The Canadian Press

Quebec provincial police say the search for a four-year-old girl who fell into a river last week is no longer a rescue operation, but a recovery mission.

The child has been missing since Friday, when she fell into the Mistassibi River in Dolbeau-Mistassini, Que. — about 240 kilometres north of Quebec City — while sledding with her mother near the riverbank.

Police officers have been searching the river ever since, with officers surveying the banks, a nautical team monitoring the waters and a helicopter scanning the area from the sky.

A look at news events in February 2023:

4 – The U.S. military shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the Carolina coast on orders from President Joe Biden. U.S. defence officials had been tracking it for about a week as it travelled over sensitive military sites across North America. They say the large balloon went into Canadian airspace in the Northwest Territories before crossing back into U.S. territory over northern Idaho. China still said it was a weather research "airship'' that had been blown off course and denied any claims of spying.

A look at news events in January 2023:

4 – Canada marked the first National Ribbon Skirt Day, after a bill to recognize the event every Jan. 4 passed in Parliament late last year. It was inspired by a 10-year-old girl who wore a ribbon skirt to her rural Saskatchewan school in December 2020. Isabella Kulak wore the colourful garment as part of a formal day, but her family said at the time that a staff member told her the outfit wasn't formal enough. The school division later apologized. 

The Public Health Agency of Canada is reporting another death from a salmonella outbreak involving cantaloupes, bringing the total to seven. 

The agency says there have been 164 lab-confirmed cases of salmonella in eight provinces linked to Malichita and Rudy brand cantaloupes so far.   

Quebec has been hardest hit with 111 of those cases. There have also been illnesses in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. 

Statistics Canada says the annual inflation rate was unchanged in November, holding steady at 3.1 per cent.

The consumer price index report today shows progress on easing inflation stalled as higher prices for recreation and clothing put upward pressure on headline inflation.

Meanwhile, the pace of grocery price increases continued to slow for a fifth consecutive month.

Grocery prices were up 4.7 per cent from a year ago, marking a slowdown from 5.4 per cent in October.

More Canadians have been approved to leave Gaza through the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt.

A new document published by Gaza's General Authority for Crossings and Borders shows 165 names under the "Canada" heading.

Israel's military on Sunday ordered more areas in and around Gaza's second-largest city of Khan Younis to evacuate, as it shifted its offensive to the southern half of the territory where it says many Hamas leaders are hiding.

Heavy bombardments were reported overnight and into Sunday in the area of Khan Younis as well as Rafah itself.

A man who was on supervised probation stemming from a 2021 assault has been charged in a shooting that killed four people in Winnipeg.

Officers were called early Sunday to a home in the West Broadway neighbourhood, where they found five people wounded. 

A man and a woman were pronounced dead at the scene, and another man and a woman died later in hospital.

A fifth person, a 55-year-old man, remains in hospital in "very critical" condition, Insp. Jennifer McKinnon told reporters Friday.

Government House leader Karina Gould warned Tuesday the Liberals are unlikely to get a pharmacare bill passed by the end of the year, despite their promise to do so in an agreement with the NDP.

"I don’t think we’re going to get it passed by the end of this year, but we’ll definitely keep working," Gould said on Parliament Hill. 

The two parties are still hammering out the details of a bill and it's a "productive" conversation, she added.  

In the end, she said, "I'm quite confident that we'll land it."

WARNING: This is a story about a boy who died by suicide. There is a list of resources for anyone in crisis at the bottom of the article.

Parents of a 12-year-old boy who killed himself last month after falling prey to online sextortion are urging others to talk to their kids to make sure they don't also become victims of internet "predators."

 Life expectancy for Canadians decreased for the third straight year in 2022, and more people died of COVID−19 than in any other year since the pandemic began, according to a report released Monday.

Statistics Canada’s analysis of deaths last year shows the average Canadian’s life expectancy dropped to 81.3 years in 2022, a full year lower than the 82.3 years recorded in 2019.

"Life expectancy declines when there are more deaths, when deaths occur at younger ages, or a combination of both," the report said.