I demonstrate that the two unexpected results in the local Universe:
anomalous intrinsic (V-I)_0 colors of RR Lyrae stars and clump giants in the
Galactic center, and very short distances to Magellanic Clouds inferred from
clump giants, can be at least partially resolved with a modified coefficient of
selective extinction A_V/E(V-I). With this modification, I find a new
clump-giant distance modulus to the Large Magellanic Cloud, mu_{LMC} = 18.27
+/- 0.07, which is 0.09 larger than the Udalski (1998b) result. When distance
estimates from the red clump, RR Lyrae stars and the eclipsing binary HV2274
are combined, one obtains mu_{LMC} = 18.31 +/- 0.04 (internal).Comment: less detailed and more review-style version of ApJ Letter (528, L9),
to be published in the ASP Conference Series Vol. 203, 1999: ``The Impact of
Large Scale Surveys on Pulsating Star Research'', L. Szabados and D. Kurtz,
ed