As wildfires rage throughout the western U.S., one California blaze in the rugged mountains outside of Yosemite National Park destroyed eight structures and forced thousands of nearby residents to flee their homes.

As of Tuesday evening, the fire had scorched 39 square miles (101 square kilometers), according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The blaze burning since Sunday was making its way to the hills on the edge of Mariposa, a town of about 2,000 people under a mandatory evacuation order.

Pakistani police say gunmen riding on a motorcycle opened fire, killing four members of a Shiite family and their driver in the country's southwest.

Local police chief Mohammad Ishaq says the drive-by shooting took place in the town of Mastung, about 75 kilometers (45 miles) south of the city of Quetta, Baluchistan's provincial capital.

The Indonesian government on Wednesday banned Hizbut Tahrir, an organization that wants to establish a global caliphate, under a new presidential decree criticized as draconian by rights groups.

Hizbut's legal status had been revoked to protect national unity, said Freddy Haris, a director-general at the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights.

The family of a Lebanese man who has been held in Iran for nearly two years said Tuesday his condition is deteriorating three weeks after he went on a hunger strike.

Nizar Zakka, 50, was rushed to a hospital on Sunday, where he refused an IV, his brother Ziad told The Associated Press. He said his brother is prepared to die if he is not released, and refused to sign documents in Farsi, a language he doesn't understand.

Desperate to help Syrians stuck on Jordan's sealed border, U.N. agencies reluctantly agreed late last year to hand much of the control over aid distribution to Jordan's military, a Jordanian contractor and a Syrian militia.

Since then, the system has broken down repeatedly and only sporadic aid shipments have reached two remote desert camps on the border that house thousands of Syrians displaced by war. Rival groups in the larger Rukban camp accuse each other of diverting aid, and black marketers flourish.

A young Saudi woman sparked a sensation online over the weekend by posting a video of herself in a miniskirt and crop top walking around in public, with some Saudis calling for her arrest and others rushing to her defense.

State-linked news websites reported on Monday that officials in the deeply conservative Muslim country are looking into taking possible action against the woman, who violated the kingdom's rules of dress. Women in Saudi Arabia must wear long, loose robes known as abayas in public. Most also cover their hair and face with a black veil, though exceptions are made for visiting dignitaries.

The United Arab Emirates orchestrated the hacking of a Qatari government news site in May, planting a false story that was used as a pretext for the current crisis between Qatar and several Arab countries, according to a Sunday report by The Washington Post.

The Emirati Embassy in Washington released a statement in response calling the Post report "false" and insisting that the UAE "had no role whatsoever" in the alleged hacking.

Turkey has dismissed almost 7,400 civil servants for alleged links to terror groups in a government decree, the latest in a wave of dismissals since authorities quashed a coup attempt last summer.

Teachers, academics, military and police officers were sacked late Friday, including former Istanbul governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu who was jailed last August for alleged links to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

They left their homes to escape the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and now they are going back.

Worn out from months of living in tents, about 150 Syrian families decided this week to return to the city of Homs — even if it meant going back to a life under Assad's rule.

A satirical cover for a political news magazine was all it took to see its editor eventually sentenced to more than two decades in prison.

Cevheri Guven, editor in chief of Turkey's Nokta magazine, fled while out on bail late last year, smuggling his family out of a country he says is rapidly descending toward all-out dictatorship. He took refuge in Greece, where he applied for political asylum.