Khmer Rouge

Cambodian director Rithy Panh will be in Los Angeles for the Oscars on Sunday. His film, “The Missing Picture,” is the first film from Cambodia ever to be nominated for an Academy Award. It’s Rithy Panh’s own personal memories of spending four years of his childhood living in a labor camp under the Khmer Rouge, watching as almost every member of his family died.

China’s getting serious about smoking — so serious it’s banning smoking in schools. And it’s imposing new restrictions as well. Meanwhile, in Austria, a former police officer is being compared to Robin Hood after he stole but said he planned to give it to the poor. Plus Denmark and Sweden consider a ban on circumcisions, in today’s Global Scan.

Adult-onset diabetes is increasingly common in Cambodia, yet many Cambodian diabetics don’t exhibit the usual risk factors. Could the country be experiencing a delayed effect of famine in the 1970s?

How do you make an instrument relevant that hasn’t been heard for hundreds of years? A French ethnomusicologist is recreating Cambodian instruments that vanished centuries ago.

Diabetes is very much a disease of poor countries — where healthcare is ill-prepared to deal with it. So in places like Cambodia, where diabetes is common, but undiagnosed, prevention is the name of the game. Surprisingly, that means a focus on getting people to eat brown rice.