PARIS — The Paris half-marathon, which was scheduled for Sunday with 44,000 registered runners, has been cancelled over fears of coronavirus, officials said Saturday. The announcement came after the French government ordered the cancelation of "gatherings of more than 5,000 people" in enclosed areas as well as some external events. French Health Minister Olivier Veran said the cancelations of external events would affect gatherings in open areas where there would be "intermingling with populations from areas affected by the virus". The weekend program of French Ligue 1 football matches is unaffected and will go ahead as planned, he said. The weekend games are not taking place in areas of France most affected by the virus, the Oise region north of Paris and La Balme-de-Sillingy village in the southeastern Haute-Savoie region. Veran said there were 16 new cases of coronavirus in France, taking to 73 the number of people affected since the end of January. Two people have died, a 60-year-old French teacher and an 80-year-old Chinese tourist. Russian athletics elects businessman as president Russia"s athletics federation (RUSAF) on Friday elected a businessman as its new president with the organi`ation racing to win places for its athletes at the upcoming Tokyo Olympics after a doping ban. Businessman and politician Yevgeny Yurchenko was voted to helm an organi`ation embroiled in a doping scandal, winning 53 out of a possible 63 votes, RUSAF said in a statement carried by agencies. Yurchenko"s bid for the top spot was all but guaranteed, with Russia media reporting ahead of the ballot that the 51-year-old had won the support of the Kremlin. Hours before the vote, on Thursday evening, RUSAF said the former vice governor was the only candidate, without giving details. Yurchenko, who was briefly vice-governor of the Voronezh region south of Moscow, won notoriety in 2011 when he purchased a historic Vostok space capsule launched in the early 1960s for $2.9 million. He now faces the considerable task of convincing World athletics to allow Russian athletes who test clean to compete under a neutral banner at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Russia has been suspended by World athletics — then known as the IAAF — since 2015 over repeated doping scandals and has been fighting for readmission. Ahead of voting on Friday, Yurchenko promised to overhaul the Federation and to recognize RUSAF"s previous doping "errors". Yet some Russian athletes were not convinced he or any of the candidates were capable of cleaning up the athletics organization. "Unfortunately today, those who would like to preside over the federation are people I don"t trust," veteran high jumper Mariya Lasitskene told AFP last month. Yurchenko is taking over from Dmitry Shlyakhtin who resigned in November after being accused by World athletics of obstructing a probe into Russian high jumper Danil Lysenko. — AFP