Here is a rather pathetic question. In a <a href="http://gowers.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/icm2010-ngo-laudatio/#comment-9720">comment</a> on Tim Gower's weblog, I tentatively stated that the fundamental lemma was necessary for the <a href="http://www.mathunion.org/ICM/ICM2006.2/Main/icm2006.2.0473.0500.ocr.pdf">work of Skinner and Urban</a> relating ranks of Selmer groups of elliptic curves to the vanishing of their $p$-adic $L$-functions. Now, I believe it is correct that some endoscopic version of transfer from a unitary group to a general linear group is necessary for the construction of their $\Lambda$-adic representations. However, having a really poor understanding of the actual techniques, I don't know which version is crucial. That is to say, it's entirely likely that some earlier special case is sufficient for Skinner-Urban. Could I trouble some expert to give a brief outline of the situation? 

The pathetic part of this is that the journalist I mentioned in the comment will call in about 4 hours, so it would be nice to know before that. Of course I shouldn't have agreed to speak about something I know so little about, but it was hard to refuse under the circumstances. Oh, in case you're worried that I'm going to discuss Skinner-Urban with the fellow, don't. I just want to bone up on the background.

-----------------------------

Added: 

For people who like the idea of linguistic diversity in mathematics, I am including a link to a <a href="http://math.postech.ac.kr/~minhyong/kmsfields.pdf">report </a> written (with Sugwoo Shin) for the Korean Mathematical Society that expands on the comment to the journalist.