June 11, 1996

A bill that would require the State Division of Motor Vehicles to get a driver's written consent before releasing information from its records to anyone other than an insurance company has drawn support from the movie industry. Richard Masur, president of the Screen Actors Guild in Los Angeles, will be at the State House today to express support for the measure. In 1989, Rebecca Schaeffer, a star of the television series "My Sister Sam," was killed in Los Angeles by a man who got her address through California's Department of Motor Vehicles.

The Whitewater independent counsel, Kenneth W. Starr, has begun an investigation into how the White House obtained confidential F.B.I. files on several prominent Republicans, Government officials said today. Mr. Starr's investigators went to the Pentagon today to interview the central figure in the episode, an Army aide, Anthony Marceca, who requisitioned the Federal Bureau of Investigation records while doing background checks on as many as 340 people, from former Bush Administration Cabinet officials to Republican Party leaders.

Shane L. Daniels is expected to make a nearly complete recovery from head wounds that he received in a beating outside a nightclub in Westhampton Beach on May 26, his doctors said today. "We're pleased with the progress he has made, and he no longer seems to be threatened by his injuries," said Dr. George W. Tyson, chief of the neurosurgery department at University Hospital here. "My opinion is that he will gain back most of his normal life style and, eventually, hopefully all."

In the small town of Odaicho on Japan's east coast, Isamu Yoshida says he would love to carry Kodak film in his little photo shop. But the Fuji film salesmen visit regularly, and provide posters and advertising as well as twice-a-day film pickup and delivery of photos. In contrast, Mr. Yoshida says that he has never met a Kodak salesman and that Kodak offers no film pickup in his area.

A planned marketing alliance between American Airlines and British Airways may seem at first to be simply the latest in a series of partnerships between airlines. But the alliance is also expected to lead to an aviation accord between Britain and the United States to replace one that American officials have been dissatisfied with since it was signed 50 years ago. An important aspect of the alliance, which is expected to be announced today, will revolve around Heathrow International Airport, the world's busiest hub for international traffic and a linchpin in the strategy of the United States to bring American-style "open skies" to the more restrictive world of European air travel.