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New Zealand-born photographer Amos Chapple was a long, long way from home. Out in the middle of Russia's vast Sakha Republic, an area that spans over 1 million square miles, he was heading towards the world's coldest city.

And he was alone.

In these far reaches of northeast Russia, Chapple says, "If people don't need to be outside, they won't be outside. So in the smaller towns, they all look abandoned. And if you see somebody, they're racing between doors with mitts clasped over faces hurrying to get inside again."

Out in the freezing cold, he finally crossed paths with the only other creature audacious enough to face this kind of weather.

"I saw some cows out in the streets," he says. "So I figured, OK, they're on their way somewhere, they're going to take me back to a person, who hopefully I can speak to, who will be doing something outdoors. So I decided to follow these cows."

They led him off the road through a forest.

"Finally, I come to this sort of secondary settlement — a couple of houses and there's this stable. And then sure enough this old man kind of stumbles outside into the cold," Chapple says. "He looks around, he does a double take when he sees me, like, 'Where did you come from?' There was this beautiful moment when I was able to say, 'Oh, I'm from New Zealand! Hello!' "

In that remote region six time zones from Moscow, Chapple was making his way into Yakutsk, Russia.

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A woman sells an arctic hare along with her usual fare of frozen fish in the central market of Yakutsk. Amos Chapple hide caption

itoggle caption Amos Chapple

A woman sells an arctic hare along with her usual fare of frozen fish in the central market of Yakutsk.

Amos Chapple

Life In The Heart Of Siberia

Maybe you've heard of Yakutsk from the board game Risk, which you might have played in the comfort of your warm home. Out here, the average winter temperature dips down to -30 degrees Fahrenheit.

"The first impression I had was being physically gripped by [the cold]," Chapple says. "It was literally like something had wrapped around my legs."

Chapple says he's never experienced a cold like that. He describes the streets of Yakutsk, a city of about 270,000, as dark and foggy.

"The mist from people's breath, from car exhaust and from factory emissions, it never goes away, it never dissipates," he says. "It just hangs there. So very, very misty, all through the day and night."

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While the majority of the city's population are indigenous Yakutian, many ethnic Russians and Ukrainians moved to Yakutsk in Soviet times, lured by high wages for working in the harsh climate. Amos Chapple hide caption

itoggle caption Amos Chapple

While the majority of the city's population are indigenous Yakutian, many ethnic Russians and Ukrainians moved to Yakutsk in Soviet times, lured by high wages for working in the harsh climate.

Amos Chapple

He says Yakutsk was one of his most difficult assignments. Being outside for hours on end took a toll on his body and his camera would seize up in the cold.

"It took me a while to figure out why I was getting all of these kind of hazy, very un-contrasty images. And that was because when I would breathe, when I would exhale, the mist from my breath would just kind of waft around in front of the lens and ruin the shot," Chapple says. "So you would have to hold your breath before you took a picture."

Indoor Entertainment, Outdoor Adventure

Yakutsk is the largest city in the world built on permafrost. Most buildings are constructed on stilts that go deep underground. And while the weather may be hostile, this giant region in Russia is rich with natural resources — especially gold and diamonds.

The people braving the cold here have lived in this region for generations, like freelance journalist, Bolot Bochkarev. He was born and raised in Yakutsk.

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A woman enters Preobrazhensky Cathedral in Yakutsk. "You get this blast of freezing mist coming through the door," photographer Amos Chapple says. "It was just spectacular." Amos Chapple hide caption

itoggle caption Amos Chapple

A woman enters Preobrazhensky Cathedral in Yakutsk. "You get this blast of freezing mist coming through the door," photographer Amos Chapple says. "It was just spectacular."

Amos Chapple

"We've got many facilities like stadium, restaurants, many nightclubs, concert halls," Bochkarev says. "We've got enough entertainment. But everything is done indoors because it's cold outside."

Bochkarev says he plays tour guide to visitors who travel across the world.

"When tourists, international visitors come to Yakutsk, we go on the ice to catch fish," he says. "Also snowmobiling, dog sledding. You know, frozen 'eye brushes,' frozen noses. People like it."

Bochkarev says in the world's coldest city, there's always adventure.

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Russia

Last year, frozen fruit sales in this country surpassed a billion dollars, shattering all previous records. Sales have more than doubled since 2011.

So what's behind this explosion of frozen fruit?

Sarah Nassauer, who reports on the food business for the Wall Street Journal, points to a pair of studies from the world's biggest seller of fresh fruit.

"Dole [Packaged Foods] got into this business, started selling frozen fruit in 2005," she says. "So in 2006, they did a big sort of frozen fruit usage study, and then they did another one last year in 2014."

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One of Dole Packaged Food's frozen fruit options. Over the years, frozen fruit companies have adjusted packaging to make it flashier and more colorful, and also put their products in stand-up bags, says Wall Street Journal reporter, Sarah Nassauer. Dole.com hide caption

itoggle caption Dole.com

One of Dole Packaged Food's frozen fruit options. Over the years, frozen fruit companies have adjusted packaging to make it flashier and more colorful, and also put their products in stand-up bags, says Wall Street Journal reporter, Sarah Nassauer.

Dole.com

In the studies, Dole asked things like: What kind of frozen fruit do you buy? How much? And, most importantly, what do you use it for?

Back in 2006, Nassauer says, "People saw it more as a dessert topping. It was near whipped toppings in the frozen food aisle. And it was in these sort of hard-to-find lie-flat bags that were what frozen fruit was in for decades."

But Dole thought, here's this inherently healthy food — there has to be a bigger market out there.

"So they very intentionally said, 'Let's put it in these stand-up bags, put shiny graphics on it, suggest healthy recipes like smoothies on the back of the bag,' " Nassauer says. "And that was definitely their approach."

"At the same time," she adds, "I do think they probably got pretty lucky in terms of the health trends that has happened those years as well."

One health trend in particular is leading the charge: Smoothies. Busy, health-conscious Americans are sucking them down like mad.

"In 2014, they estimate that 60 percent of frozen fruit purchased went into smoothies," Nassauer says. "And that number was 21 percent in 2006."

NPR host Arun Rath went to Whole Foods, where you don't have to take the trouble of sliding glass. Unlike bags of veggies, frozen fruit containers are ready-to-grab in an open, reach-in freezer.

Tart cherries, sweet cherries, organic blueberries, cranberries, wild blueberries, mango chunks: the selections was extensive.

The Salt

What's More Nutritious, Orange Juice Or An Orange? It's Complicated

The Salt

Blending Vs. Juicing? How To Get The Most Nutrition From Your Fruit

He also noticed the fruits were more nicely presented than they used to be, some in stand-up bags: "Some of these bags, the organic ones, look nice and wholesome ... beautiful pictures all over them."

When he was a kid, he remembers, they were packaged in plainer, white bags.

Nassauer says that with the smoothie craze spreading, it's no surprise that blender sales also hit the billion-dollar mark for the first time last year.

And to make things even easier, Dole and other companies are now selling combo bags, ready to blend.

You can even get kale in the mix, if you're so inclined. Or you could stick to the classic frozen berries — even if they come in new-fangled packaging.

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Parallels

Libya Today: 2 Governments, Many Militias, Infinite Chaos

The headquarters of the National Oil Corporation in Tripoli are gleaming, the floors marble, the offices decked out with black leather chairs and fake flowers. It seems far from the fighting going on over oil terminals around the country.

But the man in charge looks at production and knows the future is bleak.

"We cannot produce. We are losing 80 percent of our production," says Mustapha Sanallah, the chairman of Libya's National Oil Corporation.

He looks like a typical executive, decked out in a suit and glasses. But beneath his calm veneer, he's worried.

"Now we have two problems: low production and low price," he says.

At the current rate, he expects that the country won't even earn 10 percent of the budget money Libya had in 2012, before militias started taking oil infrastructure hostage.

"If there is security in Libya, we can resume production within a few days," Sanallah says.

If there's one thing that has a chance of keeping Libya from totally falling apart, it's oil. It provides nearly all the country's revenue. It's what militias are fighting over. And it's the prize coveted by the two rival governments — one in Tripoli, the other in Libya's east — that claim to be running the country.

The Tripoli faction is seen as Islamist, the eastern government as anti-Islamist — but the fighting is mainly over turf and resources like oil, rather than ideology.

The international community has recognized the eastern government, but it opposes what it sees as the east's divisive attempt to set up a rival national oil company and take control of the industry, something Sanallah says is impossible anyway.

"We are still the NOC [National Oil Company]; the legal NOC is here. I am the chairman of NOC," he says. "[The east] nominated a new chairman of NOC, but there's no staff, there's no people, there's no hardware, there's no software."

International mediators are trying to keep the oil company independent of either side, but oil fields are under attack. One tanker was bombed, and another one was threatened.

Sanallah says he wants to keep oil out of the fight.

"I hope so. I hope so," he says — but he doesn't sound convinced.

His employees are fighting fires at major oil terminals, and with no real security forces, it only takes a few gunmen to shut things down or hold them hostage.

"I think the message was clear to the oil company: There is no security, good security. Otherwise a few people cannot control the vein of the blood of Libya," he says.

And with the terminals closing, Libya's battered economy is taking even more blows because foreign oil companies are pulling out. Libya is only producing about 330,000 barrels a day, increasing the economic burden.

"When you are closing the terminals, it means you cannot produce oil, and if you cannot produce oil, then you cannot produce gas. So we are making up the gas by importing diesel. This is another burden on the shoulders of NOC," he says.

Again, oil is basically what pays for any central Libyan government. How much? "All — 90 to 95 percent. There is no revenue but oil," he says.

If negotiations don't end the fighting, Sanallah says, the country will collapse. A functioning oil industry could be all that stands between Libya as a nation, and Libya as a failed state.

Libya

oil

The Federal Aviation Administration has released long-awaited draft rules on the operation of pilotless drones, opening the nation's airspace to the commercial possibilities of the burgeoning technology, but not without restrictions.

In short, the proposed rules that have been a decade in the making would limit drones to flying no more than 100 mph at an altitude no higher than 500 feet. The FAA bans their use at night and says they cannot be operated over people not directly involved in the flight.

The FAA also will require anyone using Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) for commercial purposes to obtain a special pilot certification to operate them.

In a statement, the White House called drones "a potentially transformative technology in diverse fields such as agriculture, law enforcement, coastal security, military training, search and rescue, first responder medical support, critical infrastructure inspection, and many others."

The statement says that the proposed rules ensure "that the Federal Government's use of UAS takes into account ... important concerns and in service of them, promotes better accountability and transparent use of this technology."

Reuters, quoting industry experts, calls the new rules "relatively benign."

Even so, the news agency says, "the rule was unlikely to help Amazon.com in its quest to deliver packages with unmanned drones, since its approach requires an FAA-certified small drone pilot to fly the aircraft and keep it line of sight at all times — factors not envisioned in the online retailer's plan."

The draft regulations must still undergo public comment and revision before being officially adopted.

FAA Drone Rules

FAA

drones