Young people largely drove the early stages of Internet growth but in recent years the sharpest rise in Web use in developed nations has been amongst people aged 70 and over, experts said Monday.

“Older adults are the fastest growing demographic on the Internet,” said Professor Vicki Hanson of the School of Computing at Scotland’s University of Dundee on the opening day of a global World Wide Web conference in Madrid.

A global conference on the World Wide Web got under way in Spain Monday, 20 years after the invention of the global information medium that has changed the daily lives of people around the world.

British software genius Tim Berners-Lee, one of the founders of the system, will give a keynote talk on Wednesday “which will reflect on the last 20 years and look forward to the next 20 years” of the Web.

The United States said Monday that foreign barriers to telecommunications services and equipment are hindering its effort to compete globally.

In a review of Washington’s telecommunication agreements with countries, the US Trade Representative (USTR) cited issues with major suppliers as well as “high” fixed and mobile call termination rates, and transparency and regulatory independence as among key concerns.

Using a mobile phone abroad in Europe looks set to get cheaper.

European MPs have brokered an agreement that will see the tariffs for making calls, sending text messages and browsing the web fall from July 2009.

All the prices that have been agreed are regarded as a ceiling and are the maximum that operators will be allowed to charge for the different services.

Vodafone and Telefonica, which trades as O2 in the UK, have signed a massive network sharing deal to work together across Europe.

The two will share networks in Germany, Spain, Ireland and the UK. Talks are still going on to finalise a similar deal in the Czech Republic as well as looking at other areas of possible collaboration like transmission services.

Like something out of Heath Robinson, four Spanish teenagers equipped with nothing more than a £56 digital camera and a latex balloon captured stunning pictures of the Earth from the stratosphere.

As part of a school project, the budding scientists floated the camera-operated weather balloon 20 miles above the ground to capture the images.

Gerard Marull Paretas, Sergi Saballs Vila, Marta Gasgull Morcillo and Jaume Puigmiquel built the electronic sensor components from scratch and sent them to the edge of space using only a £43 latex balloon.

Spanish police have arrested 23 people, mainly Nigerians, who are suspected of running an email and letter scam that is thought to have defrauded over 150 people in the United States and Europe, the interior ministry said Tuesday.

The gang sent out 20,000 letters every day to potential victims, making them believe they had been left an inheritance of up to EUR 53 million from an unknown family member, it said in a statement.

Social networking website Bebo on Monday announced the launch of five new European-language versions, its first major expansion outside the English-speaking world.

Owned by America Online, Bebo claims to have more than 22 million users worldwide, almost half of them in Britain.

Until now Bebo was available only in English and in Polish, compared to the 40 language versions offered by market leader Facebook.

From Monday users will also be able to choose French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch.

A new manufacturing method for lithium-ion batteries could lead to smaller, lighter batteries that can be charged in just seconds.

Batteries that discharge just as quickly would be useful for electric and hybrid cars, where a quick jolt of charge is needed for acceleration.

The approach only requires simple changes to the production process of a well-known material.

The new research is reported in the scientific journal Nature.

Keeping in touch as a expat living abroad, or indeed as a frequent traveller on holiday or leisure is expensive these days, and in many ways more so as we all depend more on more on regular voice contact via our mobile phones. For many people with a holiday home abroad it doesn’t make sense to have a landline installed, so they are dependent on their mobile phones more and more.