The United States will send a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to Israel, along with the troops needed to operate it, the Pentagon said Sunday, even as Iran warned Washington to keep American military forces out of Israel.
Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin authorized the deployment of the THAAD battery at the direction of President Joe Biden. He said the system will help bolster Israel’s air defenses following Iran’s ballistic missile attacks on Israel in April and October.
The delivery of the sophisticated missile defense system risks further inflaming the conflict in the Middle East despite widespread diplomatic efforts to avoid an all-out war. The Iranian warning came in a post on the social platform X long associated with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who noted the earlier reports that the U.S. was considering the deployment.

North Korea said Sunday it has ordered its artillery corps near the border with South Korea to fully prepare to shoot after the North threatened a "horrible disaster" over the alleged flight of drones over its capital.
North Korea claimed the South had sent unmanned drones over Pyongyang three times this month.
In a statement carried by its state media, Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of the North's leader Kim Jong-un, said the North was ready to take a "strong corresponding retaliatory action" in case drones carrying anti-Pyongyang materials are flown again into the North, warning that the "attack time" can come at any time.
In response, South Korea's defense ministry said any attempts by the North to harm its people would result in the end of the Kim regime.
On Friday, North Korea's foreign ministry claimed that South Korean drones carrying leaflets were detected in the night skies over Pyongyang on Oct. 3, as well as Wednesday and Thursday of this week, and threatened to respond with force if such flights occur again.
South Korea's Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun initially denied that the military had sent any drones across the border, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff later said it could not confirm whether the North's claims were true.

Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonymous person or group credited with creating Bitcoin, the first decentralized cryptocurrency, and authoring its original whitepaper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System," which was published in 2008. Nakamoto also developed the first version of Bitcoin software in 2009, essentially launching the cryptocurrency.
Despite various investigations, Nakamoto's true identity remains unknown. Over the years, several individuals have been speculated to be Nakamoto, but none have been definitively proven. In 2011, Nakamoto communicated that they had "moved on to other things" and has since vanished from public view, leaving the Bitcoin community and its development to others.
Nakamoto is estimated to own around one million bitcoins, making them one of the wealthiest individuals in the world if those holdings are still accessible.

Bitcoin's price drop is fueled by whale activity, including large transfers to exchanges.Traders are locking in profits ahead of key economic data releases.Bitcoin is mirroring the Nasdaq's volatility due to increased correlation.