CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Frances R. Mears, an Associated Press reporter, editor and bureau chief during a journalism career that spanned more than 40 years, died Saturday. She was 66. Mears had been ill with cancer, said her husband, Walter R. Mears, the Pulitzer Prize-winning political writer and retired AP vice president. After more than a decade in newspaper journalism, Fran Mears — then known as Fran Richardson — joined the AP in 1982 in Indianapolis, serving there as a legislative reporter and broadcast editor.