Today's briefing:
Australian MP Helen Haines loses both legs after car attack outside office.
Gangs in Haiti hold four Salvadoran soldiers after an armored-vehicle ambush.
US orders non-emergency staff and families to leave Saudi Arabia.
One of the difficulties with protecting a public figure is that being available is often part of the job. People need to know where their representative works, and arriving at the office should be an ordinary part of the day. We cannot make every familiar place inaccessible simply because somebody might choose to attack it.
Last week, Australian MP Helen Haines was attacked while unloading her car outside her electorate office. Police describe it as targeted, but say they had no warning. Investigators have found no direct contact between her and the man accused of driving into her.
For protectors, that leaves a difficult question: how much of our confidence in a routine arrival depends on nobody having threatened it? This week, On the Circuit, we examine what happens when the first known indication of hostile intent is the attack itself.
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TOP STORY
Australian MP Rammed Outside Her Own Office
On Monday, October 19, Helen Haines, 65, the independent federal MP for Indi in northeast Victoria, was taking things out of her car outside her electorate office in Wangaratta when a Toyota LandCruiser drove past, turned around and pinned her against her own vehicle, Al Jazeera reported. Witnesses told Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke that the driver then reversed and hit her a second time, according to Reuters. Ricky Jefferies, a local barber who first thought he had heard a crash, held the driver and took a knife from him. Doctors amputated her left leg that evening and her right leg two days later. Her husband says she is alive and stable.
Brendan Nugent, 43, from the nearby village of Tarrawingee, is charged with dangerous driving causing serious injury, intentionally causing serious injury and causing harm to a Commonwealth public official, along with cannabis offenses. He did not apply for bail and is held until a February hearing, and police have not ruled out an attempted murder charge. Counter-terrorism investigators are part of the inquiry. Police describe the attack as targeted and isolated, say they had no prior warning or intelligence, and have found no direct contact between the two. They are examining whether he held anti-government views. His lawyer says he has a rare neurological condition.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on the day that it "wasn't an accident." Opposition defense spokesman James Paterson said electorate offices are poorly protected and suggested MPs rethink parking where they can be easily identified, Australian Associated Press reported. Security agencies briefed MPs two days after the attack. The Australian Federal Police, which set up a dedicated team last year to investigate threats against politicians, had already urged people to tone down heated rhetoric. Victoria, which holds a state election on November 28, has since begun what its premier called "unprecedented" security talks between police and the electoral commission.
Our Take
The absence of a warning is central to this case. Police say they had no prior intelligence, and investigators have found no direct contact between Haines and the accused. That limits what anyone could reasonably have done about this particular individual before the attack. It does not tell us whether the place where she arrived was adequately protected.
According to the reported account, the driver passed her, turned around and came back while she was still beside her car. He allegedly struck her twice. The opportunity existed on a public street, before an office door or visitor check could have made any difference.
We do not yet know enough about the arrangements outside the office to judge individual security decisions. But describing the incident as isolated offers little reassurance about the exposure itself. Whatever investigators establish about this man's motive, the attack shows how directly a vehicle could reach a public official during an ordinary part of her working day.
Sound even smarter:
Police in Australia recorded 1,067 threat incidents against parliamentarians in 2025, after threats doubled between 2021 and 2025, and 41 people were charged that year, Al Jazeera reported.
Threats to candidates rose 17 percent at Australia's 2025 federal election, and ASIO chief Mike Burgess warned that year that politically motivated violence was among the agency's fastest-growing concerns, according to the same report.
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MEANWHILE
Haiti Gangs Hold Four Salvadoran Soldiers
Four Salvadoran aviation technicians serving with Haiti's UN-backed Gang Suppression Force have been missing since Sunday, October 18, when explosives hit their armored vehicle in Croix-des-Bouquets, north of Port-au-Prince, as they returned to camp. The vehicle caught fire and the men got out on foot, the Salvadoran military told the AP. Helicopters sent to the area came under fire, and fighting blocked both land and air approaches.
El Salvador now says gangs are holding them. President Nayib Bukele announced a rescue operation on October 21 and said his country would respond more forcefully if the men are not freed alive, Al Jazeera reported. No group has claimed the attack. It is the first major strike on the force, which has more than 2,000 personnel in Haiti, and an analyst told the AP that holding the men gives the gangs leverage to negotiate.
US Orders Staff Out of Saudi Arabia
The State Department has ordered non-emergency US government employees and their families to leave Saudi Arabia, effective October 23, citing Houthi attacks on civilian airports and critical infrastructure, the US Mission said. Four US officials told Reuters that missions in other Gulf states will also send family members home. The Mission's October 25 alert warns the fighting could spread quickly beyond the area now affected.
US staff now need the ambassador's approval to use any Saudi airport. Riyadh's King Khalid International, closed after the four strikes in five days we reported on October 13, has partly reopened, and Lufthansa and Air France have canceled Riyadh flights through mid-November. The alert lists land routes out, including the King Fahd Causeway to Bahrain, and repeats that Americans have been detained for photographing impact sites.
CIA Contractor Charged Over Alleged Leak
The FBI arrested Ian A. Brinksman, 42, of Washington, DC, on October 23 and charged him with unlawfully transmitting national defense information, the Justice Department said. He had worked for a US government agency since 2020, and since 2022 as a systems integration developer for a contractor serving it, with a Top Secret clearance and access to compartmented intelligence. CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the contractor worked for the CIA.
Prosecutors allege he passed the material to someone he had an ongoing personal relationship with, who runs a Substack publication and has posted that she accepts leaks. A September fundraising article on that publication claimed its reporting drew on classified assessments. Officials say he went well beyond his duties to get the material, though the release does not describe what it was. The charges are allegations, and he is presumed innocent.
SNAPSHOTS
🇫🇷 France. The Interior Ministry counted 410,000 protesters on October 24 and nearly 1,000 arrests, with tear gas used in Paris and Lyon. Organizers have called another protest for Saturday.
🇮🇹 Italy. The government sent 500 soldiers to Milan as cost-of-living protests ran in eight cities on October 24. Police clashed with protesters in Turin and Rome and briefly detained 371 people.
🇳🇬 Nigeria. Gunmen on about 50 motorcycles attacked Binnari village in Taraba State on October 23. Police recovered at least 10 bodies, and Amnesty International puts the toll at 40.
🇦🇱 Albania. Thousands rallied again in Tirana on October 24 against Prime Minister Edi Rama. Authorities say more than 300 protesters and police were injured, and dozens were arrested.
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EXTRA INSIGHT
STATE THREAT. UK counter-terrorism police rearrested two men on October 20, a 24-year-old Briton and a 25-year-old British-Iranian, on suspicion of helping Iran's intelligence service in the RAF Fairford plot. Both had been bailed after earlier arrests. No one has been charged, but police now call Iranian state involvement "highly likely," and MI5 says more than 50 people were arrested over Iran-linked plots in the past year.
CUSTODIAL SECURITY. Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy, 28, already serving 40 years for a 2016 ISIS plot against New York, got 50 more years on October 19 for stabbing two officers at the federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, in 2020. He made the blade from part of his steel desk, and one officer lost an eye. A note in his sock called it an attack for the Islamic State.
ConnectWise shut its Cloud Backup service after attackers used its stolen access key to enter hundreds of customers' Microsoft 365 accounts without passwords.
Quest Diagnostics said an attacker broke into the online system about half a million clinicians use to order lab tests, exposing patient records.
Ahold Delhaize, owner of Food Lion and Stop & Shop, confirmed a cyberattack knocked out online ordering across most of its US and European brands.
When police say there was no warning, it is tempting to conclude that there was nothing anyone could have done. Sometimes there really is very little opportunity to identify an attacker in advance. But we can still examine the circumstances in which a principal could be reached. The address may have to stay public, and the working day may have to carry on. That makes the ordinary arrival worth a fresh look, even when there is no particular person giving us cause for concern. Our best wishes go to Helen Haines and her family.
See you next week,
– On The Circuit
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