Returning to soaring gas prices... Households in Europe are set to pay an average of 54% more for energy than they did two years ago, due to soaring natural gas and power prices across the region, according to Bank of America, as reported by Bloomberg.

The average residential consumer will spend €1,850 euros on energy this year, up from €1,200 in 2020, analysts at the bank said in a research note. The biggest increases will be in Italy and the UK, where bills will jump by about €950.

Europe’s energy crisis is hitting households, sending bills rocketing and pushing many into fuel poverty. Policymakers are under pressure to find ways to shield consumers while not sending energy suppliers into bankruptcy. Of the European Union’s 27 members, 20 have acted to soften the blow for the most vulnerable consumers and households - most effectively via tax cuts, according to the European Commission.

“We see a return to early-2021 price levels as unlikely in 2022,” wrote the analysts, including Harry Wyburd and Karen Kostanian. Even if this were to occur, “it would likely be too late to avert significant cost increases which have already been locked in via hedging.”

On Wall Street, US stocks are mixed after the opening bell.

• Dow Jones up 40 points, or 0.1%, at 36,840
• S&P 5 flat at 4,792
• Nasdaq down 66 points, or 0.4%, at 15,556

Michael Pearce, senior US economist at Capital Economics, has looked at the US jobs figures in detail, and predicts that the picture will darken in January because of the spread of Omicron.

The stronger 807,000 gain in the ADP measure of private payrolls in December suggests some upside risk to our estimate that the official figures released on Friday rose by a more modest 350,000. Regardless of how strong the December figures are, however, the widespread absenteeism caused by the rapid spread of the Omicron variant means the official non-farm payroll employment tally could fall outright in January.

The breakdown suggests that the acceleration in private payrolls to 807,000 in December, from 505,000, was widespread. The manufacturing sector added 74,000 jobs, construction payrolls rose by 62,000, while services employment increased by 669,000, including a 246,000 rise in leisure and hospitality payrolls. While that broad-based strength is consistent with the continued downward trend in jobless claims over recent weeks, the continued strength of leisure and hospitality payrolls is a little difficult to square with the high-frequency evidence that suggests activity dropped back last month.

The most recent nationwide surge in Omicron cases has triggered widespread cancellations and closures, as already short-staffed businesses are hit with a wave of staff calling in sick. Most of those absentees will still be paid and therefore counted as employed this month. But a significant minority who do not have access to paid sick leave will not, potentially knocking hundreds of thousands off the official non-farm payrolls tally in January. Because the ADP survey counts anyone on the payroll as employed, however, whether they are paid or not, a big discrepancy could emerge between the two employment measures.

Fossil fuel companies and firms that work closely with them are among the biggest spenders on ads designed to look like Google search results, in what campaigners say is an example of “endemic greenwashing,” writes Niamh McIntyre, one of our data journalists.

The Guardian analysed ads served on Google search results for 78 climate-related terms, in collaboration with InfluenceMap, a thinktank that tracks the lobbying efforts of polluting industries.

The results show that over one in five ads seen in the study – more than 1,600 in total – were placed by companies with significant interests in fossil fuels.

Sony has revealed plans to start an electric car company, making it the latest electronics manufacturer to target the automotive sector, reports my colleague Jasper Jolly.

The Japanese tech firm is “exploring a commercial launch” of electric vehicles, and the new company, Sony Mobility Inc, will launch this spring, its chairman and president, Kenichiro Yoshida, told a news conference before the Consumer Electronics Show in the US.

Yoshida on Wednesday presented a prototype sport utility vehicle, the Vision-S 02, which uses the same electric vehicle platform as the previously announced Vision-S 01 coupe that began testing on public roads in Europe from December 2020.

Inflation in Italy has gone up, to the highest rate since August 2008.

According to Istat preliminary data, the headline measure edged up to 3.9% year-on-year from 3.7% in November. Core inflation, stripping out volatile energy and fresh food, increased to 1.5% from 1.3% in November.

After an average 0.2% contraction in 2020, inflation went up by 1.9% in 2021, the highest annual rate since 2012 when it had reached 3%.

ING economist Paolo Pizzoli said:

Energy prices were the undisputed inflation driver over 2021 and the lagged effects of these mean we shouldn’t expect to see a deceleration in headline inflation before the second quarter of this year.

All of Europe’s main stock indices are now in positive territory, but investors appear cautious after the chunky gains seen in the last couple of days that lifted the pan-European Euro Stoxx 600 index to record highs over two consecutive days.

The FTSE 100 index in London is back at levels last seen just before the Covid-19 pandemic started, in February 2020.

After the final eurozone private sector surveys this morning, we will get ADP job numbers for the US at lunchtime, followed by the final readings for the US private sector surveys, and the Federal Reserve minutes of the last policy meeting, out at 7pm GMT.

• UK’s FTSE 100 up 16 points, or 0.2%, at 7,521
• Germany’s Dax up 102 points, or 0.6%, at 16,255
• France’s CAC up 40 points, or 0.55%, at 7,357
• Italy’s FTSE MiB up 114 points, or 0.4%, at 28,068

And here’s a timeline: five key moments from the trial that shook Silicon Valley, from our west coast tech reporter Kari Paul.

Here is our profile of Elizabeth Holmes, once regarded as the next Steve Jobs. Our wealth correspondent Rupert Neate writes:

Just six years ago Forbes magazine declared her the “the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire” and the “next Steve Jobs”. Now, Elizabeth Holmes, 37, founder of the collapsed blood testing company Theranos, is facing decades in prison after being found guilty of conspiring to defraud her investors out of billions.

Holmes, a university dropout with no medical training, had fooled regulators and some of the world’s richest people, including Rupert Murdoch, Henry Kissinger and Larry Ellison, into believing she had figured out a way to test for a range of health conditions with just a pinprick of blood.

But the tests did not work, and the company was accused of often faking the results. One patient testified that a blood test revealed they were miscarrying when they were pregnant; another said they were given false-positive results for HIV.

Our west coast technology reporter Kari Paul, for Guardian US, has looked at the wider ramifications of the Elizabeth Holmes trial.

The founder of the now-defunct US blood testing firm Theranos was found guilty on Monday of fraud, concluding a high-profile trial that captivated Silicon Valley and chronicled the company’s missteps.

Experts say the fraud charges could open up the tech industry to further scrutiny, making startups tread more carefully.

The former CEO’s loss marks a milestone for Silicon Valley – an industry that has for years evaded accountability in its pervasive culture of “fake it till you make it” that encourages founders to make big promises, often with little proof.

“Silicon Valley has thus far been famously been resistant to much prosecutorial activity, because its business model assumes you are going to take an aggressive, optimistic view of your product or service to attract investors,” said Jack Sharman, a white-collar defense lawyer at Lightfoot, a law firm in Alabama.

“And if that product or service succeeds, you’re not a fraudster, you’re a visionary,” he added.

Jo ventured into the City, London’s financial district, on Tuesday, when many people returned to work after the festive break. This is what she found:

As the bells chimed one o’clock in the City of London on Tuesday, the typical lunchtime exodus from the offices in the capital’s financial district was barely a trickle.

A handful of workers left the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street on their lunch breaks, but most of the scattering of people were dressed for a day shopping or sightseeing rather than sitting behind their desks.

In normal times, Tuesday would have marked the first day back in the workplace after the Christmas festivities for millions of the nation’s office-based employees. Despite data suggesting that the Omicron Covid-19 variant is less severe than other versions of the virus, coupled with figures indicating that cases in the capital have stabilised, staff at most large offices appeared to be continuing to work from home.

The travel industry is calling on UK ministers to remove all remaining Covid testing requirements for international travellers.

It argues that they are damaging the travel sector and will not affect the spread of the Omicron variant, reports my colleague Joanna Partridge.

Manchester Airports Group (MAG) and the trade body Airlines UK said in a joint statement that research they commissioned into travel restrictions supported the position that the removal of travel testing requirements would not affect overall cases rates and hospitalisations in the UK.

The two organisations said the research showed that domestic rather than international restrictions would be the only way to reduce Omicron’s spread within the country.

France, Europe’s second-biggest economy, fared better.

Services growth weakened slightly from November but was the second-quickest since June. The services business activity index fell to 57.0 from 57.4 in November, still indicative of a sharp expansion.

The composite index, which comprises manufacturing and services, was at 55.8 in December, down slightly from November’s 56.1 but still pointing to strong growth in France’s private sector.

The recovery in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, stalled in December.

A slightly faster rise in manufacturing output during the month was offset by a decline in services activity caused by a resurgence in the pandemic and renewed virus containment measures.

The services business activity index moved below the 50 no-change mark to 48.7 in December, from 52.7 in November, pointing to a decline in the sector, albeit at a more moderate rate than those seen during the first ad second waves of the pandemic.

Firms are under considerable pressure to raise their prices, due to higher energy, staff, raw material and transport costs. The rate of input price inflation was the second-fastest on record, behind that recorded in November. The survey stretches back to mid-1997.

Countries ranked by Composite PMI:

• Ireland 56.5 nine-month low
• France 55.8 (flash: 55.6) two-month low
• Spain 55.4 8-month low Italy 54.7 two-month low
• Germany 49.9 (flash: 50.0) 18-month low

The German carmaker BMW achieved record sales of more than 2.2m vehicles from its BMW brand in 2021, outstripping 2019 sales despite the global chip shortage.

Sales chief Pieter Nota revealed the record-breaking sales figure in an interview, and BMW confirmed it to Reuters later.

The BMW group, including the Mini and Rolls-Royce brands, “achieved solid sales growth” last year, Nota said.

We expect further profitable growth into 2022.

The carmaker is due to report full annual results next week.

Kantar has also dug into our Christmas spending habits, and reports that sales of mince pies jumped 7% year-on-year, while Christmas chocolate sales rose 8%.

There was also a boom in plant-based foods, as more people embrace veganism. But sprouts, a traditional festive favourite, slipped in popularity.

Kantar’s Fraser McKevitt says:

It looks like people came prepared for indulgent celebrations and indigestion remedy sales also rose by 8%. More bitter was the decline in sprout sales, which dipped by 3%, but the traditional green hasn’t fallen out of favour just yet as almost half of all households in Britain served them up in December.

We saw new dietary trends coming through in the data and plant-based foods proved particularly popular this year, even before Veganuary gets underway. Chilled vegetarian ranges increased sales by 6% while their frozen equivalents were boosted by 4%.

The busiest shopping day of the year was 23 December, Kantar reports, with UK supermarkets seeing their busiest month since the start of the pandemic.

FraserMcKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at its Worldpanel Division, says:

Food and drink spend peaked two days before Christmas. The real driver of bumper sales on 23 December wasn’t online though, as we saw the largest number of in-store visits since March 2020 this month.

Shoppers clearly trusted that supermarkets shelves would remain well stocked, and they didn’t feel the need to rush out much earlier to get their favourite festive treats.