If you use the news reading capability in Pine to talk to a NNTP
    server, then you need to have a NEWSRC. file in the PMDF_INIT:
    directory, or a newsrc file with a non-default name as selected
    by your NEWSRC-PATH Setup Config option. This file contains the
    names of news groups you read. Pine updates it when you delete
    a message in the news group. Deleting a message in news does not
    really delete it, but simply makes the message unavailable to
    you when you next read the associated news group. The format of
    this file is one line per news group, with the lines having the
    format:

    newsgroupname:[message,...]

    where MESSAGE is either a number or a range of numbers (e.g.,
    1-3).