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For Joel Bowman, decades of bike commuting started feeling like hard work. So the 66-year-old Atlanta resident recently switched to an electric bicycle and now when he rides Bowman feels like the wind is at his back.

An e-bike looks a lot like a regular bike, but with an integrated electric motor, and it doesn't burn gasoline like an old-fashioned moped. As you pedal, an e-bike gives you a powered boost when you need it.

They are getting more popular in Europe, but in the United States, e-bikes still have to overcome the stigma of being just a toy for old people.

Bike commuting is still rare in America's cities, but those who do it have a special bond. At least in Atlanta, Bowman says.

"I wanna say, the biking community here, I love it," Bowman says. "There's a lot of waving and a lot of high-fiving going on among bikers. I like being part of that."

He's getting ready to ride the six miles to his job at Emory University. He's been doing this ride for decades, but as he got older the ride got harder. So he switched to an e-bike.

"The real contrast is the old bike, somethings I got a little, 'Arghh, I gotta bike home, I'm tired,' " he says. "This, I just look forward to being on because it is pure fun."

E-bike riding feels like a back wind pushing you up a hill as you pedal. On a straight road you can reach up to 20 miles an hour, depending on how hard your legs are moving. The bike is adjustable, so you always have the option of a no-sweat ride.

Ed Benjamin, chairman of the Light Electric Vehicle Association, says U.S. e-bike sales doubled between 2012 and 2013. Still, sales of 200,000 e-bikes are a fraction of the 16 million bicycles sold last year.

E-bikes can cost anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars. Typically, that's two to three times the price of a similar bike without the electronics.

Most U.S. e-bike customers are older. Benjamin wants to change that.

"And when somebody says to me, 'I'm young, and I'm strong and I'm fit and I don't need no stinkin' motor,' I kind of chuckle because I have clear memories of having exactly the same attitude," Benjamin says.

He's confident that attitude will shift as more regular cyclists who are puffing up a hill get passed by a smiling e-biker.

Parallels

3 Charts (And A Few Words) On The Rise Of Electric Bikes

The Two-Way

Solar Bike Path Opens This Week In The Netherlands

The Two-Way

Coming Soon To A Pole Near You: A Bike That Locks Itself

That's kind of what happened in Europe. Take Holland, where the elderly have been riding e-bikes for a decade. Then younger people started buying them a couple of years ago, and now e-bike commuters are forcing discussions of widening bike lanes.

"I can imagine for an American this sounds a bit strange that we have such crowded cycle paths, but that's the fact here," says Jack Oortwijn, editor-in-chief of the industry publication, Bike Europe.

"E-bikes contributed to that," he adds. "It's a trend that started with elderly people and not like the usual new trends that start with young people."

E-bikes make up a growing 20 percent market share in Holland and plenty of sportier models for younger commuters are being offered. More and more families in Europe are trading in their second car for an e-bike.

America's cities still have a long way to go in their bike friendliness, and Bowman is content to just be an accepted rarity on his e-bike.

"And it's great," he says. "I know I can now basically stay with this biking community for a long time with this bike."

e-bikes

electric bicycles

After loosing about 40 patients when the facility first opened in mid-September, the staff at the facility realized they needed a new strategy for dealing with the dreadful disease.

"We said, 'No, this cannot continue. We need to do something,' " says Dr. Santigie Sesay, who coordinates treatment at the center.

At a brainstorming session, staff zeroed in on a key problem: dehydration. People with Ebola are wrecked with diarrhea. They vomit. They may bleed.

"So we said, 'If we can replace the fluids that are being lost, we can definitely help these people,' " Sesay says.

But the usual way to replace fluids is an intravenous drip. And it can be dangerous to insert a needle into an Ebola patient. All it takes is one prick to infect a health worker. Plus, running IVs takes careful monitoring.

i i

Isatu Koroma baths the patients at the Hastings Ebola Treatment Center and helps to clean the facility. She wears full protective gear during her rounds. David P Gilkey/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption David P Gilkey/NPR

Isatu Koroma baths the patients at the Hastings Ebola Treatment Center and helps to clean the facility. She wears full protective gear during her rounds.

David P Gilkey/NPR

So Sesay was advised against IVs. "During our training, we were told that we are not supposed to to go into the vein," he says.

Still, the staff at Hastings resolved to give IVs a try — with their most experienced nurses inserting them.

To date none of the workers have gotten infected. And the effect on patients has been dramatic, Sesay says.

It's difficult to pinpoint survival statistics for any one center when the overall number of patients is small, and the outbreak is still unfolding. But based on the data so far, Sesay says, Hastings' death rate is way down.

"Out of every 10 patients, four will die and six will come out," he says.

Sesay has also noticed another effect. The medical staff at the center realize the patients have a fighting chance.

"Everybody has become very, very enthusiastic," he says. The staff started interacting with the patients more, even helping the weakest ones eat.

"We started talking to the patients," Sesay says. "We even started bed-bathing our patients ... we became so motivated, and things changed drastically."

Isatu Koroma, who cleans the inside of the ward, says she's been pulling for an older patient — a woman who reminds her of an aunt, who died recently died of Ebola.

"I fell in love with her," Koroma says. "I love her like my Aunt."

The woman was in bad shape when she arrived.

"She was so sick, so weak," Koroma says. "I encouraged her: 'Please you have to for you family. You have your daughter.' "

Now that woman is among about sixty patients who have been moved to the recovery area, just across the yard.

At the area, a worker is calling out the names of people who will be released soon from the treatment center.

The moment is bittersweet. These people have survived Ebola, but a lot of them have lost close relatives.

One women in the area lifts up a baby high into the air. He's tiny.

"This baby has no have mother or a father," the woman says.

Both of the baby's parents have died of Ebola. The woman has been caring for him even though she doesn't know the little boy's name. "I call him Mohammed," she says.

The woman has two children of her own, waiting on the outside of Hasting's treatment center. Her kids, at least, will be getting their mom back soon.

Sierra Leone

ebola

Infectious Disease

Global Health

When Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) first entered politics in the 1960s, he started out as moderate — pro-abortion rights, pro-union, in support of the civil rights movement. With time, McConnell shifted to the right as the Republican Party shifted.

"I was just really startled by this when I started looking into it," Alec MacGillis tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "I knew that he had started out as somewhat more moderate — but I didn't realize just how moderate he really was."

The Cynic

The Political Education of Mitch Mcconnell

by Alec Macgillis

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MacGillis's new book The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell traces how McConnell became one of the most powerful politicians in the country — and it examines McConnell's evolution as a politician.

In the 1960s, McConnell was "firmly pro-abortion rights," says MacGillis.

"In his first elected office in Louisville, Ky., as county executive in Louisville, he repeatedly snuffed out anti-abortion bills that were coming through his office — didn't even let them come up for a vote or a hearing," he says.

But in 1984, McConnell barely won his seat in the Senate — by fewer than 5,000 votes.

"There was no question what had happened — that McConnell had won basically on the coattails of Ronald Reagan," MacGillis says. "And McConnell looked at that very, very close result and basically thought to himself, 'You know what? I don't want it to ever be this close again. I see where the Republican Party is heading; I see where my state is heading; I see where the South is heading politically — and I need to get on that train.' "

McConnell, who has been the Senate minority leader since 2007, will become the majority leader when the new term starts in January.

And according to MacGillis, "This is what he's dreamed about since he was a very, very young man ... and now he's about to achieve that dream."

Interview Highlights

On McConnell's political positions when he first entered politics in the 1960s

There was a big battle back in the Republican Party in the '60s between the conservative wing and a still quite strong moderate wing. This is, of course, during the time of Barry Goldwater's 1964 nomination to the party coming from the conservative wing. But there was still a very, very strong moderate contingent of the party and Mitch McConnell was completely on that side of the line.

He was very firmly pro-union. In his first election back in 1977 in Louisville, he got the endorsement of the AFL-CIO because he backed collective bargaining for public employees, which is something even a lot of Democrats today don't support. He sought out the head of the AFL-CIO at the bowling alley in Louisville and sweet-talked him and got his support.

He was very firmly in support of the civil rights movement, which back in Kentucky was not necessarily the obvious thing to do. He, as a student, would show up at civil rights rallies and was very much in favor of the legislation in Washington in the '60s.

On how McConnell embodies the changes in the Republican Party over the past 30 years

McConnell, to me, embodies two things in politics today: One is the transformation of the Republican Party from a party that used to have quite a few moderate and liberal members and Northern liberal Republicans — Midwestern moderate Republicans — into a party that is now much more monolithically conservative and really Southern-dominated.

“ It's not so much what you do when you're in power in Washington; it's what you do to position yourself for the next time around. ... That mindset has become very prevalent. It's bipartisan and it also suffuses the media — but McConnell embodies it really more than anybody else.

- Alec MacGillis, The New Republic

McConnell really embodies that shift because he himself has evolved with that transformation just to a tee. But at the same time ... he embodies for me the mindset that has become more and more dominant in Washington today ... which is the permanent campaign mindset.

It's the mindset that all that really matters is the next election, the next cycle. It's not so much what you do when you're in power in Washington; it's what you do to position yourself for the next time around, your next re-election, your party's next election cycle. That mindset has become very prevalent. It's bipartisan and it also suffuses the media — but McConnell embodies it really more than anybody else.

On McConnell figuring out how to use the rules of the Senate to benefit his party

He is a master of Senate procedure. That's one of his real strengths. ... He just has studied it very, very closely. [He's] studied how it works ... and figured out how you could use ... [the rules] within this sort of very vague culture-based and nebulous realm of the Senate where these rules are not necessarily written down anywhere — some of them are, but others are just things that have carried over in tradition and culture of the institution. He's figured out how you can use these procedures — and also the customs that have built up over time to really slow things down and gum up the works in ways that hadn't been done before.

On how McConnell lined up support for leadership posts in the Senate

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It's something he campaigned for more aggressively than just about anyone before him. His colleagues in the Senate were struck to see just how determined and eager he was to climb the ladder. And what he would do is he would start quite early, several years before the elections for these various leadership posts, he would start strategizing in how to win those elections. He had a wingman, his colleague [former Sen.] Bob Bennett from Utah ... [who] would go out a year or two in advance and start trying to count up votes and feel people out on whether they would support Mitch or someone else. ...

Again, McConnell was not the most naturally popular or beloved person within his caucus, so he really needed help from someone else to kind of go out and line up those votes for him. They would badmouth the opposition and various rivals for various jobs ... really, in a junior high school kind of way — trying to line up support so that when the time came for the elections for the various leadership posts high up the ladder, it suddenly would become clear that McConnell had, in fact, lined up just enough support to get the job.

Martial law in Thailand will remain in place "indefinitely," the country's justice minister told Reuters in an interview nearly six months after the military overthrew the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

"Martial law is necessary and we cannot lift it because the government and junta need it as the army's tool," Justice Minister Gen. Paiboon Koomchaya told the news agency. "We are not saying that martial law will stay in place for 50 years, no this is not it, we just ask that it remain in place for now, indefinitely."

Thai Prime Minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha had originally promised to restore democracy by next year, but as we reported last month, he said the date could be pushed back.

The justice minister's comments come just ahead of tourist season, which accounts for nearly 10 percent of Thailand's gross domestic product. Tourism took a hit following the May 22 putsch that brought Prayuth to power. But as NPR reported last month, the head of the Tourism Authority of Thailand said martial law is good for tourism because it ensures the safety of foreign tourists.

Thailand