Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist, I'm your host Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

The suggestion that video games are addictive is as old as video games themselves.

Now the World Health Organization recognizes the addiction as a mental disorder.

We look into how the business models of modern gaming may be feeding that need.

And 50 years ago the new nation of Bangladesh was born from East Pakistan after a grueling

9 month war.

Little has been known about the earliest stages of that conflict, but revealing images

by one daring photographer have just come to light.

First up though.

For the second year now the coronavirus pandemic has made its mark on the holiday season.

The Omicron variant is pushing out all others all over the world, from America to Western

Europe to South Africa.

Case numbers just keep hitting new records.

Yesterday more than 2,400 flights were cancelled.

As with so many industries there are just too many staff unable to work.

But a smaller fraction of all those millions of global cases are resulting in hospitalizations

or deaths.

And that may mean it hopefully means that the world is entering a new more manageable phase

of the pandemic.

What we know so far about Omicron is that it spreads incredibly rapidly, that's very clear

from all countries where the variant has already been found.

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