"Despite not being a valid top-level domain in the Internet, considerable DNS traffic that queries the local domain exists in the public Domain Name System.[1] In June 2009, the L root server received more than 400 such queries per second,[2] ranking 4th in DNS traffic of all TLDs after COM, ARPA, and NET." [1]
Scary potential for mischief-making. Hopefully ICANN would reject applications for these domains, but I'm not sure I'd take that level of competence for granted.
.local is the default 'local domain' in most routers, it couldn't be used reliably as a tld. These queries are probably just routed by mistake/buggy software.