Confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus world-wide surpassed one million Thursday, a grim milestone for the pandemic as governments deploy increasingly stringent measures to battle its spread and a record 6.6 million U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week. The U.S. has 234,462 reported cases of the coronavirus, which has spread with ferocious speed across the world, driven initially by global travel. That figure is just under a quarter of the global total, and nearly twice that of the next-highest country,…