  We briefly review our photometric and spectroscopic study of RR Lyrae
variable stars in the bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), that allowed us
to reconcile the so-called "short" and "long" distance moduli of the LMC on the
value mod_LMC=18.51 +/- 0.085 mag. Then we present preliminary results from the
photometric study of a 33' x 34' area in the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy
containing the stellar clusters Fornax 3 (NGC 1049) and 6. We identified about
1000 candidate variables in this field of Fornax, and report the first
detection and measure of about 60 RR Lyrae variable stars in the globular
cluster Fornax 3.
