What was going on when I was born?

In experiments with profound implications for genetic research, foreign genes have been transplanted into animal embryos by scientists at Yale University.

Nearly 600 young men and women were sworn in yesterday as New York City police recruits, including what officials believed was the highest percentage of minority-group members ever to form a Polics Academy class.

In a post-Labor Day assessment of the nation's economic outlook, many leading private economists share the view that recession will continue through the fall.

Senator Jacob K. Javits and Alfonse M. D'Amato, the two contenders for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate, displayed, often rancorously, their many differences on political philosophy, issues and personality in a 90minute discussion at The New York Times yesterday.

I STARTED eating when I was 23: that was also the age at which I started going to cocktail parties.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2--President Carter has proposed to European leaders that they consider ways the West could respond sympathetically to expected requests from Poland for large-scale economic help once the current crisis is ended, Administration officials confirmed today.

Pullman Inc. yesterday brought suit in Federal court in Chicago in a further effort to escape being taken over by McDermott Inc., which last week topped a friendly bid by WheelabratorFrye Inc. to acquire control of Pullman.

ST. LOUIS, Sept. 2--The McDonnell Douglas DC-9 Super 80 will belatedly roll off assembly lines in Long Beach, Calif., this month, its appearance delayed by production problems, inexperienced workers and a tardy safety certification by the Federal Aviation Administration.

AMHERST, Mass. IT was not the sort of event that would attract a huge crowd. At Amherst College here recently, the macrobiotics community met in conference and proclaimed itself not only alive but, it says, flourishing.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2--The Environmental Protection Agency today set in motion the machinery to withhold more than $850 million in Federal transportation and sewage-treatment funds from California because the state had failed to enact a law requiring inspection of automobile emission-control systems.

AFTER 75 years of independent living, Norma, a widow, fell on an icy road last winter and broke her hip. She was depressed by the prospect of spending months as an invalid in a nursing home while her hip mended.

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 2--After more than half a century in which the law was unable to block his career as a rising leader of the Mafia, Joseph C. Bonanno Sr., 75 years old, was found guilty today of conspiracy to interfere with a Federal grand jury's investigation of his two sons' business operations.