You may recall our discussions on and off last year about the official dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles into 2 new seperate political entities, namely the states of Curacao and Sint Maarten, and the annexation of the remaining 3 islands, Bonaire, Saba and St Eustatius, into the Kingdom of the Netherlands proper, specifically as municipalities of the Dutch Province of North Holland. The dissolution was supposed to have taken place on 15 December 2008. (Aruba already broke away from the Netherlands Antilles Federation in 1986 and has since been a seperate entity with its own Aruba Guilders currency and postage stamps.)
Of course, no newspaper ever bothers to report about tiny islands like these. I suddenly remembered them and the havoc the dissolution would have caused to my country-count efforts, for I might be obliged to visit each of the 5 islands if the federation is dissolved - I had already visited Curacao and Sint Maarten in 2007 but had previously omitted the other three smaller ones. It would have been an expensive venture to attempt to return to the vicinity just to do the three tiny isles.
I wikipediaed "Netherlands Antilles" and guess what I discovered? According to that entry (and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Netherlands_Antilles ), the dissolution of the Federation has been postponed to a future, indefinite date, due to disagreements between various parties involved in the talks.
So, for the time being, those country-collectors among you can sleep a little more soundly as the total number of political entities has stayed constant for the time being!
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