These names are illegal?

When fetching news I get 152 lines like the following:
    Warning: skipping group ".", invalid name (NULL component).
    Warning: skipping group "...", invalid name (NULL component).
    Warning: skipping group ".alt.california", invalid name (NULL component).
    Warning: skipping group ".alt.consciousness.4th-way", invalid name
(NULL component).
    Warning: skipping group ".alt.fan.karl-malden.nose", invalid name
(NULL component).
    Warning: skipping group ".alt.politics.liberalism", invalid name
(NULL component).
    Warning: skipping group ".alt.usenet.kooks", invalid name (NULL component).

I already added 'nodesc = 1' in my config. Before it was even worse.

When looking to the names that give an error I see that they start or
end with a dot, or that there are two dots after eachother in the
name. This is not allowed?

-- 
Cecil Westerhof