What is the Good Friday agreement?

• Signed on 10 April 1998, put into force in on 2 December 1999.
• It is a major political development in the Northern Ireland Peace Process
• It is also called the Belfast agreement. Among many other provisions it ensures that political parties will use peaceful and democratic means.
• In a nutshell the Northern Ireland problem is this: many Protestant Unionists believe that Northern Ireland should remain part of the UK. Many Catholic Nationalists think it should join the Republic of Ireland.
• ‘The Troubles’ was a period of violence that began in 1969 when the two opposing groups marched in protest. The agreement is largely seen as the endpoint of The Troubles.
• On 10 March 2009, the BBC reported that a policeman was shot dead just 48 hours after the murders of two soldiers.
• A Dublin-based newspaper received a call from a group calling itself the "Real IRA". It claimed to have carried out the attacks on the Army soldiers.
  
  Sources:
  BBC news, Reuters and Wikipedia