When Olivier Baroin moved into an apartment in Montmartre about 15 years ago, it felt like he was living in a village in the heart of Paris. Not anymore.

Stores for residents are disappearing, along with the friendly atmosphere, he says. In their place are hordes of people taking selfies, shops selling tourist trinkets, and cafés whose seating spills into the narrow, cobbled streets as overtourism takes its toll.

Israel gave final approval Wednesday for a controversial settlement project in the occupied West Bank that would effectively cut the territory in two, and that Palestinians and rights groups say could destroy hopes for a future Palestinian state.

Settlement development in E1, an open tract of land east of Jerusalem, has been under consideration for more than two decades, but was frozen due to U.S. pressure during previous administrations. The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.

From Florida to New England, people trying to enjoy the last hurrahs of summer along the coast were met with rip current warnings, closed beaches and in some cases already treacherous waves as Hurricane Erin inched closer Wednesday.

While forecasters remain confident that the center of the monster storm will stay far offshore, the outer edges are expected to bring high winds, large swells and life-threatening rip currents into Friday. Life-threatening surf and 100 mph (155 kph) winds will lash the East Coast, National Weather Service forecasters warned Wednesday.

NATO defense chiefs were due to hold a virtual meeting Wednesday, a senior alliance official said, as Western countries pushing for an end to Russia's war on Ukraine devise possible future security guarantees for Kyiv that could help forge a peace agreement.

Italian Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the chair of NATO's Military Committee, said that 32 defense chiefs from across the alliance would hold a video conference as a U.S.-led diplomatic push seeks to end the fighting.

Syria's foreign minister held a rare direct meeting with an Israeli delegation in Paris on Tuesday, talks that were brokered by the United States as part of a diplomatic push for Syria and Israel to normalize relations despite a recent surge in tensions between them.

Syria's state-run SANA news agency said Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani met with Israeli officials to discuss de-escalating tensions and restoring a 1974 ceasefire agreement — a deal that established a demilitarized separation zone between Israeli and Syrian forces and stationed a U.N. peacekeeping force to maintain calm.

One of Lebanon's largest factories making the highly addictive amphetamine Captagon has been discovered and destroyed as part of rare security cooperation between intelligence agencies in Iraq and Lebanon, Iraq's Interior Ministry said.

The announcement late Monday came a month after the Lebanese Army issued a statement about the discovery of a drug factory in Yammoune village in the eastern Bekaa Valley with large amounts of drugs inside.

After setting off from Cyprus, a ship loaded with 1,200 tons of food supplies for the Gaza Strip was approaching the Israeli port of Ashdod on Tuesday in a renewed effort to alleviate the worsening crisis as famine threatens the Palestinian territory.

The Panamanian-flagged vessel is loaded with 52 containers carrying food aid such as pasta, rice, baby food and canned goods. Israeli customs officials had screened the aid at the Cypriot port of Limassol from where the ship departed on Monday.

President Donald Trump said he's begun arrangements for a face-to-face meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss a pathway to end Russia's invasion of Ukraine, while affirming that the U.S. would back European security guarantees aimed at preventing Moscow from reinvading its neighbor once the current conflict ends.

Details of the security guarantees and Trump's efforts to arrange peace talks were still evolving as an extended meeting among Trump, Zelensky and other European leaders wrapped up at the White House.

U.S. envoy Tom Barrack on Monday called on Israel to honor commitments under a ceasefire that ended its war with Hezbollah, after the Lebanese government launched a process to disarm the militant group.

Under the November truce agreement, weapons in Lebanon were to be restricted to the state and Israel was to fully withdraw its troops from the country, although it has kept forces at five border points it deems strategic.

A lot has happened in just a year on both sides of the Lebanon-Syria border. A lightning offensive by Islamist insurgents in Syria toppled longtime autocrat Bashar Assad and brought a new government in place in Damascus.

In Lebanon, a bruising war with Israel dealt a serious blow to Hezbollah — the Iran-backed and Assad-allied Shiite Lebanese militant group that had until recently been a powerful force in the Middle East — and a U.S.-negotiated deal has brought a fragile ceasefire.