What was going on when I was born?

The Daily News is being offered for sale, its owner, the Tribune Company of Chicago, announced yesterday. The News, a tabloid, which has the largest circulation in the country for a general-interest newspaper, says it has lost at least $11 million this year. Over the last decade, circulation and advertising income have dropped sharply. The announcement that it was available for sale was another blow to its 3,800 employees. They had been expecting the company to seek contract concessions to bring labor costs in line with the paper's $342 million in annual revenues. There was no immediate comment from The New York Post, also a tabloid, which has been aggressively challenging The News for circulation in the city. The publisher of The Post, Rupert Murdoch, has said that he would not be interested in purchasing The News, a step from which he would probably be barred by Federal antitrust laws.

Attorney General William French Smith said today that the Reagan Administration's effort to revitalize the nation's intelligence agencies was needed to offset a ''dramatic'' increase in Soviet spying in this country and a growing threat posed by international terrorism. Mr. Smith's remarks came in a speech to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles, the text of which was made available here. He said that the Admin- Excerpts from speech, page 32. istration was increasing the intelligence community's resources and rebuilding personnel levels to counter the ''threat to our Government and its citizens from hostile intelligence services and international terrorist groups.''

The United States publicly called upon Poland's military Government today to free its political prisoners and to let Lech Walesa, the leader of the Solidarity movement, ''speak to his countrymen and to the world.'' The State Department said the Administration was ''deeply concerned for the leaders of Solidarity and the thousands of other prisoners being held in Poland.'' Elsewhere, there were these developments: - The West German Parliament called on Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to put off any action on further economic aid for Poland as long as ''repressive measures'' are in force against the Polish people. (Page 7.)

The Warsaw radio reported today that Poles, worried by the imposition of martial law, were hoarding food, especially bread. Radio broadcasts monitored outside Poland said members of the Polish Communist Party and other unarmed civilian volunteers had joined soldiers and riot police officers in patrolling the streets of Warsaw. Reports reaching Washington indicated that resistance to the martial law authorities continued in the Baltic port city of Gdansk and in the Silesian coal fields, although it was impossible to determine the extent of the resistance. Sabotage Threats Reported The State Department spokesman, Dean Fischer, said today that according to unconfirmed reports Silesian miners were still occupying several mine shafts and had threatened to sabotage the mines. At the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, he said, workers ''appear to have barricaded themselves in some of the buildings.''

Yesterday, five and a half years after Manuel Vega was paralyzed from the waist down by a police officer's bullet that severed his spinal cord, a jury awarded him $7,014,000 in compensatory damages from New York City. Gerald Seavers, the officer who shot Mr. Vega, was commended for ''meritorious police duty,'' the next to lowest police citation, in connection with the disputed incident in Brooklyn in the summer of 1976. Officer Seavers, 35 years old, has earned 19 commendations and a medal of valor in his 12 years on the force. The award in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn was believed by Mr. Vega's lawyer, Aaron Broder, to be the largest against the city for that type of injury. It was also believed to be the largest award in the nation for a gunshot wound inflicted by a police officer, exceeding an award made last year in Michigan by more than $5 million.

Senate Republican leaders, in an effort to overcome President Reagan's resistance to tax increases and cuts in military spending, today gave him a set of budget estimates showing mounting deficits over the next five years. But earlier in the day, Mr. Reagan met with House Republican leaders, who urged him to stand fast in his opposition to additional taxes. They argued that the income tax reductions enacted earlier this year, if left in place, would pull the economy out of recession. The conflicting advice reflected the fiscal and ideological battle now going on within the Administration. It also showed the political pressures on the President's Congressional supporters.

There were no Soviet tanks in Warsaw today, and that, to many Poles, was the hardest thing to take about the crackdown that began Saturday. Whatever pressure the Soviet Union brought to bear, most Poles believe it was their own hard-liners who did it, and they planned it long ago. What follows is an account of what one reporter saw and heard from the beginning of the crackdown until he left Warsaw Thursday afternoon for Paris. Saturday, Dec. 12 Saturday night, a young Polish man set off to visit his father to tell him that trouble had begun. He had heard that the Warsaw regional headquarters of Solidarity had been raided and communications had been cut. He invited three young women friends and this correspondent to go with him in a small car.

The United States said today that because of Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights it had suspended an agreement signed with Israel less than three weeks ago for military cooperation to counter Soviet threats to the Middle East. President Reagan ordered the move, the State Department spokesman said, because Israel failed to consult with the Text of U.S. statement, page 4. United States in advance on the annexation of the area seized from Syria or to take American concerns into account. High Administration officials said this was a deliberately tough step with two purposes: to put Israel on notice that Washington will not passively tolerate unilateral moves deeply affecting the Middle East and specifically to deter Israel from major military operations in southern Lebanon.

Zhao Jianping, a lively seven-year-old in a green sweater, selected another color from his crayon box, shifted his sheet of paper and sketched the white plastic rabbit that the teacher had set out as a model on her desk. The drawing class had begun at the Shiyan Primary School in Shanghai, and the two dozen children concentrating on their task were clearly oblivious to the controversy that has revolved around the quality of education they are receiving. Following the end of the Cultural Revolution five years ago, Shiyan School was designated a ''key'' school, one of an elite network across China that has benefited from more funds, better facilities and superior teachers. Resources were too limited to enrich all schools equally, the reasoning went. So the more promising schools were selected to focus on the brighter children, and thereby foster the talent to narrow China's technological gap with the West. The decision basically revived a system that had existed for a half-dozen years before the Cultural Revolution.

A countrywide search by the Italian police over the last 24 hours has turned up no trace of Brig. Gen. James L. Dozier, the American who was kidnapped from his apartment in Verona Thursday. The Red Brigades terrorist organization has taken responsibility for the kidnapping in two phone calls to ANSA, the Italian news agency, but has not named any conditions for the general's release. The first phone call was made to the agency's office in Milan Thursday night and the second to its office in Verona this afternoon. The second anonymous caller, a man, described the general as ''the hangman of NATO'' and said he was being held in a ''people's prison where he will be judged by the proletariat.''

A bomb wrecked the headquarters of the ruling political party here today, and the police reported that at least 6 people were killed and 125 were injured. No party officials were killed in the blast as most of them, including Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, were at lunch and away from the four-story building, party members said. There was no immediate word on who was responsible for the explosion. However, Prime Minister Mugabe charged last week that there were still ''subversive elements'' in the country who wanted to overthrow his Government.

Four American veterans of the Indochina War, trembling with emotion, stepped off a plane at a bleak Hanoi airport late this afternoon to an enthusiastic welcome by Vietnamese officials. One of the veterans, Tom Bird, a former infantryman with the 1st Cavalry Division, started walking down the steps of the plane before noticing a group of Vietnamese soldiers waiting to greet him. Mr. Bird swiftly returned to the plane, trembling. ''My first instinct was to call the whole thing off,'' Mr. Bird said several minutes later, returning outside. ''It's just too strange. I feel a little out of control.''