Boardroom meetings made easy! Huawei launches IdeaHub with HD video conferencing, interactive whiteboard

Cuba Libre is a staple cocktail, but Cuba’s signature rum — Havana Club — has been outlawed from liquor stores in the US. The ban dates back to the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. The Havana Club brand has been coowned by French company Pernod Ricard and the Cuban government since 1993. The recipe was crafted by the Arechabala family, which owned the brand since its inception in 1934. They were, however, forced out as the company was appropriated in a nationalisation drive. In 1994, the Arechabalas sold the recipe to erstwhile rival Bacardi, which was forced to shift base to Puerto Rico after the communist revolution. Since then, Bacardi has been selling its own version of the rum under the disputed trade name.

In July 2 015, the Pakistan government ruled that Canadian telecommunications firm Blackberry would have to shut down operations in the country as its data traf fic was routed through an enterprise server outside the ambit of state surveillance authorities. Blackberry uses strong encryption for protecting users’ data, preventing intelligence agencies from accessing messages and search logs. The ban was revoked in January 2016.

On June 3, 2015, the Delhi government banned Maggi instant noodles after tests found lead and monosodium glutamate beyond the permissible limit. Subsequently, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) imposed a nationwide ban on Maggi. The Bombay High Court eventually lifted the ban, paving the way for Maggi to return to the market in 2016.

In March 2014, Iran blocked WhatsApp saying its parent company Facebook’s CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg was an ‘American Zionist’. Incidentally, WhatsApp was co-founded by Jan Koum, an Ukranian Jewish refugee who moved to the US from Kiev in 1992. Tehran, which has been at loggerheads with US ally Israel, said that Jewish business interests that control tech companies were leveraging their influence to destabilise the theocratic regime.

In June 2016, days after his inauguration, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte pledged to ‘clean up’ Filipino society. He mandated the country’s police to crack down on drug trade and tackle homosexuality — a crime punishable with the death sentence. In January 2017, the government decreed a ban on Pornhub in an effort to stop child pornography. Ironically, the age of consent in the Philippines is 12 years. The decision to scrub pornographic content from the country’s networks came on the back of a 2016 Pornhub survey that found that Filipinos were the most avid viewers of X-rated content on its platform. On an average, Filipinos spent 12 minutes and 45 seconds per session – two minutes more than South Africans, who came second.