Al Qaeda recently announced that it was holding an elderly U.S. aid worker captured four months ago in Pakistan hostage; Warren Weinstein, a seventy-year old man, was working in Pakistan as the country director for J. E. Austin Associates; he was captured by gunmen in August after they tricked him into letting them into his home; al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri has claimed responsibility and demanded the U.S. end its air strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen; Zawahiri also demanded that the U.S. also release the 1993 World Trade Center bombers and the relatives of Osama bin Laden in exchange for Weinstein’s release; so far U.S. officials have not received any proof that Weinstein is still alive