A sedentary lifestyle can amplify a genetic disposition to obesity, but just walking briskly, and briefly, each day can cut that effect in half, a new study showed Wednesday.

"This is the first study that directly looked at the effect of the sedentary behavior of television watching on the body mass index (BMI) of individuals with a genetic predisposition to obesity," said study author Qibin Qi authors at a conference by the American Heart Association this week in San Diego, California.

The New York Knicks responded to the turmoil of coach Mike D'Antoni's resignation with a resounding 121-79 victory over Portland that ended a six-game NBA skid.

D'Antoni departed Wednesday morning, under fire as defeats piled up and star player Carmelo Anthony failed to mesh with headline-grabbing newcomer point guard Jeremy Lin.

Huge crowds rallied in cities across Syria Thursday in a mass show of support for President Bashar al-Assad "to make the world hear our voice" on the first anniversary of a deadly anti-regime revolt.

State television showed tens of thousands of people waving Syrian flags and Assad's portrait in squares in Damascus, the northern city of Aleppo, Latakia on the Mediterranean coast, Suweida to the south and Hasaka in the northeast.

McLaren's Lewis Hamilton is looking forward to a "fresh start" in the new Formula One season after being hit by problems on and off the track last year.

The 27-year-old Briton says he is aiming for a more focused approach than 2011, when he was distracted by relationship problems with his pop-star girlfriend and also changed his management set-up.

The American University in Cairo said Wednesday that a team of its researchers has designed a faster and cheaper test for all types of hepatitis C, which it says affects about 10 million Egyptians.

The development "reduces the two-step testing process carried out over a number of days to a one-step process that takes less than an hour... at a fraction of the cost of traditional diagnostic protocols," the university said.

Chelsea interim manager Roberto Di Matteo believes his team's nail-biting Champions League victory over Napoli can inspire the club to a successful season finale.

The Premier League giants confounded the bookmakers as well as the weight of history on Wednesday as they overturned a 3-1 first leg deficit with a pulsating 4-1 win over the Italians at Stamford Bridge.

Three South Korean pharmaceutical firms will soon be allowed to produce generic versions of the anti-impotence drug Viagra despite a row over patents, officials said Wednesday.

The Korea Food and Drug Administration said generic products made by the three local firms have passed a "bioequivalence" test.

Manchester United's Anderson could be sidelined for up to five weeks with a hamstring injury, the Premier League leaders' manager Sir Alex Ferguson said on Wednesday.

The Brazilian midfielder has seen his season blighted by fitness problems and did not travel to Spain for Thursday's Europa League last 16 second leg tie against Athletic Bilbao.

Police arrested Thursday a Moroccan man suspected of having links to al-Qaida and planning terrorist attacks on targets including a synagogue in Milan, Italy's counter-terrorism unit said.

"A 20-year-old Moroccan man was arrested at dawn, after investigators discovered messages he had posted on websites talking about a possible attack on sensitive targets," said the unit's head in Cagliari, Alfonso Polverino.

Around 1,000 Syrian refugees, including a defecting general, crossed into Turkey in the last 24 hours, the foreign ministry said on Thursday, the one-year anniversary of the Syrian revolt.

"The number of Syrian refugees currently staying in Turkey boomed by 1,000 in a single day and climbed to 14,700 total," ministry spokesperson Selçuk Unal told reporters in Ankara.