Defense Department calls for major STEM initiative as American math skills pose threat to national security

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BOSTON (AP) — Like a lot of high school students, Kevin Tran loves superheroes, though perhaps for different reasons than his classmates. “They’re all insanely smart. In their regular jobs they’re engineers, they’re scientists,” said Tran, 17. “And you can’t do any of those things without math.” Tran also loves math. This summer, he studied calculus five hours a day with other high schoolers in a program at Northeastern University. But Tran and his friends are not the norm. Many Americans joke about how bad they are at math, and already abysmal scores on standardized math tests are falling even...