COSTELLO: All right, just a reminder, you are looking at a picture of Peter Theo Curtis, the American journalist who was freed from captivity. He was being held captive by al Qaeda affiliated terrorists. He popped outside of his Cambridge house earlier this morning. We expect him to make remarks to the media at any moment now. Of course, when he does, when he approaches the mic, we'll take you back out to Cambridge. In another news this morning, the number of close calls between passenger jets has nearly doubled. Rene Marsh is following that story in Washington. Good morning, Rene.</s>MARSH: Good morning, Carol. You know, this is not supposed to happen. We're talking about passenger jets getting dangerously close in the skies, but we have new statistics from the FAA that shows just how often it does happen. CNN has learned the number of close calls nearly doubled in 2013 over the previous years. Now when you take a closer look at the numbers, you see that 38 were considered high risk. That's actually three fewer than the previous year. But take a look at the number of medium and low risk incidents. That number soared. And this year, there have been other close calls. Four of them were very high profile, including a near midair collision in April over Newark. You had a United Airlines 737 landing with 160 passengers on board; it comes within 150 yards of a United Express regional jet preparing to take off. Now the FAA says that its fairly new voluntary safety reporting system, which essentially allows employees to submit safety incidents confidentially, they say that has led to even more reporting, increased reporting, and that's how they explain the higher numbers. But some air traffic controllers say that may be true, but they feel that there are other factors at play here. They say some of these control towers are understaffed; that leads to fatigue, and Carol, they say eventually that leads to a mistake.</s>COSTELLO: All right. Rene Marsh reporting live from Washington. Thanks so much. The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM begins now.
FAA Report Shows Passenger Jet Near Misses Have Doubled