What was going on when I was born?

The Whitney Museum of American Art has paid $1 million for a painting by Jasper Johns, believed to be the highest price ever for the work of a living artist. The 1958 painting, a famous precursor of the Pop Art movement, is "Three Flags."

Ihe problem of aging and inefficient industrial plants, which has cost American industry much of its competitive advantage in the world marketplace, is affecting defense-related factories as well, raising deep concern about the nation's ability to respond quickly to a military emergency.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26--The boatlift that has brought 125,000 refugees from Cuba to the the United States has been officially ended by the Cuban Government, Federal officials reported today.

Senior City Hall and transit officials have agreed that New York needs more transit police officers, and Mayor Koch and the agency's chairman will meet shortly to discuss a possible 5-cent fare increase to 65 cents to pay for them.

TEL AVIV, Sept. 26--The Minister for Religious Affair, Aharon Abuhazira, has been summoned for police questioning in a case that could threaten Prime Minister Menachem Begin's already tenuous majority in Parliament.

The nation's major banks, placing the blame on their own higher costs for borrowed money, raised their prime lending rate yesterday to 13 percent. from 12 percent.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 26--Iraqi troops besieging Iran's oil refinery city of Abadan today set fires raging from one end of the facility to the other with heavy artillery attacks.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26--In a significant policy shift, senior Carter Adminisration aides have approved a proposal for increasing United States production of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28--Iraq announced today that it was suspending all exports of oil because it had none to ship.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti--If there is a symbol for the condition of international assistance to Haiti, it may be a guesthouse in Anse-Rouge, a seaside town in the northwest, the poorest region of Haiti and the departure point for many of the 6,700 boat people who have landed in Florida since April.

PEKING, Sept. 26 (UPI)--China intensified its population-control drive today by ordering the 38 million Communist Party members to have only one child per family.

CARACAS, Venezuela, Sept. 26 (AP)-- A Cuban anti-Castro leader and three Venezuelans accused of causing the explosion of a Cuban passenger plane four years ago were acquitted today by a Venezuelan military court for lack of evidence. Orlando Bosch and the Venezuelans, Hernando Ricardo, Freddy Lugo and Luis Posada, were arrested soon after the explosion in October 1976 in which 73 people were killed.