³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

After this morning's phone-in show -- with a steady flow of callers again preoccupied with the rates hike controversy -- I headed off to record a few more interviews and work on other items for the Sunday programme, including an interview with Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams, who's just back from the and the US. In fact, he came to our studies directly from the airport. Mr Adams assured me, contrary to some media reports, that the US government has no issue with his decision to accept an invitation from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. You can hear that interview at 9.00 am on Sunday on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Ulster.

Between interviews and other work, I kept an eye on developments in what the shorthand journos at the Beeb are calling "the Pope story". With every update, the debacle surrounding a lecture by the Pope at the University of Regensburg on Tuesday threatened to become a massive . Right now, it has the potential to create as great a stir as the "" story. If, like me, you prefer primary sources to second-hand summaries, you'll find the full text of the Pope's lecture .

I'm still trying to work out how such a plainly contentious -- and curiously injudicious -- quotation made it into a papal speech. One of my news colleagues wondered if the pope had forgotten that he was pope for a moment -- after all, when he was a professor of theology, he could have flown all kinds of kites without his words being reported in the press. I ruled out that hypothesis in the belief that public statements by the pope are always carefully scrutinised by advisors, and they would surely remember that the pope was the pope. Wouldn't they?