Xinhua Asia-Pacific news summary at 1600 GMT, Sept. 4

SEOUL -- South Korea's foreign reserves grew for the second straight month in August on the back of higher conversion value in non-U.S. dollar assets, central bank data showed Wednesday.

Foreign currency reserves increased by 2.41 billion U.S. dollars from a month earlier to 415.92 billion dollars at the end of August, after rising by 1.3 billion dollars in the previous month, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK