News in Brief: A National Roundup

An assessment of the "generation gap" in American politics has found that young people are more conservative than their elders on some prominent social issues.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that 69 percent of 15- to 18-year-olds, for example, support school prayer. Among adults ages 27 to 59, 59 percent supported allowing prayer at school activities.

The study, released last month, was based on interviews conducted last year with about 1,250 people ages 15 to 92 as part of the Public Agendas and Citizen Engagement Survey of the...