we catch up with pentatonix, the first a cappella group to hit number one on the billboard charts. >> we do the flashy type of thing, but at the end of the day we're just twenty-somethings singing choir music, you know what i mean, and we just made it a different thing. >> ifill: all that and more, on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> ifill: the house of representatives ratified some high-level deal-making this evening. the vote was 266 to 167 on a package aimed at heading off a government shutdown, and default on the nation's debt. it came just a few hours after republicans nominated paul ryan to be the next speaker. we'll have a full report on all of this, later in the broadcast. former speaker dennis hastert pleaded guilty today to fraud for evading federal banking laws in a hush-money scheme. the 73-year-old republican entered the plea in chicago. he said he did not want the f.b.i. to know why he paid $3.5 million to an unnamed party. it's been widely reported that the money went to hide claims of sexual misconduct. hastert will be sentenced in february. in nigeria, there's word of a dramatic rescue by the country's military. the army says it freed 338 captives held by the islamist militant group "boko haram". newshour special correspondent nick schifrin is in yola, nigeria and spoke with us earlier by phone. >> reporter: more than 300 prisoners were released from northeastern nigeria where we are now and one of boko haram's final strongholds. the nigerian military released photos of some of those people released. so many women and children have been taken by boko haram especr#s&y, forced to become wives or even suicide bombers. the nigerian military also says it killed about 30 fighters and seized weapons and ammunition from those fighters. in the past six or seven months, the nigerian military has freed about 1,000 prisoners, so this isn't the first time this has happened, but it's first time it's happened on the edge of this forest, and this is significant. that is boko haram's final headquarters, and it's really the place the nigerian military needs to go into in order to defeat boko haram. u.s. officials now telling me there are u.s. drones flying overhead, and that intelligence is being given to the nigerian military. they will need that if they're going to meet their own deadline of defeating boko haram by the end of the year. >> ifill: meanwhile, african union investigators in south sudan have laid bare accusations of war crimes, including mass killings and forced cannibalism. the a.u. report says government troops committed the atrocities against ethnic "nuer" civilians in the capital, juba, during a 22-month civil war. the two sides signed a peace agreement in august, but fighting continues. iran will attend international talks aimed at ending the four-year-long conflict in syria. state television confirms foreign minister mohammad javad zarif will lead the iranian delegation at tomorrow's session in vienna. iran has firmly backed syrian president bashar assad, and zarif's deputy made clear today, that hasn't changed. >> ( translated ): we believe that the solution in syria is only a political solution. americans and foreign players in syria have no choice but to accept the realities in syria. mr. bashar assad and the syrian government have the necessary readiness for talks with insurgents who are committed to a political path. >> ifill: secretary of state john kerry will also attend the vienna talks. he said today the challenge is like trying to chart "a course out of hell". back in this country, a national report card shows math and reading test scores in public schools are falling or stagnant. the "national assessment of educational progress" finds: an army surveillance blimp broke loose in maryland today, and drifted for hours before landing in pennsylvania. it floated at 16,000 feet for some time, as fighter jets followed, and its tether dragged near the ground, snapping power lines and causing outages. the blimp sank back to earth after losing helium. in economic news, the federal reserve kept short-term interest rates at record lows. but, policy makers suggested a rate hike could finally be coming in december. wall street appeared to be undeterred. the dow jones industrial average gained 198 points to close near 17,780. the nasdaq rose 65 points, and the s&p 500 added 24. and britain's prince harry was in the washington area today, promoting programs to help wounded troops and veterans. he visited fort belvoir in virginia, along with first lady michelle obama and jill biden, and together, they watched wheelchair basketball players compete. later, the prince, who served two tours in afghanistan, met with president obama in the oval office. still to come on the newshour: a deadly day on greece's shores; what the treasury secretary thinks of congress' budget deal; the role of police in schools: to protect or enforce? and much more. >> ifill: hundreds of syrian refugees fleeing the ravages of war, met another tragedy today, as their desperate journey to find a new home ended in despair. special correspondent malcom brabant reports from the greek island of lesbos. >> reporter: a medical team works frantically to revive a small child. >> five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. >> reporter: this was happening two hours after the boat capsized. the doctors' efforts were in vain. the cries of the bereaved pierced the night. lesbos is full of volunteers here to help the refugees and migrants. those swaddled young survivors in thermal blankets, trying to ward off hypothermia. adult survivors were visibly traumatized. the small island was unequipped to deal with such disaster. volunteer eric kempson. >> there's a lot of people still in the water. i would say the death toll will be quite high. they're doing cpr on babies, children. it's a mess. we've got lifeguards down. there we have coast guards out there, helicopters out there. it was a big wooden boat, someone said over 200 people on board. so we just do the best we can and save as many people as you can at the moment. we have all the doctors down here. all the emergency services are here. we have to do the best we can. >> reporter: in the darkness, amid the chaos, greek doctors and foreign colleagues from international aid agencies did what they could in the triage area. these people were running away from war and conflict, and they took a wooden boat because they thought it was safer than the inflatable craft used during the summer. the people traffickers doubled their prices for a place on boats like this. >> ( translated ): we can see the vessel through the binocular, but within a matter of seconds we lost sights of it. all we could see were life jackets on the surface, so we immediately called the coast guard and even two turkish boats came and they fill up with people and went back the turkey. there were at least 150 life jackettings visible. it was a big boat. there must be an awful lot of victims. >> help here. >> reporter: as the hours passed, the mood became more ominous. >> need help here. >> reporter: the coast guard cutter headed back out to sea to resume the task of searching for survivors. the sea was flat calm. the afternoon winds that capsized the boat had died down. a fishing boat that had joined the operation headed to the docks and was surrounded by medics. the crew that pulled at least one survivor from the water. several hours earlier, at first light, a 35mph wind was blowing. no fishermen were out on the water. coast guard boats remained in port. but despite the choppy seas, the traffickers' business was booming. the first arrivals of the day ran aground off the rocky northern shore. local fishermen and volunteers attached a line to the decrepit pleasure cruiser. they had to make sure the refugees didn't panic and capsize the vessel. this fisherman's priority was to help rescue the children on board. >> ( translated ): can't the united nations do something? these rotting boats are coming over from turkey. take a picture so people can see. the traffickers are putting people inside and sending them over in dreadful weather conditions. who is the person? who is responsible? who can say stop and put an end to the crime that's taking place? it's a disgrace. i'm in the water day and night, and i just can't watch these children drowning anymore. we're all trying to help here. we're not bad people on this island, lesbos. we're trying to do what we can and do our duty. it's a question of humanity, but the powers that be have got to take a serious look at this issue and solve it. >> reporter: the rescuers formed a human chain the passes the children to safety. one woman was overwhelmed at having landed on european soil. >> i'm really happy. i'm glad. i'm glad we are here, finally. thanks, god. thanks, god. and thanks for you for helping us. >> reporter: tonight there is real uncertainty about the number of people who perished on this vessel. some survivors talk about the boat carrying about 300 people, and they say that it went down extremely quickly. one survivor has talked about there being a collision about ten minutes out from the turkish coast, and that seems to have happened when the people smuggler was due to get off the boat and get on to another vessel to take him back to turkey. there seems to have been a collision between the two boats. whatever the truth, this is a really cynical example of the sort of business these traffic traffickers perform. for the pbs news howrk i'm malcolm brabant in lesbos. >> ifill: now to this very busy day in the u.s. house. there was the vote approving that sweeping budget deal. plus republicans' decision to endorse paul ryan for speaker. 200 out of the 247 gave him their backing. he needs 218 votes in the full house to clinch the job. the wisconsin republican emerged from a closed-door party caucus this afternoon, calling it "a new day in the house of representatives." >> we are not going to have a house that looks like it looked the last few years. we are going to move forward. we are going to unify. our party has lost its vision and we're going to replace it with a vision. >> ifill: the full house will vote on ryan's nomination tomorrow. but although he said yesterday that the process of getting to a budget agreement "stinks," he said today he will support it. hours later, the house moved to pass that agreement, averting a federal default next week and a likely government shutdown in december. the two-year package includes $80 billion in new spending, split evenly between defense and domestic programs. it also raises the government's borrowing limit through march 2017. the additional spending would be funded in part by sales of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve. and by cuts in medicare reimbursements for hospitals and doctors. the deal won support from many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. >> it is a deal that leaves both sides unsatisfied, but it is a deal that avoids default, prevents a government shutdown, and adequately funds our military. >> we have, i'm glad to say, a two-year budget agreement that eases the burden of the damaging sequester cuts, protects seniors, affirms the full faith and credit of the united states, and provides much-needed economic stability and security to our nation. >> ifill: republicans in the arch-conservative "freedom caucus" opposed the deal, as a backroom bargain that bowed too much to president obama's wishes. >> ifill: the senate is expected to pass the budget next week. earlier this afternoon, i sat down with treasury secretary jack lew. secretary of treasury jack lew, thank you for being us with. >> great to be with you, gwen. >> ifill: as we speak this afternoon, it looks like a vote similar innocent on a budget deal that would also allow the debt limit to go up after kicking this can down the road repeatedly with congress, what changed this time to allow a two-year deal to be on the verge of approval? >> well, i think a lot of things came together. obviously the fact that the debt limit is going to be reached on tuesday of next week and they have to act before then focused their minds on the debt limit in a very real way. i've been communicating with congress on a very regular basis. it's been getting closer and closer. i think it's a good thing they've reached an agreement. it certainly seems to be on track for the debt limit being raised in time to avoid that unnecessary self-inflicted wound. on the budget side, there have been conversations going on for many years, but intensely for many weeks, to try and figure out how to resolve this year's funding bill. the approach is one that we have supported for a long time, which is to relieve the across-the-board cuts and sequestration by replacing the savings with a balanced mix of tax, spending and items. the breakthrough in the last week has enabled us to reach an agreement. we've achieved that goal, and providing $80 billion of relief will give congress the ability to write appropriations bills to meet our domestic needs and our defense needs. this means they will be able to invest in research and education and also in our national defense. i think that's what americans want congress to do. it shouldn't be so hard to get to these amendments where these agreements can be reached. i hope this passes in a way that's uneventful and enables congress to get on with its work. >> ifill: could you have reached this moment if it had not been for the resignation of speaker boehner? >> conversations were going on before that. i think he clearly approached it with an intensity that deadlines create in these last couple of weeks. i think congress coming to terms on the debt limit helps that they understand there is real deadline. the two are separate. we negotiated over the budget. the debt limit, we made clear from the beginning, they just have to approve the debt limit. it's not something they can kind of extract concessions. >> ifill: we heard incoming speaker paul ryan say the process stinks, even though he's voting for the final deal. does that signal to you there might be problems going into this next round of negotiations, whenever that might be, with the new speaker? >> well, to be clear, this is going to give the congress a total amount of money to spend for the next two years in the appropriations process. they now have to produce bills by december 11th to fund the government for next year, because that's when the short-term funding bill expires. i hope that they approach that with the same kind of spirit of compromise and reaching mutually acceptable outcomes and that it doesn't become an occasion for the extraneous issues, that cause unnecessary conflict to be introduced. >> ifill: have you spoken to speaker-elect ryan yet about this process? >> i've had a working relationship with him over the course of the last couple years from multiple seats. i was a director when he was the budget committee chair. i worked with him when i was chief of staff at the white house. i've worked with him as treasury secretary. we've always been able to talk about issues. it won't come as a surprise we have very different policy views on many things, but we've always been able to talk in a respectful way andñr the look fr areas where we could work together. i hope that relationship continues. >> ifill: i want to talk to you about some of the nuts and boalgts in this agreement. one has to do with medicare part b, the part that pays for outpatient service, doctors' visits. there was a risk those premiums would rise by 30%. now it's been pushed back to 15%. some people say there were some gimmicks used to do this, the kinds of gimmicks the president spoke out about against. >> medicare premiums, because we have no cost of living increase this year, because inflation didn't hit a minimum level to trigger an adjustment, there is a group of roughly 30% of medicare beneficiaries who were going to actually see almost a 50% increase in their medicare premium. there was a bipartisan interest in stretching that out over a period of time and having the impact not be as immediate and as severe. and i think that's what was worked out in the bill. it is the kind of thing we should be able to work together on a bipartisan basis, and everything that is in this bill is paid for. with one offset or another. >> ifill: in the a gimmick? >> if you look at the savings in the bill overall, there are both spending reductions and some tax enforcement measures. >> ifill: there are no taxes included in this deal as the president said there would have to be. >> there will be revenue to come from our enforcing the existing tax laws more effectively. on the spending side, there are quite a number of real savings provisions. as in any budget agreement, you know, nobody likes all of the offsets in a budget agreement. so there will be some criticism over the coming days. i think we'll focus not so much on whether or not they're real, but with some who say, why did you get the savings here. >> is cutting benefits to providers a back door way of decreasing advantages for a patient? >> there are no beneficiary cuts in this package. you know, sensible provider reforms that have reimbursements on a basis that reflects best practices, best understanding of what costs are, that's a good thing. so i think that what we've put together in this package is a fair and balanced approach. in terms of the medicare provisions, i think the good thing that we're going to avoid something that would have been very hard to explain to people, their medicare premium going up 50% because inflaights didn't go up. >> ifill: is it fiscally sound to raise $6.5 billion by releasing oil from the strategic petroleum reserve? >> the strategic petroleum reserve is an important national asset. but it's an old asset. it's an asset that was put in place decades ago, and it actually needs several million dollars of improvements for it to be as useful and usable as it should be. part of this agreement will modernize the strategic petroleum reserves so we can get access to it when we need it in a more reliable way. we produced quite a lot more domestic energy today than when we filled the strategic petroleum reserve in the first place. i think if you look at this provision in light of our national security needs, it's a very important step forward. >> ifill: short term you have avoided another debt ceiling crisis and another government shutdown crisis. long term, without significantly reforming entitlements or somehow cutting spending on, that are we going to be back at the same place again? >> you know, gwen, the debt limit is sometimes thought of as spending money. the debt limit actually doesn't spend a penny. all it does is gives us the ability to pay for the bills that have been committed to by prior acts of congress. so the idea that the debt limit would be used as a way to control spending is just fundamentally wrong. you have to make those decisions way before you hit the debt limit. and we clearly have challenges over the horizon, but for the next ten years, we're looking at a budget where the deficit is a% percentage ofñi g dp has beenñi brought under control. it's been brought down to roughly 2.5% of our economy. it was at 10% of our economy. there is more work to do as weñi get into the long term, the retirement of the baby boom and other things we know are over the horizon in terms of full impact, but there is not an immediate crisis. right now the immediate crisis in our country is our failure to invest enough today. that's why i think the budget is so important. it doesn't do everything we need to do. i hope congress can do some more things, the export-import bank, finishing work on infrastructure. but this is an important foundation. self-inflicted wounds is a thing we ought to be able to assure the country we avoid. that's a very important accomplishment because the alternative would have been real harsh. >> ifill: treasury secretary jack lew, thank you very much. >> great to be with you. gwen. >> ifill: stay with us. coming up on the newshour: why some of the biggest tech companies aren't making money; an oil boom boosts racial diversity; and an a cappella group tops the charts. >> ifill: now, the national conversation happening around police, their role in schools and their interaction with african-american students especially. yet another viral video has re-ignited that debate, prompted by cell phone footage showing a south carolina sheriff's deputy manhandling a teenager accused of being disruptive. the deputy was working as a school resource officer at columbia's spring valley high school. leon lot says the maneuver used by a police officer violated training protocals, but the sheriff also called on office to reassess the way they handle discipline problems. >> this is a learning opportunity for all of us. we'll take what he did and the mistake he made and make sure that all of our deputies learn from that throughout the sheriff's department and know you have to do things differently and not like he did. we're also going to talk very closely with the school districts and make sure they understand that when they call us that we're going to take law enforcement action. they're there to take administrative action. and if they want us to take a law enforcement action, we'll do that, but if they don't want us, then they don't need to call us for that. >> ifill: far closer look at discipline and enforcement in schools, we turn to susan ferriss,ñi investigative reportr for the center of public integrity.çó she's written on the treatment of children and students by police and the u.s. justice system; and shaun harper, associate professor and executive director of the center for the study of race and equity in education at the university of pennsylvania. welcome to you both. this was clearly a shocking incident. this is something nobody can argue. but was it rare or was it typical, susan ferriss? >> well, i don't think we really know that because it's so hard to get documents about incidents that happen in school and arrests. but we do know that in some jurisdictions, there are quite a few arrests of students. there's national data that we've analyzed at the center for public integrity showing that in the 2011/'12 school year there was an average of six for every 1,000 students who were referred to police from schools. we don't know what those were for. the data doesn't tell that, but when you drill down in some places to get police records or school records, you get a better idea, and sometimes there are incidents where kids are man handled by police, handcuffed, pepper sprayed, and put into the juvenile justice system. >> ifill: shaun harper, six out of 1,000 does not sound like a lot. what do the numbers tell you? >> well, the numbers tell us that at spring valley high school that there is a discipline problem. so i think that what we saw on the video was just a snapshot of a larger set of structural issues around discipline. so, for instance, black students are just about half of the student body at thatñi particulr high school, but yet there are more than 77% of students who were suspended from that high school in a single academic school year, which is part of a national phenomenon. we at the center for the study of race and equity in education recently published a report that focused on the disproportionate impact of suspension and expulsion on black students in 13 southern states. gwen, we fund that of the 1.2 million black students who were suspended nationally, 55% of those suspensions occurred in school districts located in the 13 southern states, including south carolina. >> ifill: susanñi ferriss, let's talk about the whole idea of having police officers. you heard what the sheriff had to say in south carolina. what is the purpose? what was the reason... what is the reasoning for even having armed officers on site? >> i think there are a variety of reasons. one, i think most obviously is the fear of school shootings and violence, and after a school shooting, there is usually a request locally to add more police to schools. also going back to the '80s and the '90s, the growth of security guards and police because of fear of violence among students and drugs. i don't think that people bargained on officers getting deeply involved inçó what many people used to consider essentially discipline problems. >> ifill: shaun harper, let me play devil's advocate, because i saw another video online where the students were attacking the principal, where teachers felt like they had the means to protect themselves against unruly students. how did thisxd or has this gottn out of hand either way? >> well, one thing that we now have at our disposal are the video camera footage. so i'm not sure there has been an uptick in or even a decrease in the number of incidents such as the ones that we've seen on these videos, but just like policing in our larger communities and in our larger society, now we have dash cams and we have people with cell phone cameras who can, you know, exposede to the world the incidents thatñr are happening. so i don't know that i'm able to really comment one way or another about, you know, if, you know, violence against teachers and school leaders, you know, is really, you know, a big problem, what i can say, though, for sure is the officer who was fired today definitely assaulted that young lady, and i'm so glad that there was someone there with a cell phone camera the capture it. >> ifill: let me ask you another question while you're on that point, which is how do we know that this is race that is driving this? you talkedñr about the disparity in the numbers, but what drives that? >> sure. i think that... our research makes very clear that, you know, there are implicit biases that many educators and school administrators and perhaps even school resource officers have about young black children that we're violent, we're unruly. well, i'm in the a child anymore, but they are young criminals. we have consumed for almost all of our lives, you know, these messages about who young black people are, so those same messages make their way into schools, and, you know, unfortunately and tragically even, you know, young black kids are often, you know, severely and more harshly penalized for the same kinds of things that young white children do. i'm pretty sure there is a young white boy in a class somewhere in america who had his cell phone out on the same day that that young lady was attacked, and the teacher said, put your cell phone away and he didn't, but when that young lady, because she's black, right, you know, that engenders a different response that is unequivocally race. >> ifill: susan ferriss, why doesn't the training for the officers or the school resource officers or the disciplinarian, even teachers, why isn't that taken into account or is it taken into account in training? >> there is really no national standard for that. it's almost done by jurisdiction. there are other concerns about the training that police officers should have when they go into schools because of the large number, large from portion of special needs students also that are getting referred to police and to courts. when we did our data mall sis, we found that there were 14% of students in the united states that had special needs, but 26% of those referred to police were special needsçó students. i'll give you an example of what we found in virginia. virginia was the top state that we found when we analyzed this data at about three times what the national average was. we looked at some cases including the case of a 11 -year-old boy with autism in a school. he was first cited by a school resource officer for kicking a trash can during a bad moment he was having in the school principal's office. the school resource officer decided to go down to the juvenile court and file this petition for disorderly conduct. later on the boy walked out of class without permission. he was having trouble in his class. the officer was told to go get him by the school principal. when the officer went to get him, he didn't... the boy didn't comply with an order to go to the office. the officer grabbed him, and the boy struggled. the boyxd ended up charged with felony assault on a police officer. at 11.çó >> ifill: a lot of us have to decide who decides what is excessive and whether it's a behavior or a discipline. shaun harper, university of pennsylvania, susan ferriss, from the center of public integrity, thank you both very much. >> thank you. >> thank you, gwen. >> ifill: this has been a busy couple of weeks for some of america's biggest tech companies. many have been releasing their profit reports, and for some, the time has come to to find a way to reach a larger audience, earn more money, and stay relevant to an ever-changing market. hari sreenivasn, in our new york studios, has that story. >> sreenivasan: if you look at your tech news feed, there's been plenty of news about apple earning billions of dollars off iphones and other devices. but other big names, particularly twitter and yahoo, are trying to adjust their approach. yahoo's chief executive, marissa mayer, said she will soon launch a plan to streamline her company, which now finds itself using google for some search and advertising results. over at twitter, there's a new permanent c.e.o., jack dorsey. he's a co-founder of the company and charged with broadening twitter's appeal at a time when snapchat and other apps are rising. jon kelley is a contributing editor at vanity fair who covers this sector. let's start with twitter first. i mean, there's almost this jobsian mythos of the founder coming back to take the company the new heights. where is twitter and why has it seemed to fallen out of favor? >> there is this mythology because twitter and dorsey want to promote that very for obvious reasons. but twitter suffers from the same sort of problem that yahoo has. it was a hot company in its past. it's struggling to recapture that heat and to satisfy the expectations of its investors, who expect that it will. >> sreenivasan: it's in the a new start-up. it's a ten-year-old company. you think, wow, facebook has really taken off in the same amount of time. >> it's true. it's very funny, in the modern tech landscape, a mature company, an old company is ten years old. so twitter at year ten is trying to recapture the growth it experienced its first few years in the public market. that may be an impossible job as it looks for new users and new audiences and new ways to create revenue streams out of new products like moments which they recently unveiled. it's possible that twitter may be a successful company. it's also possible that it's a boring company. >> sreenivasan: there was a fascinating article saying it is still used by theists"" the journalists and the activist. >> twitter owes itself to the arab spring. it hoped to change the world and make it a better place. now people find that twitter is kind of cumberson and tricky the use. it's a police for people to communicate. it's hard to bring in new users when you say essentially, you have to follow hundreds if not thousands to get live news. so to reclaim twitter space in the news either and to play catch to what snapchat did. they seem to think there is an opportunity because indeed they're already trying to get revenue against this. so clearly they see this as a big part of their next year and if not the next two or three years in catching up with revenue. >> sreenivasan: speaking of revenue, yahoo is not a small company, a billion dollars or so in revenue. compare that in the eyes of normal shareholders, ample and the massive mounds of cash they're sitting on, right? what's marissa mayer's report card now? share hold verse given her a pretty long kind of lead time and said, fine, here's your checkbook, go buy a company of companies, but yahoo hasn't performed the way they thought it would. >> in a funny way, mayer reminds me of dorsey. she's somebody who was given perhaps an impossible job. yahooçó is a first generation internet company. it came of age in the earlyñr '90s. how do those companies still exist, amazon, embay, few others are still around. so it's not surprising that yahoo isçó looking back toward s glory days. now, the hiring of mayer was seen as this almost transformational opportunity. her first day on the job she was literally greeted with hope posters obama-style with her face on them. >> sreenivasan: you can go nowhere but down. >> it's tough. ask the president. i think they felt she and only she could deliver a transformative product. their own version of some sort of jobsian fantasy brought the life that would transform the company. you know what? very, very hard to do that. indeed, mayer had this three-year air cover in which all by baba was going to go public. she had three years the operate and roll out some hot product. it hasn't happened. in january the all by baba spin-off occurs and then yahoo is on its own. it earns about $1 billion a quarter. that's about what it hit. there are certainly many companies that would love that kind of revenue, but not in the valley. >> sreenivasan: she emphasized trying to make yahoo much more mobile friendly. the world has proved to those platforms and is not as laptop or pc century as it used to be. has that worked? she's also made some big acquisitions? >> yahoo was nowhere mobile when she arrived in 2012. that's a scary proposition. so when you think about the billion dollars in revenue yahoo earned, compare it to apple, which essentially created the smartphone, and made $50 billion in this quarter. and you get a sense of where people are reading. and, indeed, twitter, which is focused on catching up to snapchat and what's app, all of its mission is attempting to get on to the phone in front of you. that's where more than half of the audience is. and that's where mayer has been certainly trying to be as prodigious as possible in creating new products, but when she arrived, yahoo mail didn't even have a functioning application on the smartphone. so it's very difficult to see what their applications are. >> sreenivasan: jon kelly, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> ifill: the oil boom in the western part of the u.s. has changed not only the physical landscape, but the racial landscape too. areas that have historically been home to few, if any, people of color, are suddenly becoming more diverse. leigh patterson of inside energy, a public media reporting project, has the story on how that's changing communities. >> reporter: as young man, ray stewart never thought in a million years he would end up in a remote wyoming energy town, playing with his daughter in the park. but then his parents moved to gillette for work. >> they told me about the opportunities as far as job and the community and everything so i pretty much came running, literally. >> reporter: running from shreveport, louisiana five years ago... >> ready, big guy? one, two, three! >> reporter: ...his friend steve marsh moved from chicago in 2008. both men say the transition from diverse urban areas to the rural west was not easy. >> i had a lot of people ask, "can i touch your hair?" yes, it happens a lot. "i've never seen a black person before, can i touch your hair?" >> reporter: they got awkward questions and plenty of stares. but when i asked if they had a tough time here because of their race... >> ignorance is everywhere. i've been here for quite awhile so you learn to adjust and adapt. i think i'm a stronger person for it. >> reporter: but like so many others, these two moved here for one reason: to make money. and jobs in oil and gas pay well. so far this year, these workers nationally have made an average of around $30 an hour. in the aftermath of the recession, that kind of pay attracted workers of many different races and ethnicities to oil boomtowns out west. wyoming is the least populated state in the country, and one of the whitest, but that could be changing slowly. since 2010, the state's african american population has nearly doubled. >> that's wyoming's total population since 1870. >> reporter: economist wenlin liu says wyoming is not unique in the sharp growth of its overall african american population. he's seeing this new demographic shift all over the west. >> montana, north dakota, south dakota, wyoming, idaho. they are showing great increases. >> reporter: according to census data, between 2010 and 2014, these states actually had some of the fastest growing african american populations in the entire country. >> i think one of the reasons, probably, has something to do with employment. >> reporter: nowhere is that more true than in the oil and gas boom state of north dakota. the unemployment rate here is just 2.9%. that's the second lowest in the country. that's partially thanks to the fracking-induced surge in shale oil production. workers came from all over not just to work in energy, but also in the industries that sprang up to support it. the diversity of those workers is reflected in the student-body at watford city elementary school. this boomtown school has kids from around 20 different countries, and since 2010 the number of students has nearly tripled. >> not 'whoever,' it's 'however.' >> a majority of my students speak only spanish. i have some kids from yemen. i have some kids from kurdistan, i have some kids from pakistan. >> reporter: ahmed himself was an e.l.l. student. he emigrated from kurdistan to north dakota in 1992. >> here in watford city three years, i think it was mainly just the local people here. but ever since the oil boom, i have seen from mexico, from honduras, from asia. >> give me a hands up if you know what you're supposed to do. >> reporter: cassandra longbrake teaches second grade here. she says many of her students' parents came here for work. but the plummeting price of oil has hit north dakota hard. those plentiful jobs are no longer a sure thing. so far in this year, the state has lost over 5,000 jobs in mining, oil and gas. that's a 16% drop. >> there is still that revolving door that we see. where people are coming in, prices of oil is going down. they're scared of their jobs or maybe they are getting laid off and they are starting to leave. i've had kids that have enrolled in school and a week later, they're gone. >> reporter: living and working in a boom and bust economy can be difficult. but that doesn't necessarily mean workers will leave. according to census data, over the last few years, the number of young african american children in wyoming has dramatically increased-- by over 40%. the number of white children has remained steady. and once you have kids, it's harder to move. >> i have my family and i spend most of my time with them. >> i like the community here, i met my wife here. now that i'm here, this is home. >> reporter: for the pbs newshour, i'm leigh paterson in gillette, wyoming. >> ifill: a capella music long ago hit the mainstream, but this week its at billboard 200 pop charts this week. jeffrey brown has the story of pentatonix. ♪ ♪ >> i'm kirstin. >> i'm scott. >> i'm mitch. >> i'm kevin. >> i'm avi. ♪ >> brown: together they are "pentatonix", which has "gone platinum". they burst onto the scene in 2001 and began to forge a following on nbc's "the sing- off," a reality competition which led to a recording contract. ♪ next they turned to a more traditional pop route. ♪ oh i think i found myself a cheerleader ♪ >> reporter: and their christmas album at one point overtook mega star taylor swift's for number one in 2014. ♪ ♪ along the way they won a grammy award for best arrangement and appeared in the movie "pitch perfect 2". >> i think it's interesting to see people's perspectives on this type of change. like with "glee" coming out initially. "glee" came out when we were seniors in high school. we were in show choir and as seniors, we're like, this is awesome. it's finally cool. we did it. and so that... >> reporter: did you say, this is us? we can do this? >> no. when the pilot came out for "glee," i think we had a watch party. we were all seniors, and everyone was so excited. we're like, this show is awesome. >> it is essentially what we were already doing. >> so i think that opened up kind of a different chapter in music. >> reporter: kristin, scott and mitch first met as high school students in arlington, texas. >> we originally joined together for an act pell la trio for a radio competition in texas that we lost. >> reporter: and the rest is history. >> and the rest is history. but i remember one instance where we were singing and rehearsing and we called a couple friends in the room. we were like, we need your opinion, is this good? should we even enter. after we sang, they were like, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. you guys have truly something special. >> reporter: group members, all of whom came to this with music lessons and theater experience as kids, believe a big part of a cappella's appeal is it back-to-basics approach, very different from most of today's pop music. kevin and avi, who joined the three original friends later on, explain. >> we live in a society where music is very, very overproduced. >> reporter: overproduced? >> in a sense. there's a lot of electronics. i love the electronics sound, but there are a lot of people that want a more organic sound. so we think we can provide that in the music industry we're in. we can kind of be that for people who don't want to listen to that sort of electronic, overproduced sound. i want to listen to something more raw and pure. and that is kind of how we fill that void in this industry. >> people that want something that is just kind of a little more humble. we... >> reporter: humble? you are out there. you're sort of... i've seen the videos. it's fun and it's kind of loud in a sense. >> it is loud in a sense. we this use a flashy type of thing, but at the end of the day, we're just, you know, twenty somethings singing choir music. we've created a different thing. it's really just taking it back to the most organic form of music. we see ourselves as really just a band. we happen the use our voices. >> reporter: you can travel more lightly. >> you're right. >> reporter: how does it work? well, we got a demonstration. >> we're most inspired by the groove. so we'll start with kevin. and then we'll have the baseline. so we'll have core progression. and then we have two background parts. ♪ ♪ and then we just lay the solo on top. ♪ >> reporter: with their newly released album, the group is trying something new, writing and performing their own songs. >> we wanted to show our artistry. we all have very different tastes in music. we're so eclectic. we wanted to show that. before we did covers, but that's someone else's song and that's someone else's words. now we're telling stories about our relationships and about what we love to do and who we are as a band. that's really cool. i feel like especially in our live show, it's going to be so fun singing these songs and seeing people sing our words. >> reporter: i'm thinking that every day there's like another youtube sensation. >> oh, yeah. totally. >> reporter: this went viral, this went viral. how do you avid just being a youtube sensation? how do you sustain that? >> i feel like we're working on that right now. >> we're in that transitional period right now. >> reporter: are you all in this for the long haul? >> absolutely. we want to make our mark in the music industry. >> reporter: they plan to continue making that mark when they release their next christmas album later this year. in new york city, i'm jeffrey brown with the pbs "newshour." >> ifill: now to our newshour shares of the day, something that caught our eye which might be of interest to you, too. a nasa spacecraft today flew into an icy spray coming off one of saturn's moons. the mission? to figure out whether that moon has what they call "hydrothermal vents" that could support life. this nasa video explains the science behind the theories. tiger stripes are the deep canyons. underneath the spicy exterior turns a global ocean, heated in part by tidal forces from saturn and another moon with events expelling water at least 194 degrees fahrenheit. plumes of water vapor and icy particles jetson from its surface in geyser-like spouts. cassini will jetson through 30 miles november the surface. the plumes are more than just gas and water. samples show they also contain many of the building blocks essential to earth-like life. this lends itself to the possibility that organisms similar to those that thrive in our own deep oceans might exist here. it is still too early to know exactly how complex potential life forms could be, scientists speculate that at the very least microbial life is a real possibility. >> ifill: >> ifill: nasa's spacecraft, called cassini, has been orbiting saturn since 2004 and will continue to send back information about the planet and its moons. on the newshour online, photographer sara bennet's new project is based on the principle that people are more than their worst act-- even convicted murderers. the former criminal defense attorney is documenting the lives of women convicted of murder, who are working to rebuild their lives after prison. see a photo gallery of those portraits, on our home page, www.pbs.org/newshour. >> ifill: and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm gwen ifill. join us on-line, and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> and by bnsf railway. >> supporting social entrepreneurs and their solutions to the world's most pressing problems-- skollfoundation.org. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and individuals. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org ♪access.wgbh.org >> announcer: this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and sue herera. see you in december. that's when the fed said that interest rate hike is not just possible, but maybe even likely. what such a move would mean for your money. halftime report. we're at the midway point of the earnings season, and it's not just the dollar that's keeping revenues down. are you the life of the party? why builders say only your kitchen knows. all that and more tonight on "nightly business report" for wednesday, october 28th. and good evening, everyone, and welcome. well, that got our attention. the federal reserve today said a december rate hike is a real possibility. in its policy statement, the central bank left interest rates where they are right now but opened the door to a potential rise later t

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