odds of any neurodevelopmental diagnosis, 19 percent higher odds of special-education use, 24 percent higher odds of asthma, 27 percent higher odds of daily or weekly anxiety, 57 percent higher odds of mental-health medication and 60 percent higher odds of mental-health therapy.

The odds climbed with the dose count. Against children who received none, current-autism odds were 3 percent higher after one dose, 25 percent higher after two, and 40 percent higher after three or more. Among children aged 5 to 7, three or more COVID shots were linked to 154 percent higher odds of current autism.

Hulscher told The Gateway Pundit the association "persisted across numerous adjustment strategies, strengthened with increasing dose count, and reached its largest estimate in some of the youngest multiply vaccinated children."

He added: "This is a safety signal that must not be ignored. Endangering the developing brain is a red line. COVID-19 'vaccination' of children should cease immediately."

The authors say the autism signal held after controls for age, sex, race, income, parental education, insurance, region, healthcare access, wellness visits, emergency-room use, hospitalization, prescription use and influenza vaccination. Influenza and HPV shots, run as comparison exposures, did not reproduce it. Children who received a COVID shot but not a flu shot had 45 percent higher autism odds than children who received a flu shot but not a COVID shot.

The design is cross-sectional. It cannot put the shot before the diagnosis on a calendar, and the authors say so. That limit is real. It is also the comparison the CDC, the FDA and the manufacturers did not run on their own books while the product was being sold to pregnant women and then to toddlers as a routine precaution. Pediatric trials were never powered for autism, ADHD or a special-education placement.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had already put the wider denial in plain language in April 2025. "It's clear that the rates are real. Year by year there is a steady, relentless increase," he said. "This is a preventable disease. We know it's an environmental exposure. It has to be. Genes do not cause epidemics."

CDC surveillance now puts autism at 1 in 31 American 8-year-olds, 1 in 20 boys, and about 1 in 12.5 boys in California, the state where Spencer works. President Trump's line at the same moment was shorter: "They pump so much stuff into those beautiful little babies, it's a disgrace."

Spencer is still on the Fresno floor. The complaint says the deaths have not gone back to the old rate. The federal survey says the children who made it out of those wards are carrying a dose-linked signal the agencies spent four years calling a conspiracy.

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/nurse-stillbirths-exploded-after-covid-shots-hit-maternity-wards

"Their Own Country": Quebec Elects Separatists Vowing To Break From Canada

 Quebec's separatists are returning to government with a promise to take the province out of Canada, reopening a battle over the country's future while Ottawa is already locked in a trade war with Washington.

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon took a moment to speak to anglophones in the province, saying that all Quebecers face the same challenges, and that he looks forward to solving problems together.

Monday's victory for the Parti Québécois puts the independence movement back in power for the first time since 2014. Its leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, has promised another referendum on separation. And he used his victory speech to remind Canadians exactly what he intends to achieve.

"The courageous battle of Francophones to protect their language and culture will succeed when they have their own country," he said, according to Politico.

Hours later, writing in French, he framed the night less as a mandate for a breakup than as a recovery of confidence. The government, he said, would "extend a hand." He would be "the premier of ALL QUEBECERS, without exception." He closed with Gaston Miron: "It cannot always not happen."

For Prime Minister Mark Carney, the stakes extend well beyond a difficult relationship with another provincial premier. A government committed to leaving the federation will now have the premier's office and a public platform from which to make its case. Disputes over immigration, economic assistance and provincial authority could become arguments over whether Quebec belongs in Canada at all.

The timing compounds the problem. Alberta is also approaching a vote this month on whether to hold a separation referendum. The two movements have different roots, but both challenge Ottawa's effort to present a united country while confronting Donald Trump's tariffs.

That contrast was immediate on social media. One widely shared reaction congratulated Carney for a civil note to the new separatist premier, then asked why Alberta's signature campaign for its own vote has been treated as disloyalty.

Quebec has handed the separatists the opportunity to build support for a breakup. They still have to win that argument.

St-Pierre Plamondon's party took roughly 28% of the vote and 59 seats, five short of a majority in the 127-member National Assembly. Polls put support for independence at about 30%, according to the BBC. The incoming premier has a minority government and a central political objective most voters have yet to embrace.

That vote share is not a rounding error. It is, by one Montreal account, the lowest ever recorded by a party forming a Quebec government. The seat map tells the same fractured story: Liberals doubled their caucus, the Conservatives entered the National Assembly for the first time, Québec Solidaire held nine seats, and the outgoing Coalition Avenir Québec was wiped out.

But the confrontation with Ottawa need not wait for a referendum.

St-Pierre Plamondon has vowed to resist federal pressure for increased immigration. He has also promised to "abolish the monarchy in Quebec," proposing to redirect funding from the lieutenant-governor's office toward social causes such as homelessness.

"We are going to do what we have to do to get the monarchy out of Quebec, repatriate those funds, and send them to social causes," he told reporters during the campaign.

The lieutenant-governor represents King Charles III and provides royal assent to provincial legislation. Trying to strip funding from that office would invite significant legal challenges, the BBC reported. St-Pierre Plamondon has said he is prepared for a legal battle.

Such a clash could give the separatists a way to argue that even Quebec's decisions about its own institutions remain subject to a constitutional arrangement it should escape.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/their-own-country-quebec-elects-separatists-vowing-break-canada