Skiers hoping to hit the slopes this season are confronting two incompatible pictures of the same winter. In Southern California’s Big Bear, four of 33 runs were open in early February and snowfall sat at its lowest level in nearly seven decades. In Colorado, Silverton Mountain collected 20 inches from a single cold front.

Both accounts are recent, both lean on resort figures and government weather data, and neither cancels the other. Together they describe an industry whose fortunes are set locally by weather, while the retail layer built on top of it — jackets, goggles and knitwear sold before anyone reaches a lift — is priced as though snow is guaranteed.

What The Snow Reports Actually Confirm

The California picture is documented. According to KQED, reporting on Tuesday 3 February 2026, rain and unusually warm temperatures had dominated the season in the San Bernardino Mountains. Average daytime highs hovered around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and National Weather Service data cited in the report put this winter’s snowfall at the lowest in nearly seven decades.

Julian Villalobos, a ski instructor at Snow Summit, described the surface in the trade’s own vocabulary. “With this kind of weather right around 1:00pm, 2:00pm, it turns to mashed potatoes,” he said. “No one wants to ride mashed potatoes. It’s horrible.” Mashed potatoes is ski jargon for lumpy, wet snow.

The downstream effect shows up in rental shops. Mario Magliozzi, a manager at Goldsmith’s Sports in Big Bear, said the wall of bindings that empties on busy days had stayed full: “We have had days where we run out of equipment. That is not happening this season.” The Big Bear Chamber of Commerce told KQED that lodging bookings were down by at least a quarter — an estimate from a business group, not an audited figure.

Colorado’s reporting runs the other way. CBS News Colorado recorded Silverton Mountain’s 20 inches as the state’s biggest storm gain, followed by Purgatory Resort in Durango with 12, Monarch Mountain with 11 and Sunlight Mountain with 10. Breckenridge opened its first lift-served laps at the treeline. Skiers who did hit the slopes there found Loveland Ski Area promising in a release that more snow was expected “today and tomorrow” — a forecast at the time of publication, not a measured total.

What It Costs To Hit The Slopes This Season

Against that uneven snow record, the retail cycle has moved on schedule. WWD’s alpine shopping guide describes a season nodding to the 1980s across ski, snowboard and après-ski styles, with novelty motifs, bright colours, slick silhouettes and fur accents.

The price spread inside that single edit is the story. At the top: a Brunello Cucinelli shearling jacket at $20,000, a Giorgio Armani Neve lurex jacquard jacket at $8,400 with matching trousers at $9,200, Gucci ski goggles at $1,390, a Saint Laurent bag at $4,500, a Moncler Grenoble puffer at $2,795 and a Snow Goose by Canada Goose merino knit puffer at $2,650.

Further down the same list sit the working pieces: Mountain Hardwear DrySpell 70D 3L ripstop pants at $390, a We Norwegians merino sweater at $360, a Toni Sailer sweater at $350, Moon Boot boots at $320 and a Lele Sadoughi beanie at $168. A $1,195 Perfect Moment down ski jacket and a $930 Moncler Grenoble neoprene ski suit sit in between.

What the guide does not contain is any evidence of sell-through. It is a shopping edit, not a sales report, and none of the sources reviewed here publish unit figures for these items. Whether a $20,000 jacket found a buyer in a season when Big Bear’s rental racks went unused is unknown from the available record.

Who Gets To Hit The Slopes, And With What Support

Access is the other half of the season, and here the reporting is more concrete. NBC10 Boston profiled Vermont Adaptive, described as the state’s first disabled skiing programme, which has hosted more than 5,700 outings this year alone.

Katie Ahern, an adaptive athlete living with multiple sclerosis, said the terrain is the same even when the technique is not. “Being outside is important for me,” she said. Instructor Andrew Kimpton put the case plainly: “It, in many ways, shows everyone that everyone can do what they need to do with different equipment and maybe different supports, whatever that might be.”

Vermont Adaptive said it has no riders in this year’s Paralympic Games, which begin on 6 March, though athletes who grew up in the programme are hoping to qualify. That is an ambition, not a team selection.

In western North Carolina, WXII12 reported that Sugar Mountain Ski Resort expected thousands of visitors over a long holiday weekend, potentially its busiest of the season, with the season running to March. Marketing director Kimberley Jochl said registration had been upgraded for the children’s programmes — the Sugar Bear school for skiers aged 5 to 10 and the Polar Bear school for snowboarders aged 7 to 14.

What To Watch

Three things are worth tracking. First, whether the forecast snow reaches Colorado resorts as predicted, since expectations reported on a Saturday are not the same as measured totals. Second, whether Big Bear’s lodging bookings recover before the season closes. Third, which adaptive athletes are actually named to Paralympic teams, as opposed to aiming for them.

One gap deserves stating plainly. None of the reports reviewed here covers a resort outside the United States. There is no snowpack data for the Alps, no figures for Japan or the Southern Hemisphere, and no reporting on African ski operations. Anyone outside North America planning to hit the slopes this season will find, in this set of sources, no verified conditions to plan around — only a demonstration of how sharply the same winter can divide.

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Clare Dominic is the Editor at AfriLatest. With a background in journalism and a passion for storytelling, she oversees the editorial process to ensure content is accurate, engaging, and relevant. Clare works closely with contributors to maintain the highest standards of journalistic integrity across all news, sports, and lifestyle coverage.

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The first direct commercial flight between the United States and Venezuela in more than seven years landed in Caracas on Thursday, and Washington presented it as proof of momentum in the Venezuela transition talks — a process whose final stage, an actual transfer of power through elections, has not begun.

American Airlines Flight 3599 from Miami touched down at Simón Bolívar international airport at 1.15pm local time, The Guardian reported. The last US commercial flight left Caracas in March 2019, when relations collapsed during Donald Trump’s first term.

José Freig, the carrier’s vice-president of international operations, called it ‘a historic day’ before handing Venezuela’s transport minister, Jacqueline Faría, a model of one of his company’s planes. On the runway, Venezuelan passengers queued to board the return leg to Florida.

The US chargé d’affaires in Caracas, John Barrett, went further, calling the route ‘a direct result’ of a three-phase plan for post-Maduro Venezuela: stabilising the country, rebooting its economy, and ‘eventually securing a political transition back towards democracy. ‘We are only just getting started,’ he said.

What The Miami Flight Actually Confirms

The flight is evidence of phase two. Commercial ties are being rebuilt at speed, nearly four months after US special forces seized Nicolás Maduro in the capital and Delcy Rodríguez, his former vice-president, took power with Washington’s blessing.

It is not evidence that phase three has started. No election date has been published, and the official who would help organise one has publicly ruled it out for now. ‘It’s not time for elections,’ interior minister Diosdado Cabello said on the eve of the landing.

Faría framed the route in trade language: ‘This country wants to connect itself to the world.’ Félix Plasencia, Venezuela’s top diplomat in Washington, said it ‘should be the first one of many’.

Where The Venezuela Transition Talks Stand

The gap between the two governments’ language and the calendar is the story. Barrett describes a trajectory toward democracy. Rodríguez’s administration, according to the Guardian, appears in no rush to hold fresh elections.

John Feeley, a former US ambassador to Panama, described the arrangement bluntly as ‘a viceroyship’ — ‘a powerful king-like figure that extracts rent from overseas territories’, with Rodríguez ensuring ‘the king or the crown, or in this case Washington, gets its due’.

Feeley said he would not foreclose the possibility that the intervention ends up benefiting Venezuelans. He also said: ‘I’m pessimistic because of the track record of the Trump team and Donald Trump himself and his own attitudes towards democracy.’

Earlier in the year, Trump said he had held a ‘very good’ phone call with Rodríguez covering oil, minerals, trade and national security, writing on Truth Social that ‘we are making tremendous progress, as we help Venezuela stabilize and recover’, Kurdistan24 reported. No policy details accompanied that call.

Oil, Gold And What Has Not Been Published

The economic track has moved fastest and with the least transparency. Trump said Washington had struck a deal giving US interests control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan reserves — more than double American reserves, in his account, and enough to ‘substantially lower Gas Prices’. BBC News reported that Rodríguez put the term at 25 years, covering 17 fields, targeting 1.5 million barrels a day, with $100bn in investment and $209bn in taxes for Venezuela.

A US official told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, that Washington would hold 55% of a joint venture with an ‘experienced private operator’, which was granted a 100-year concession. The text of the agreement has not been published.

David Goldwyn, president of Goldwyn Global Strategies, told Reuters there was ‘no precedent’ for the US government leasing Venezuelan oil fields and that it was ‘hard to see how this kind of arrangement would accelerate investment at any material scale’, citing political uncertainty, a weak power grid and limited export capacity.

Rachel Ziemba of the Center for a New American Security told the BBC the deal was ‘unlikely to have any material impact on global oil supplies in the next month or even the next year’. Venezuela’s crude is heavy and sour, costlier to refine than the light, sweet grades the US produces.

Britain, meanwhile, said in September it would upgrade its mission in Caracas to ambassador level, with Latin America minister Chris Elmore citing ‘an important opportunity’ for democracy and UK backing for ‘US-backed transition talks between the interim government and parts of the opposition’, Hürriyet Daily News reported. Venezuelan parties are separately negotiating the return of gold reserves frozen in London.

Why The Sequence Matters Beyond Caracas

The BBC noted the oil arrangement appears wider in scope than the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority’s control of Iraqi oil revenue after 2003. That comparison is the useful one: resource control can be arranged in weeks; legitimising a government takes institutions and a vote.

The sequence also explains why the Venezuela transition talks draw attention far beyond South America. Sanctions relief, diplomatic recognition and access to resources are moving in the same package, negotiated between two capitals, with allies such as Britain adjusting their posture afterwards. Governments that have spent years bargaining over sanctions and frozen assets will recognise the mechanics, even where the commodity differs.

The runway ceremony cost little and can be reversed. An electoral calendar cannot be improvised as easily.

What To Watch

Four checkpoints will separate progress from presentation. Whether the oil agreement’s full text is published. Whether the Chevron and Halliburton investment talks reported by the Wall Street Journal convert into signed contracts. Whether Cabello’s line on elections changes. And whether a British ambassador actually arrives in Caracas.

Until an electoral calendar appears, the Venezuela transition talks remain a framework with a flight schedule and no date for a vote.

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Clare Dominic is the Editor at AfriLatest. With a background in journalism and a passion for storytelling, she oversees the editorial process to ensure content is accurate, engaging, and relevant. Clare works closely with contributors to maintain the highest standards of journalistic integrity across all news, sports, and lifestyle coverage.

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Mohit Kumar spent most of this year making an engineering argument. On Thursday, a federal court in Texas turned it into a legal one.

Oura filed a patent infringement complaint seeking to block US sales of Ultrahuman’s Ring Pro, the redesigned ring that carried Kumar’s Bengaluru company back into the American market only months after an import ban pushed it out. It is the second time Oura sues Ultrahuman in a US court, and the first aimed at the device the startup built specifically to get back in.

The complaint names Ultrahuman and SVTronics, a Plano, Texas electronics manufacturer that Oura says builds the Ring Pro under Ultrahuman’s direction and control. Oura is seeking monetary damages and a permanent injunction.

Kumar’s position is now double-edged. He runs a company valued at about $365 million after a $70 million raise in September that drew Qualcomm Ventures and Labcorp. He is also the defendant in a case that could remove his flagship product from the largest smart-ring market outside his home base.

Why Oura Sues Ultrahuman Again, Two Days After A New Patent

The timing is the detail worth pausing on. The complaint cites two Oura patents: D804,471, a design patent, and 12,769,363, which covers a ring architecture built around a curved battery, circuit board, magnets and sensors. The second was issued to Oura on 20 October, two days before the company filed suit.

Oura argues that the Customs decision which let the Ring Pro into the US covered only the patent at issue in the earlier dispute, not these two. “Ultrahuman has a history of copying Oura’s innovations, as demonstrated by the 2025 ITC ruling against the company,” an Oura spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Ultrahuman introduced a redesigned ring but failed to address continued infringement of Oura’s patents.”

Ultrahuman did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. The company has not publicly answered the new filing.

From The Ring Air Ban To Ring Pro Clearance

The dispute dates to 2023, when Oura first sued Ultrahuman over the Ring Air. Oura then brought a case at the US International Trade Commission in 2024 and won a ruling in August 2025, which blocked imports of the Ring Air and its components. Wired reported that the ITC finding rested on a hardware patent covering layered internal and external components, a description broad enough to reach most rings on the market.

Ultrahuman’s answer was a redesign. It unveiled the Ring Pro in February, began selling globally, and in March received a favourable ruling from US Customs and Border Protection. CNET reported the clearance opened preorders at $349 for the first 1,000 buyers and $399 afterwards, with a charging case at $100 or $479 as a bundle. The ring claims 15 days of battery life, 45 with the case, and unlike Oura charges no subscription for core sleep, recovery and stress data.

“We’re delighted to be back in the US with Ring Pro,” Kumar said at the time. “Ultrahuman is an engineering company, and we believe that the company that leads with engineering will ultimately win in this space.”

The Delhi Counterclaim That Did Not Survive

Kumar’s company has fought back in court before, without success. In 2025 Ultrahuman filed its own infringement suit against Oura in the Delhi High Court, alleging Oura copied women’s health features, circadian tools and its glucose monitoring platform. The court dismissed the case on 1 September 2025, with Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora presiding, Mashable reported. Ultrahuman said it would clarify and re-file.

Oura called that action meritless at the time and described the ITC outcome as decisive. Ultrahuman’s public case has rested on patent age rather than patent absence. “This isn’t a dispute over years of secret R&D,” the company wrote in a blog post about the litigation. “It’s about a very recent patent purchase now being wielded to limit the choices ring-wearers like you have.”

The pattern is now established: Oura sues Ultrahuman in US courts, and Ultrahuman counters where jurisdiction allows.

What The Ring Fight Means For Buyers Outside America

IDC expects global smart-ring shipments to rise 12.8% this year to 4.9 million units and reach about 6.3 million by 2030. Neither company breaks out Africa figures in the filings and statements described here, and that gap matters. Distributors and buyers on the continent sit at the end of an import chain that reacts to US legal outcomes: a permanent injunction would not simply shift American pricing, it would reshape which devices reach secondary markets and at what cost.

The commercial asymmetry is stark. Research firm Omnia put Oura at roughly 74% of the smart ring market last November and Ultrahuman at about 9%. Oura has converted several rivals into licensees, with RingConn and Circular agreeing to pay royalties, while cases against Samsung and Zepp Health continue. It has also shelved a $2.2 billion IPO, citing market “uncertainty,” just weeks before filing this complaint.

That context cuts both ways. A company preparing to return to public markets has reason to defend its patent portfolio loudly. A challenger that just raised $70 million and is co-developing a Qualcomm-powered ring has reason to keep selling.

Kumar’s wager, that engineering beats litigation, now waits on a judge in Texas. Whether Oura sues Ultrahuman again after this complaint, or settles into another royalty arrangement, will say more about the structure of the smart-ring market than any product launch. For buyers in Lagos, Nairobi or Johannesburg, the practical question is narrower: which ring, and at what price, survives the injunction stage.

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About Clare Dominic

Clare Dominic is the Editor at AfriLatest. With a background in journalism and a passion for storytelling, she oversees the editorial process to ensure content is accurate, engaging, and relevant. Clare works closely with contributors to maintain the highest standards of journalistic integrity across all news, sports, and lifestyle coverage.

View all articles by Clare Dominic