Washington, D.C.

President pardons former Texas mayor

President Bush pardoned a former mayor of Plano, Texas, who pleaded guilty to bank fraud in 1996, the Justice Department announced Monday.

David B. McCall Jr., who is battling cancer, served six months in prison for his role in fraudulent loans at the Plano Savings and Loan Assn., which failed in the mid-1980s.

Officials in Plano, a Dallas suburb, earlier this month renamed a downtown plaza in McCall’s honor for his service as mayor from 1956 to 1960.

McCall and four other men, including another former Plano mayor, were indicted in August 1995 on allegations they created a web of transactions designed to transfer troublesome loans from one institution to another.

Authorities said they wanted to hide difficulties from bank examiners and relieve borrowers of the need to repay the loans.

Washington

Study links antibiotics with breast cancer risk

Antibiotic use is associated with an increased risk for breast cancer, a new study has found, raising the possibility that women who take the widely used medicines are prone to one of the most feared malignancies.

The first-of-its-kind study of more than 10,000 Washington state women concluded that women who used the most antibiotics had double the chances of being struck by breast cancer, that the association was consistent for all forms of antibiotics and that the risk went up with the number of prescriptions.

A variety of experts quickly cautioned, however, that the findings should not stop women from taking the often lifesaving drugs.

“This is not saying that women should stop taking antibiotics. Women should take antibiotics for infections,” said Stephen Taplin, a senior scientist at the National Cancer Institute who helped conduct the study.

Washington, D.C.

States to get billions for election process

States can expect by mid-May to get a long-awaited $2.3 billion in federal help to buy new voting-booth equipment and make other election improvements, the head of an electoral reform commission promised Monday.

Still, millions of voters again will be using the much-maligned punch cards in this fall’s presidential balloting. Many of the improvements, including plans for statewide computerized voter registration data, aren’t expected to be in place before 2006.

Members of the new Election Assistance Commission assured state officials at a conference Monday that they would expedite the distribution of $2.3 billion in federal funds for election improvements.

This fall, six of every 10 voters will use electronically enhanced voting systems, according to a recent study by Election Data Services, a political consulting firm.

Los Angeles

Spirit rover completes longest trip on Mars

The Spirit rover went for its longest trip yet on the surface of Mars, traveling just more than 88 feet but stopping short of the distance NASA had hoped it would cover, scientists said Monday.

Engineers had hoped the rover would travel 164 feet on its way to a crater known as “Bonneville” to examine rocks and soil for evidence that water may have existed on the Red Planet, mission manager Jim Erickson said.

“Spirit, she’s put some more territory behind her,” Erickson said. “We’re closer but not as close as we’d wanted to be.”

The rover didn’t cover the full distance because it spent more time than initially planned studying rocks and soil along the way, he said.

Spirit’s longest previous distance covered in a day was 70 feet. That occurred last week.