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In yet another distressing milestone amid the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 1 million people globally have now died of the virus, according to a database kept by Johns Hopkins.The planet passed the milestone Monday, about nine months after the new disease was first identified in Wuhan, China.Around the world, more than 33 million people are confirmed to have contracted the virus. The planet reached the 1 million deaths threshold just days after the United States recorded its 200,000th death linked to the virus ¡ª a rate that continues to lead the world. The U.S. also leads all other countries with more than 7 million confirmed cases of COVID-19.With 142,000 fatalities, Brazil is the only other country with more than 100,000 COVID-19 deaths. Other countries with high death tolls include India (about 96,000), Mexico (76,077) and the United Kingdom (42,077).The U.S., India (about 6 million), Brazil (about 5 million) and Russia (about 1 million) lead the world with the most confirmed cases of the virus.Worldwide, COVID-19 is spreading at the highest rates since the pandemic began. On Thursday alone, about 361,000 people were confirmed to have contracted the virus ¡ª by far the most daily confirmed cases on record.Deaths have largely held consistent since the summer months.Public health officials urge people around the world to continue to wear masks, avoid crowds, stay six feet apart from others and opt for outdoor activities over indoor activities ahead of the winter months. With winter approaching in the northern hemisphere, officials are bracing for a spike in cases as people move indoors, where the virus is more likely to spread. 1662

It may not be as oft-quoted as the First Amendment or as contested as the Second Amendment, but the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution plays a critical role in supporting some of our closest-held notions of American freedom and equality.For one, it clearly states that American citizenship is a birthright for all people who are born on American soil -- something that President Donald Trump has announced he wants to end. Not only would this unravel 150 years of American law, it would loosen a significant cornerstone of the Constitution's interpretation of American identity.In order to better understand this part of the 14th Amendment, we asked two experts in constitutional and immigration law to walk us through the first section. The amendment has five sections, but we will only be dealing with the first, which contains the Citizenship Clause and three other related clauses.But first, some historyThe 14th Amendment is known as a Reconstruction amendment, because it was added to the Constitution after the Civil War in 1868. That places it at an important historical crossroads, when lingering wounds of divisiveness and animosity still plagued the nation and the reality of a post-slavery America begged contentious racial and social questions."Thomas Jefferson said men were created equal, but the original Constitution betrayed that promise by allowing for slavery," says Jeffrey Rosen. "The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were designed to enshrine Lincoln's promise of a new America."However, as so often is the case, this reaffirmed American ideal fell short of reality. Rosen notes that issues of civil rights and equal treatment continued to be denied to African Americans, LGBT people and other citizens for more than a century after the amendment's ratification.And Erika Lee points out that Native Americans weren't even allowed to become citizens until 1925."Even as [these amendments] were written, obviously there were major built-in inequalities and maybe at the time weren't intended to apply to everyone," Lee says.Why was citizenship by birthright such an important concept?"Citizenship was a central question left open by the original Constitution," says Rosen. "At the time it was written, the Constitution assumed citizenship, but it didn't provide any rules for it. In the infamous Dred Scott decision, the Chief Justice said African Americans can't be citizens of the US and 'had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.'"The US Supreme Court's ruling in the Dred Scott case, named for a slave who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom, has since been widely condemned.READ MORE: Scott v. Sandford"The 14th Amendment was designed to overturn this decision and define citizenship once and for all, and it was based on birthright," Rosen says. "It is really important that it's a vision of citizenship based on land rather than blood. It is an idea that anyone can be an American if they commit themselves to our Constitutional values."What does it mean to be "subject to the jurisdiction thereof?"According to Rosen, this is one of the greatest questions of citizenship. There are two clear examples of people not subject to the jurisdictions of the United States: diplomats and their children, and -- at the time of the 14th Amendment -- Native Americans, who were not recognized as part of the American populace."With those two exceptions, everyone who was physically present in the United States was thought to be under its jurisdiction," Rosen says. "There are numerous Supreme Court cases that reaffirm that understanding, and almost as importantly, there are lots of congressional statutes that assume birthright citizenship."Some scholars, like John Eastman of the Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, have argued that children of illegal immigrants are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the US and thus should not be considered citizens under the Constitution.But Rosen says this is a minority view among constitutional scholars of all political backgrounds."While the Supreme Court has not explicitly ruled [on the instance of children of illegal immigrants], Congress has passed all kinds of laws presuming their citizenship," Rosen says.What is the connection between birthright citizenship and immigration?In 1898, 30 years after the 14th Amendment was adopted, the Supreme Court reached a defining decision in a case known as the United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Lee explains that Wong Kim Ark was the American-born son of Chinese immigrants."Asian immigrants were the first immigrants to the US that couldn't be considered white," Lee says. "So they are treated differently. They are taxed differently, they are stripped of many rights. In the 1880s, they are excluded from immigration and barred from citizenship."READ MORE: The United States v. Wong Kim ArkSo, the main question of the case was, could a person born in America be a citizen in a place where his parents could not be as well? The Supreme Court decided yes, and the case remains the first defining legal decision made under the banner of birthright citizenship."[The Supreme Court's decision] said that the right of citizenship is not a matter of inheritance, that it never descends from generation to generation, it is related to where you're born," Lee says. "It's about the power of place. That has been a very expansive, and at the time, a corrective measure to a more exclusionary definition both legally as well as culturally as to what an American is."Why must it be stated that the privileges of citizenship need to be protected?Before the Civil War, states didn't necessarily have to follow the provisions stated in the Bill of Rights; only Congress had to. The 14th Amendment changed that."This second sentence of the Amendment means that states have to respect the Bill of Rights as well as basic civil rights and the rights that come along with citizenship," Rosen says. "The idea was that there were rights that were so basic; so integral to citizenship that they could not be narrowed by the states."Despite the promises and protections of citizenship, Lee says it is abundantly clear that different racial groups were, and often are, seen as unable or unworthy to function as true American citizens. After all, basic rights of citizenship, like suffrage and equal treatment, were denied certain racial groups for a hundred years after the 14th Amendment."The idea of a law applying to 'all people' seems to be clear. But in reality, the debate and the laws and practices that get established are very much based on a hierarchy of, well sure, all persons, but some are more fit and some are more deserving than others," she says.Throughout history, Asian immigrants, Mexican immigrants, Muslim immigrants and their children, to name a few, have had unspoken cultural caveats applied to their ability to be Americans."For Asian immigrants, the racial argument at the time was that 'It didn't matter whether one were born in the US or not, Asians as a race, are unassimilable. They are diametrically opposite from us Americans,'" Lee says."That was the argument that was used to intern Japanese citizens. It was the denial of citizenship in favor of race: 'The ability to become American, the ability to assimilate, they just didn't have it.'"Why was it important to legalize rights for non-citizens?So far, we've covered the first clause, the Citizenship Clause, and the second, the Privileges and Immunities Clause. These both deal with American citizens.The final two clauses, the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection clause, are a little different, and deal with the rights of all people in the United States.Eagle-eyed Constitution readers will notice that the 14th Amendment contains a "due process" clause very similar to the Fifth Amendment. This, says Rosen, was a technical addition to ensure the Fifth Amendment wasn't theoretically narrowed down to protect only American citizens."The 14th Amendment distinguishes between the privileges of citizenship and the privileges of all people," Rosen says. "The framers [of the amendment] thought there were certain rights that were so important that they should be extended to all persons, and in order to specify that they needed a new 'due process' clause."What does it mean to have 'equal protection of the laws'?"At the time following the Civil War, at its core, it meant all persons had the right to be protected by the police, that the laws of the country should protect all people," Rosen says. "In the 20th century, more broader questions were litigated under the 14th Amendment, like Brown v. Board of Education -- whether segregation was constitutional. Cases involving the internment of Japanese citizens, case from the marriage equality decisions, even Roe vs. Wade have strains of equal protection language and invoke due process law."READ MORE: Brown v. Board of EducationAnother interesting case that speaks directly to the immigration side of the 14th Amendment debate is the 1982 case of Plyler v. Doe, in which the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for the state of Texas to deny funding for undocumented immigrant children.READ MORE: Plyler v. DoeWhy are we talking about all this right now?This week,?Trump vowed to end the right to citizenship for the children of non-citizens and unauthorized immigrants born on US soil.But his interest in repealing birthright citizenship isn't a new idea. Lee says for the last 30 years or so, there have been several overtures by the political right to explore "citizenship reform," a timeline that she says aligns with the ascendancy of modern American conservatism.Lee fears if the current push to end birthright citizenship is successful, it could have wider implications than most people assume. People from other countries who are here legally on work or student visas, for instance, could have children who do not legally belong to the only country they know."There have been attempts since the 1990s to break away birthright citizenship, or narrow it down, and it did not seem that they would have a chance at succeeding until now," she says."To me this not only reflects the ascendancy of an extreme right position but also a return to a very narrow and exclusionary definition of Americanness." 10356

It's looking like at least one? ¡ª if not more ¡ª American tech giants may soon find themselves worth more than trillion dollars. That's a lot of zeroes. A dozen in fact.Apple is in the lead right now. Thanks to strong demand for its new iPhones, the company now has a market value of about 0 billion.The stock only needs to go up another 10% for Apple to top trillion.But even if Apple gets to the trillion dollar mark first, it may soon have company. Apple rival Alphabet -- aka Google -- has a market cap just shy of 0 billion.Amazon and Microsoft are also nipping at the heels of Apple and Google. Both of the Seattle-based tech titans are worth more than 0 billion.And these two companies seem to have more momentum than Apple and Google, whose stocks are up about 6% this year.In fact, GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives wrote in a report Monday that he thinks Amazon could get to a trillion dollar valuation within 12 to 18 months.Amazon's stock has soared 30% this year thanks to impressive growth in its core e-commerce business as well as gains from last year's acquisition of Whole Foods and strength in its AWS cloud division.Microsoft has also benefited from growth in its cloud business. The stock is up 11% this year and is not far from a record high.If the four biggest tech companies all hit the trillion dollar milestone relatively soon, they eventually may wind up being joined by a few other tech giants -- and a much older school conglomerate as well.Facebook, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and Chinese gaming and social networking kingpin Tencent are all worth about half a trillion dollars. So is Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.There's also the possibility that none of these tech companies will be the first to top the magical trillion dollar level.That's because oil giant Saudi Aramco is hoping to go public sometime this year -- and it is expected to be valued somewhere between .5 trillion and trillion. 1968

In post-Brexit Britain, trips to the European Union will get a little more expensive for millions of Brits in search of a continental break.The European Commission confirmed on Friday that UK travelers will be required fill out an online form and cough up €7 (.90) for visa-free travel, which will be valid for three years.Natasha Bertaud, a spokeswoman for the commission's President Jean-Claude Juncker, likened the "simple form" to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) scheme used by the United States -- which requires travelers to pay to apply for permission to enter the country.She also pointed out that the EU's version, called ETIAS, will be "way cheaper."But this all comes with a major caveat. If the UK crashes out of the EU with no agreement in place, Brits will be required to get a visa to travel to the EU, a commission spokeswoman told Reuters on Friday.ETIAS, which is expected to come into force in 2021, will apply to countries outside the EU whose citizens can currently travel in Europe visa free. There are currently 61 such countries, including the United States, Israel and Singapore.It will cover the so-called Schengen group of 26 European countries that share largely open land borders.The electronic visa waiver system was conceived to "identify any security or irregular migratory risks posed by visa-exempt visitors traveling to the Schengen area while at the same time facilitate crossing frontiers for the vast majority of travelers who do not pose such risks,"?according to the commission. 1554

Iranian investigators have located the site of Sunday's plane crash that killed all 65 people on board, state TV reported Monday.Bad weather had thwarted a recovery mission on Sunday, when a rescue helicopter was forced to turn back.It was not immediately clear if search and rescue teams were able to reach the crash site on Monday.  347

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