Xinhua Asia-Pacific news summary at 1600 GMT, March 28

TOKYO -- Japanese parliament enacted on Wednesday a record-high 97.71 trillion yen (926 billion U.S. dollars) budget for fiscal 2018 with soaring social security costs and military spending.

Japan's House of Councillors approved the budget plan Wednesday after it was greenlighted by the House of Representatives on Feb. 28. (Japan-Budget)

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SYDNEY -- A groundbreaking new cancer drug with the power to shrink tumours could soon provide an alternative to chemotherapy.

Known as PENAO, the drug developed by a company called Cystemix at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, has shown extremely promising results in earlier testing. (Australia-Cancer Drug)

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NEW DELHI -- The Indian government has served a notice to leading social networking site Facebook over alleged leak of data of millions of users.

"The notice was served on Facebook by India's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. The Ministry has given Facebook time till April 7 to file its response on the issue," sources said Wednesday. (India-Facebook)

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KUALA LUMPUR -- The Malaysian parliament on Wednesday passed a motion to redraw the electoral map, as both the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition and the opposition parties are gearing up to contest the 222 seats nationwide in a general election expected to take place in the next few weeks.

The motion was passed in a 129-80 vote during a heated parliament session which saw opposition lawmakers stand up in succession to refuse the bill to be tabled for a vote. (Malaysia-Election) Enditem