>> in an epic journey, "endeavour" going home. murder, sex, and intrigue. they're the themes of best-selling novel "a world without end." now the story is hitting the airwaves as amy nigh sears. we sit down with author ken. breaking the sound barrier without a net. that's what skydiver felix baumgartner is expecting to do today. only cnn will bring it to you live. good morn, everyone. i'm randi kaye. it's 7:00 a.m. on the east coast, 4:00 on the west. we start with new numbers. we start with a state that's squarely in the red. i'm talk about arizona. this rocky mountain poll shoes president obama with a two-point lead over mitt romney. the key here may be the latino vote which is heavily in obama's

favor. what's interesting is only one democrat has won arizona in the past 60 years and that, you may recall, was bill clinton, 1996. both candidates are off the campaign trail today working on debate prep. president obama came under a lot of criticism for his performance in the first debate. well, he's get a second chance on tuesday. cnn's athena jones has a preview for us. >> good morning, randi. the second debate is on its way. why? because it will be undecided voters asking the questions. round 2, president obama and governor mitt romney face off in their second debate tuesday. a town hall moderated by cnn's cannily crowley which says the format presents unique challenges for the candidates. >> the challenge is that they've got to connect not just with the people that are looking into the television and watching them but to the people that are on the stage with them, some 80 or so

undecided voters as chosen by gal up. gallup. so they have to keep that in mind. >> president obama is under pressure after his last turn on the state got bad reviews. >> one bad debate is losing a battle. two bad debates could very well mean he loses the war i think you're going to see a very different president obama this time around. he's got to be seen as being aggressive, but yet he can't be seen as being overly aggressive. >> reporter: romney has enjoyed a debate battle and a boost on the campaign trail. at a town hall without a podium and with audience interaction, the candidates' style and body language can take on added weight. at the first town hall-style presidential debate in 1992

george w. bush repeatedly checked his watch, a sign some thought he didn't want to be there. some said bill clinton walking toward the audience to answer a question about the question highlighted his ability to connect with the voters. one thing that can make it hard for a candidate is a question like this. >> can we focus on the issues and not the personalities and the mud. >> analysts say the format could be good for the president. >> he will absolutely be able to draw from that energy, from the energy of the public and the crowd. >> reporter: as for romney -- >> one of his big changes during that entire campaign has been not being able to connect with the common man and woman and child. he's got to be able to come across as connecting. he's got to come across as jen wine, as caring, as liveable. >> a candidate making a perm connection is making a better connection with the folks back home. >> reporter: as we all know, the stakes for the president

couldn't be higher. thank you very much. a reminder you can see the presidential debate right here on cnn hosted by candy crowley. our coverage starts tuesday night, 7:00 p.m. eastern time. now let's get you caught up with the space shuttle "endeavour." it's close. not there yet but it's close. it's on course but way off schedule. the 85-ton shuttle has been moving through the streets of los angeles since friday night and was supposed to be in place last night. it's only going 12 blocks but they hit a few roadblocks a loij the way. 000s have lined up to get a glims of this once in a lifetime-lifetim lifetime-event. they should make it, though, later this morning to the final destination. and while the space shuttle inches its way on the streets of l.a., one man is headed to temg of space on a balloon.

seriously, in a matter of hours skydiver felix baumgartner will make his second attempt from 120,000 feet or 23 miles into the air. he'll go so fast he could become the first man to break the sound barrier without the help of a vehicle. now, as you can imagine, the extreme stunt is dangerous and he knows it. >> well, diving has always been a part of my life. therefore it is important that you do your home work because you need confidence. you have to have confidence with your team and your skills and yourself and you always hope that you're not going to die. it might happen, but i'm going put everything out there to make sure that it's not going to ha p. >> the crazy thing about this is if he passes out his parachute could open automatically but if he doesn't he's in some serious trouble. be sure to stay with us for more on the record-breaking jump. and it is game over for

yankee shortstop derek jeter. he fractured his ankle in the opener against the tigers. yes, it does hurt. he has been having trouble. recovery is expected to be about three months. and from a player out of the game to a whole league out of a game, they will not resume but not until tuesday. the league canceled the preseason and postponed the start of the regular soon due to a lack of a collective bargain agreement. a worldwide show of support for a pakistani girl who braved taliban gunmen. thousands calls the wounded young activist a hero as she fights for her life from her hospital bed. the latest on her condition next. [ male announcer ] what inspires us to build safer automobiles? people like anna and david,

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meningitis outbreak. the death toll has risen to 15 as the cdc now says there are 196 cases in 13 states.

and cnn's brian todd found that it was implicated. >> another death eight years ago. that case also had to do with contaminated medication and it's raising some questions about whether the current outbreak could have been prevented czech republic . >> reporter: cnn has learned. ten years ago a man from upstate new york named william cook got a steroid injection. that's according to documents filed business koch's family. complaints say the drug was made by necc which is identified in the papers as new england compounding pharmacy. the suit seeking $2.5 million from the company. they say that it was contaminated that he got bacterial meningitis from it and he died from it. kock passed away in february, 2004. because of confidentiality

agreements with do not know if they admitted wrongdoing. >> it raises issues with their quality systems. >> reporter: he's an expert on the compounding of drugs and the manufacturing of them at the university of maryland school of pharmacy. he says compounding pharmacies are traditionally supposed to to work with doctors to make specific drugs for compounding patients but some crossed over. >> you can obviously see when they're doing tens of thousands of units they've crossed over from a individual prescription to manufacturing where they're distributing that widely to all these different states. >> reporter: at that point he says those fa sits are supposed to be regulated by the fda. that provoked some questions. couldn't the regulators have stepped in, investigated, and shut down necc temporarily.

if they had done that, couldn't the cases have been presented. the fda doesn't have jurs digz until there's a problem. they've been fight to change that. we're told about complaints after koch got his shot, they were made aware. they didn't shut down the company but the official says after an investigation of more than three years, they gave necc a list of several things it needed to fix, put the company on probation for a year but suspended that probation because the company did fix the problems. in hoag's view, it never should have gotten that far. >> could it at all been prevented? >> i thank should have stuck to their original business of

compounding and not crossed the line. >> reporter: asked about the koch case, the company declined to comment citing dedenality issues. turkey has threatened to retaliate against neighboring syria if more shells fall across its border. defense secretary leon panetta recently addressed those concerns. >> whether or not that conflict begins to extend into the neighboring countries such as turkey remains to be seen, but now that there are exchanges of fire between these two countries raises additional concerns that this conflict could broaden. >> syria's civil war continues to rage even as panetta says the u.s. is using diplomatic channels to try to keep the unrest from spreading. infighting this weekend. a historic mosque went up in

flames. >> now the latest on the young ak tctivist who has captivated americans. she's making slow and steady progress. on tuesday she was shot in the head by militant gunmen who were furious that she defied them to get an education just to go to school. cnn's reza sayaha with more from pakistan. >> reporter: a police chief in a district one hour south of where malala was shot, calling them suspects but it's not clear how they were linked to this incident. in the mean teen malala still in critical condition in a leading military hospital, doctors say they're still monitoring the swelling in her blame. the good news, they say, is her vitals, her bloo pulse, hur blood pressure remains stable.

in the meantime the top military spokesman telling cnn in graphic detail exactly where she got shot. >> she got hit on the left side in the head. >> reporter: so she got hit directly in the head. >> yeah, she got hit in the head. and then it traveled through here, through the neck and went behind the shoulder and rested just next to the backbone. >> was this a point blank shot? >> it was a point blank shot. >> are you surprised she's even alive today? >> yes, everyone is surprised she's alive today. >> so was it a small caliber gun? >> yeah. i think it was a .9 mm probably. >> have you ever seen someone get shot in the head with a .9 mm and is alive? >> yes. >> it's incredible. are you surprised. >> i was surprised too. >> doctors say recovery is going to be crucial.

in the meantime outpouring is still there. more prayer vigils. the biggest one in karachi where tens of thousands of people are expected to turn out. reza sayah, cnn, is ball la. ken mollett, a turn with run of his novels. [ male announcer ] inside the v8 taste lab. tomato, obviously. haha. there's more than that though, there's a kick to it. there's a pop. wahlalalalallala! pepper, but not pepper, i'm getting like, pep-pepper. it's kind of like drinking a food that's a drink, or a drink that's a food, zip zip zip zip zip! i'm literally getting zinged by the flavor. smooth, but crisp. velvety. kind of makes me feel like a dah zing yah woooooh! [ male announcer ] taste it and describe the indescribable. could've had a v8.

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with nearly 100 million books sold, chances are you've picked up a ken follett novel. "world without end kwds appears

on reelz this wednesday. ken, first thanks for taking time to meet with us. >> pleasure. >> initially your big hits were thrillers. >> that's right. >> then you made the transition into mini series. why did you make the transition from these thrillers to the middle ages? >> well, i wrote thrillers because i love to read thrillers, but i was always interested in cathedral architecture and the great european cathedrals and i would go see them and read how they were built and i got interested and finally it occurred to me that there because great popular novel be written about the building of a cathedral, and so i wrote "the pillars of the erts." some people said to me, you want to write a novel about building a church? you know, you've had a lot of success with kgb and cia and the nazis and now you're going the

middle ages and it was hard to see. it turned out pretty well in tebd. my instinct is right. >> this is two 00 years after the first one and i watched part one of this eight-hour series and it is big. how does it feel when you go from the process of writing these novels and creating these characters and you see them only on paper through words and you see them physically three dimensional characters on screen? >> it's two things. first it's terrifying because i've gone through such trouble to make sure in the novel there are no boring bits, the plot is logical, and then i have to hand it over to somebody else. it took three years. all that work i have to hand over to somebody else for them to mess it about. in the case of "pillars of the earth," they did a terrific job.

>> now, you're not just handing its over to everyone. you're handing it over to ridley scott. >> yeah. that was a great reashushs. >> finally, you had a cameo in "pillars of the earth." that's true. >> they taught me french when i first came here and i taught him english. >> are we going to see you in "world without end?" >> no. my acting didn't give me response, so i'm going to stick to writing. when we come back, we're expecting that big sky dive we've been telling you all morning. felix baumgartner expecting to break the sound barrier. keep it right here. we'll be right back. [ female announcer ] introducing yoplait greek 100.

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only allegra is both fast and non-drowsy, and it works on my outdoor allergies, too. after allegra, i have it all. checking our top stories now, we're expecting felix baumgartner to make an attempt to jump 23 miles. he could go so fast he'd being the first man to break the sound barrier without help of a vehicle. be sure to stay with cnn for more on that record-breaking jump. that launch could begin as early as 8:30 eastern time and we'll be here watching it. both president obama and mitt romney off the campaign trail today. instead they're in virginia and massachusetts respectively preparing for today's second presidential debate. so while they look ahead to tuesday, how about we look back to last week and thursday's entertaining vice-presidential

debate. we all had our own favorite highlights but here's how the fine folks at "saturday night live" saw it. >> well, if you enjoyed thursday night's vice-presidential debate, you're certainly not alone. >> four years ago, president obama made a promise that he would bring down unemployment below 6%. >> ah, this guy. >> he said by the end of his first term he would cut the deficit in half. >> congressman ryan prepared by holding debates and biden prepared by watching red bull and yosemite cartoons. >> you think you're turfer than me because you do the px-90 workouts? there's jim strong and old man strong. you want to know my workout. >> when the amtrak breaks down at my morning commute, strip down to my tighty whiteys and i push that [ bleep ] all the way

to washington. during thursday's debate vice president biden repeatedly cut down ryaryan's stuff. >> the ryan team has been accused of not giving specifics. >> our economic plan is simple. we're going to close loopholes, bring down tax rates the and bring down the deficit. >> can you please be more explicit? >> no. >> he said answer this question and answered it this way. women have to do that. you don't say to your husband, maybe we should go out new england weekend. no, you say, hey, we're going to dinner friday night with my sister and her husband, be ready by 7:00 and shave the back of your neck. >> hey, do i sound like jim lehrer? >> no.