What was going on when I was born?

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 President Carter said today in a televised interview that he had told Leonid I. Brezhnev in the "strongest" message of the Presidency that the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan "would severely and adversely affect the relationship now and in the future between ourselves and the Soviet Union."

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 The composite index of leading indicators dropped a sharp 1.3 percent in November following a 1.4 percent decline in October, the Commerce Department reported today.

LONDON, Dec. 31--British steel workers were damping furnaces today in anticipation of a crippling national steel strike, now almost certain to start on Wednesday.

UNITED NATIONS, N.Y., Dec. 31 The Security Council voted 11 to 0 today to give Iran one week to release the American hostages. If they are not freed by then, the Council agreed to meet on Jan. 7 to vote to impose economic sanctions against Teheran.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 31 Fierce fighting broke out again early today in the center of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, as Soviet troops struggled to consolidate their control after the overthrow of the Government on Thursday.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 Moscow's decision to intervene militarily in Afghanistan has deeply angered the Carter Administration... Administration and seems likely to send Soviet-American relations into another period of bitter recriminations, more reminiscent of the cold war years of the 1950's than of the detente years of the 1970's.

WHITE PLAINS, Dec. 31 Beginning next week, civil cases in Westchester, Orange, Dutchess and Rockland Counties involving $6,000 or less in damages will go before arbitration panels of lawyers rather than before the courts.

JERUSALEM, Dec. 31 The Israeli Government moved to erase one of the few existing symbols of Palestinian autonomy today by announcing plans to expropriate the East Jerusalem Electric Company, an Arab-run concern that has supplied power to much of the West Bank since 1928.

UNITED NATIONS, N.Y., Dec. 31 Pakistan and other third-world nations will seek an urgent meeting of the Security Council early in the new year to consider a resolution condemning the Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan, third-world diplomats said today.

Freedom House, a New York-based national organization that has issued an annual "Comparative Survey of Freedom" since 1973, found 1979 to be a year of "expanding freedom," grading 42 percent of the world's population as "not free," 37 percent "free" and the remaining 21 percent as "partly free."

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 31 (Reuters) Five Syrians have been executed for alleged involvement in the massacre of some 60 military cadets in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo last June, the radio station of Lebanon's right-wing Falangist group reported today.