A surprise suspected accomplice has been arrested in connection with a mass school shooting in Canada that was made notorious after an 18-year-old allegedly killed six children after discussing it with the AI chatbot ChatGPT.

The US Department of Justice said on Tuesday it had detained James Codey Bryant, 30, a resident of western Washington state, on a charge of conspiracy to murder persons in a foreign country. Bryant offered money and “technical advice” to the suspected shooter for six months leading up to the killings, the justice department alleged. Canadian police have identified the suspect in this year’s massacre of eight people – including her mother and half-brother, as well as the six children, making it the second-deadliest school shooting in the country’s history – as Jesse Van Rootselaar, who has a history of mental health problems.

It had been known that Van Rootselaar had used ChatGPT to plan the attack, which took place in February. The safety team at OpenAI, the company that owns the chatbot, flagged Van Rootselaar internally after she conducted conversations with it about gun violence, but the company did not alert police.

OpenAI did reportedly close Van Rootselaar’s account, but she started a second one that was not closed. Victims’ families and the province of British Columbia have sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, for failing to report her behaviour.

Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil organiser Chow Hang-tung has filed an appeal against her conviction and sentence under the Beijing-imposed national security law.

Chow Hang-tung was sentenced to seven years and three months behind bars last month after being convicted of inciting subversion, a charge to which she had pleaded not guilty. Former lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, was also found guilty alongside Chow and sentenced to seven years in prison. Another former lawmaker, 74-year-old Albert Ho, pleaded guilty when the trial opened in January and was jailed for five years and two months.

The trio were former leaders of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which for decades held annual vigils to commemorate China’s 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. The Alliance, which was also convicted and fined HK$1.5 million, voted to disband in September 2021 following the arrests of its leadership.

Authorities accused the Alliance of inciting subversion under the national security law through its calls to “end one-party rule” in China, a key tenet of the group since it was founded in 1989. A court in August found the trio guilty of the offence, with three designated national security judges saying that the defendants “had all along been hostile towards the [Chinese Communist Party] and the Central Government under its leadership.”

Their conviction has been condemned by Western governments, rights groups, and the United Nations. Meanwhile, the ruling was lauded by local authorities.

Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has landed her next gig at Fox News.

Leavitt announced she was leaving the White House in August. One of the most prominent faces of President Donald Trump’s second administration, the network said Ms Leavitt will serve as an on-air contributor in November.

Trump has an increasingly thorny relationship with the network, whose key commentators have long given him favourable coverage. He has expressed frustration with Fox coverage choices as recently as Sunday, when he bemoaned what he said was the network’s lack of coverage of his rallies.

Mr Trump is embroiled in a stand-off with news outlets whose coverage displeases him, capped by his recent efforts to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House grounds. A judge has issued a temporary restraining order against the ban, and a hearing is scheduled for Thursday.