From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm Jonathan Jones reporting.

Arab media is reporting scattered clashes around the southern Yemeni capital of Aden between forces loyal to the exiled president and southern separatists. As correspondent Edward Yeranian reports for VOA from Cairo, 16 people have been killed and 142 wounded in two days of fighting.

In a second day of clashes, forces loyal to Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi exchanged gunfire with southern separatist fighters around key government buildings Monday in Yemen's southern interim capital of Aden. Arab media report several official government buildings are in the hands of the separatists but that a standoff prevails between the two sides in most places.

Scores were wounded and at least a dozen people were killed, according to officials loyal to Hadi.

Southern Yemeni separatist leader Aiderous Zubeidi insists the situation in Aden could not remain as is.

Edward Yeranian, for VOA news, Cairo.

Yemen has been in turmoil since Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital, Sana'a, in 2014, forcing Hadi to flee in exile in Saudi Arabia.

The government has since begun operating out of Aden.

Eleven members of the Afghan National Army were killed, 16 others wounded in an early morning attack on a military academy in Kabul on Monday.

A spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry said, "The attack is against an army unit providing security for the academy and not the academy itself."

This is VOA news.

President Trump says the U.S. doesn't want to talk to the Afghan Taliban following a string of deadly attacks in Afghanistan.

He spoke during a working lunch with visiting members of the U.N. Security Council on Monday.

In Somalia, low rainfall for a fifth consecutive growing season has aid agencies sounding the alert. More than a third of the population is in need of food assistance, and that number could grow in coming months.

Correspondent Mohammed Yusuf has the story for VOA from Nairobi.

Below average rainfall in Somalia has aid agencies concerned about this year's harvest, expected to begin in April.

But aid officials say the situation has not reached the level it did at the same time last year when the United Nations warned of a potential famine.

Food production is expected to be below normal again this year in most of Somalia, according to a recent survey by Somalia's Food Security and Analysis Unit, a project managed by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Without continued large-scale assistance, the agency says food security is expected to deteriorate in the next five months.

The survey shows 300,000 children are in need of food aid, including 48,000 who are severely malnourished.

On Tuesday, the Somali government is expected to launch its humanitarian response and action plan for 2018.

Mohammed Yusuf, for VOA news, Nairobi.

A Somali military commander and three of his bodyguards were killed following an al-Shabab ambush near the village of Lug-habar in the southern part of the country, according to officials.

Government officials sent reinforcements to help the troops who came under attack.

Sources say the military convoy was escorting civilian vehicles transporting khat, a green narcotic leaf chewed by many people in Somalia. But regional officials are denying that report.

Syrians living under Temporary Protected Status in the United States will know by Tuesday whether the Trump administration is extending those protections or canceling them.

The decision, due by [June] January 30, will affect about 6,000 Syrians.

And the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Andrew McCabe is resigning.

He'd been criticized by President Trump as biased and possibly part of an effort or conspiracy to bring down the administration.

His critics have noted that his wife campaigned for a state Senate seat last year as a Democrat in Virginia.

He'd been with the FBI for 22 years.

You can find more on these and other late breaking and developing stories, from around the world, around the clock, at voanews.com and on the VOA news mobile app. I'm Jonathan Jones reporting from the world headquarters of the Voice of America in Washington.

That's the latest world news from VOA.