What was going on when I was born?

PHILADELPHIA, May 9 President Carter, making his first major public appearance outside of Washington in more than six months, told a "town meeting" here today that he viewed Secretary of State Edmund S. "Muskie as a stronger, more statesmanlike figure and more evocative spokesman than Mr. Muskie's predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance.

WASHINGTON, May 9 -- Prices paid by retailers for a wide variety of goods rose only five-tenths of 1 percent last month, indicating a marked slowing of inflation.

TEHERAN, Iran, May 9 President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, struggling to gain control over Iran's divided and rapidly deteriorating political scene, appeared today to have won the support of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

On Thursday afternoon, John D. Backe, the president of CBS, landed in New York, basking in the afterglow of an upbeat three-day meeting in Los Angeles with officials of the network's 200 affiliated stations. After trailing ABC for several years, CBS had only recently returned ...

TAMPA, Fla., May 9 The Cuban Americans who gather at Macfarland Park every afternoon were angry when Mayor Bob Martinez arrived, and even angrier when he left.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., May 9 Thirty-two people were killed today when a ship struck the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, tearing away a 1,000-foot section of the span and dropping a bus, three cars and a pickup truck 140 feet into Tampa Bay.

Mayor Koch yesterday proposed a $13.58 billion expense budget for the next fiscal year and said he would strive to make it the first "truly balanced" city budget in more than a decade.

SADA, Yemen A convoy of pickup trucks and taxis heaped precariously high with bedrolls and assorted cartons of television sets, washing machines and other consumer luxuries lurched south along the partly asphalted highway to this old fortress city, carrying home migrant workers flush with wages hoarded in Saudi Arabia.

TEL AVIV, May 9 Defense Minister Ezer Weizman said today on his return from Cairo that President Anwar elSadat's suspension of the Palestinian autonomy talks was for internal Egyptian political reasons.

CARACAS, Venezuela, May 9 -- After three weeks of acrimonious debate, the Venezuelan Congress voted last night to hold former President Carlos Andres Perez "politically responsible" for what was denounced as a Government ship-purchase scandal during his administration.

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 9 The military men who overthrew and assassinated President William R. Tolbert Jr. in a coup last month are struggling for acceptance by the nations of black Africa. Many of these nations' leaders say they were alarmed by the sudden developments in what was widely perceived as one of the most stable civilian-run countries on the continent.

ACCRA, Ghana, May 9 (AP) Pope John Paul II and the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Robert Runcie, met today in another step toward closer relations between their churches.