Interactive Map: Mosquito Watch By: Map by Andrew Burton and Eric Bailey Posted: 10:01 AM CDT Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022 Last Modified: 2:29 PM CDT Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022 Updates

SAO PAULO (AP) — When members of Formula One team Haas gathered at the Interlagos paddock on Friday evening to celebrate Kevin Magnussen's unexpected pole position for the next day's sprint race, his teammate Mick Schumacher may not have been in the mood to party.

And soon the 23-year-old Schumacher might not be in the paddock to party at all.

Schumacher, son of seven-time champion Michael Schumacher, had just finished qualifying in last position. He did better in Saturday's sprint race and started the Brazilian Grand Prix in 12th before finishing 13th on Sunday.

Schumacher, whose contract expires at the end of the season, says he doesn't know what the future holds after collecting only 12 points so far this year with one race left.

Children entering kindergarten are starting school this fall. While the 2.5-hour kindergarten day commonly found in Manitoba schools sounds like a pleasant transition to the school system, in truth it remains one of the biggest missing pieces of the child-care puzzle.

Province-wide, families face a stressful dilemma — if they are lucky enough to have child care, they have to leave work at lunch and shuttle a child from school to child care; if they don’t, they must reduce hours, or forgo working or education, because they don’t have child care for their kindergartener.

The Government of Manitoba has made progress on making child care more affordable and accessible. But we have largely left one enormous piece untouched — part-day kindergarten. Why is publicly funded education for kindergarten still only 2.5 hours a day? To date, British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island have all implemented full-day, publicly funded kindergarten. The Manitoba School Boards Association passed a resolution in 2025 to implement full-day kindergarten programming, but the province has not provided sufficient funding to implement it province-wide.

There are currently 13,600 children in kindergarten in Manitoba. With a coverage rate for licensed child care of 32.3 per cent, roughly 5,000 families with kindergarteners lack access to licensed child care during the part of the day when their child is not in school. That is a precarious position to put any family in.

This is not a column about my minor medical woes, but it does begin with one.

In the summer of 2022, I noticed a small lump growing in the middle of my arm. It was the size of a large pea, and hard and uncomfortable to the touch. Thankfully, my general practitioner had good news: the growth was quite benign, just unsightly. He froze it off with liquid nitrogen; it left a small, flat scar.

But three years later, the growth had come back. Early this year, I arranged a referral to a dermatologist for that lump and another concern; I was booked in for six months later. I tacked the appointment letter on my fridge, and checked it almost every day.

Many Canadians are all too familiar with the fear of forgetting a specialist appointment still half-a-year or more away.