In the last days the newest GNS release (2008-01-28) has been integrated into GeoNames. The GNS dataset is maintained by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, a US department of defense support agency.
During this load we have updated 73’000 and inserted 44’000 new toponyms. We have only updated records that have not been modified by GeoNames users or other sources. With the next load we plan to merge the data on attribute level and compare the NGA change history with the GeoNames change history and update attributes that have not been touched. There are usually not many conflicts with other modifications or sources as the NGA has a completely different focus. The countries with the highest number of modifications or inserts in this release are Iran, Taiwan and Peru. Detailed numbers are in this forum posting.
GeoNames Blog 