一周要闻 嫦娥四号成功着陆月球背面 2019年初股市下跌 苹果在华销量下跌

America's New Horizons spacecraft flew past Ultima Thule. Thule, which is part of the Kuiper belt of asteroids beyond the orbit of Neptune, is the most distant object visited by a machine.

It proved to be 33km long and snowman-shaped. Meanwhile, closer to home, China also achieved a first in space: a Chinese robot rover, Chang'E-4, landed on the "dark" side of the Moon invisible from Earth.

Following December's tumultuous trading, stockmarkets fell again at the start of 2019. Last year was the worst for markets since the financial crash.

The S&P 500 was down by 6% over the year, the FTSE 100 by 12%, the Nasdaq by 4%, and both the Nikkei and Euro Stoxx 50 by 14%. But it was China's stockmarkets that took the biggest hammering. The CSI 300 index fell by 25%.

The rout is in part a response to the tightening of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve. Last month the Fed raised its benchmark interest rate for the fourth time in 2018, to a range of between 2.25% and 2.5%, but suggested it would lift rates just twice this year.

Investors were further unnerved this week by Apple's warning that revenues in the last three months of 2018 were much weaker than it had forecast, because of lower sales in China and because people aren't upgrading their iPhones as frequently as before.

Tesla's share price took a knock, after it delivered fewer Model 3 cars in the fourth quarter than markets had expected. A Japanese court approved a request to keep Carlos Ghosn in custody while prosecutors continue to question him.

Mr Ghosn was sacked by Nissan as its chairman amid allegations that he misstated his pay. He was recently "re-arrested"-without ever being released-over new allegations of shifting a private investment loss onto Nissan's books.