Archbishop Vincent Nichols said MySpace and Facebook led young people to seek "transient" friendships, with quantity becoming more important than quality.

He said a key factor in suicide among young people was the trauma caused when such loose relationships collapsed.

"Friendship is not a commodity," he told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

He added: "Friendship is something that is hard work and enduring when it's right".

GEORGE GALLOWAY has revealed that he was a victim of sex abuse as a child.

In today's Record, the controversial MP talks for the first time about his ordeal at the hands of a twisted school janitor - and backs Government plans to vet anyone whose work brings them into contact with children.

He also slams opponents who insist that they won't pay the vetting charge to prove they are not paedophiles. Galloway reveals that his abuser was in a position of trust.

And he says that if vetting laws had been in place, the pervert would not have had access to any child.

Galloway said: "I'm not saying the abuse which happened has ruined my life or anything.

"But it did affect my life, and not in a good way and neither in ways I care to rehearse before you.

"Every time a Soham murderer or a Dunblane Thomas Hamilton emerges, I die a little inside as I remember that dirty old man in Dundee driven by the same perverted interest in sexually attacking kids.

"And the fact that I did not speak up - I told no one of what happened to me.

"All I feel is ashamed, though I was the victim and he the aggressive predator."

The MP thinks his abuser is now dead.

But in typical Galloway fashion, he adds: "I hope he's roasting in the hell fires."

Backing the vetting proposals, Galloway concludes: "If just one child is spared the horrors of sexual abuse by someone they had a reason to trust, then it would be worth it.

"Trust me. I know."

George Galloway revealed he was abused when he was 11, as he backed a scheme to vet everyone who works with children which comes into effect in October.

It has been opposed by leading authors who go into schools, including Philip Pullman, who said the idea was "ludicrous and insulting".

However, writing in the Daily Record, Mr Galloway said the checks would be worth it if they spared a child the "horrors" of sexual abuse.

Referring to child killer Ian Huntley and the Dunblane Primary massacre, he wrote: "Every time a Soham murderer or a Dunblane Thomas Hamilton emerges, I die a little inside as I remember that dirty old man driven by the same perverted interest in sexually attacking kids."

Mr Galloway said he had not even revealed the abuse to his wives.

"All I feel is ashamed, though I was the child victim and he the aggressive predator."

The Ulster University team said having daughters in a family made people more open and willing to discuss feelings.

They said the influence of girls was particularly important after distressing family events such as marital break-ups.

"I think these findings could be used by people offering support to families and children during distressing times.

"We may have to think carefully about the way we deal with families with lots of boys."

Geri Burnikell, co-ordinator of the charity Support Line, which offers counselling to young people and families, said: "This is very interesting and certainly chimes with our experiences.

"Boys tend to internalise problems and in families where there are lots of sons.

"I can see that can cause problems.

"I think the most important thing in these circumstances is to give people someone independent to talk to outside the immediate family unit."

Rebecca Wood of the Alzheimer's Research Trust agreed, saying: "This research suggests that the natural decline of some of our mental abilities as we age starts much earlier than some of us might expect - in our 20s and 30s.

"Understanding more about how healthy brains decline could help us understand what goes wrong in serious diseases like Alzheimer's.

"Alzheimer's is not a natural part of getting old; it is a physical disease that kills brain cells, affecting tens of thousands of under 65s too.

"Much more research is urgently needed if we are to offer hope to the 700,000 people in the UK who live with dementia, a currently incurable condition."

It was launched as a wonder drug. A tablet to take the pain out of kicking the killer weed.

Since it appeared on the market two years ago in the UK, almost 400,000 prescriptions for Champix have been written.

Across the world, that figure is currently sitting at nine million.

Champix, or varenicline, to give it its clinical name, was first licensed here in December 2006.

It mimics the effects of nicotine on the body so it both reduces the urge to smoke and relieves withdrawal symptoms.

In clinical trials, it proved more effective than alternative remedies at getting people to quit.

For its makers - Pfizer - Champix has been a huge success.

In its first full year on the market, the drug brought in a staggering $883m for the company.

But about a year ago, I became aware of stories emerging in the media in which people who had taken Champix were said to have suffered severe depression.

Timothy Wade Pinkston threatened to go to Washington and shoot Bush in August while he was committed to the psychiatric unit of St. Joseph's Hospital. According to an affidavit, he repeated the threat to Secret Service agents, saying he didn't like the president's foreign policy or his handling of the war in Iraq.

Pinkston told a federal judge in Tampa on Wednesday that he is HIV-positive and bipolar and has a substance abuse problem. He said he'd been taking drugs and drinking when he made the threat and didn't know what he was saying.

He was previously charged with threatening the president in 1991 and also sent threatening letters to the governor of Georgia.

Gangs targeting vulnerable people with letters about bogus competitions are using legal teams to stay ahead of the law, the BBC has learned.

In what has become a multi-billion pound industry, risk assessors are also being employed by scammers, according to the Office of Fair Trading

The watchdog has told the BBC that new consumer protection laws can do little to stop the actions.

The scams, which target millions of people, earn about £3.5bn a year.

"As soon as he'd made contact with them he was totally in their grip," she said.

"He totally gave up on life. Every morning he waited for the post to arrive or for a courier to arrive with the money so he wasted his whole day. It almost because an obsession. It was all he could think about."

"They were tenacious criminals who wouldn't give up until they'd exhausted all his funds."

Trans fats are chemically altered vegetable oils. They are produced artificially in a process called hydrogenation which turns liquid oil into solid fat.

Trans fats can be found in thousands of processed foods from sweets and biscuits to ready meals. They are used because they are cheap, add bulk to products, have a neutral flavour and give products a long shelf life. They have no nutritional value.

Are trans fats bad for you?

Artificial food colours are set to be removed from hundreds of products after a team of university researchers warned they were doing as much damage to children's brains as lead in petrol.

Academics at Southampton University, who carried out an official study into seven additives for the Food Standards Agency (FSA), said children's intelligence was being significantly damaged by E-numbers. After receiving the advice last month, officials at the FSA have advised their directors to call for the food industry to remove six additives named in the study by the end of next year.

The advice, which will be put before the FSA board next week, would be voluntary. However, manufacturers would be expected by the regulator to remove the additives, replacing them with natural alternatives if possible. Some sweetmakers have unilaterally agreed to remove the suspect colours following the latest scientific evidence.

Researchers have linked E-numbers to behavioural problems since the 1970s but the debate has intensified after the Southampton study, published last September, found that seven additives such as sunset yellow (E110) and tartrazine (E102) were causing temper tantrums among normal children.

The FSA, which funded the £750,000 study, was criticised by health groups for failing to ban the additives after taking the advice of the Committee on Toxicology, which said they had only a moderate effect on some children.

Instead, the FSA said it would work with manufacturers to see if they would remove the additives and awaited an assessment of its research by the European Food Safety Agency (Efsa).

While conceding there was "limited" evidence that the additives caused the children problems, Efsa decided the study was not a good enough reason to change the safe limits of the E-numbers.

Apparently stung by the failure to act, Professor Jim Stevenson, who led the Southampton study, wrote to the FSA demanding immediate action.

His letter dated 20 March is included in the bundle of documents forwarded to the board, which were published yesterday.

In an 18-page rebuttal of criticism of his study, Professor Stevenson and three colleagues wrote: "The position in relation to AFCs [Artificial Food Colours] is analogous to the state of knowledge about lead and IQ that was being evaluated in the early 1980s ... Needleman [a researcher] found the difference in IQ between high and low lead groups was 5.5 IQ points ... This is very close to the sizes obtained in our study of food additives."

Politicians finally phased out leaded petrol from all petrol stations in 2000, almost two decades after researchers warned that the toxin was stunting the development of young brains.

Professor Stevenson's team warned: "We would argue that the findings from our own study and the previous research overviewed by the Efsa would lead to the same conclusion as was reached by Professor Sir Michael Rutter in relation to lead in 1983. Namely that for food colours there is 'justification for action now'."

They advised that there be more research on a seventh additive they studied, the preservative sodium benzoate, which stops mould growing in fizzy drinks such as Diet Coke.

The FSA's board, which meets on Thursday, will make a recommendation to ministers on what to do about additives.

Officials have warned that some products such as mushy peas, tinned strawberries and Battenberg cake might not be able to be reformulated in time and might have to be withdrawn from the shelves.