What was going on when I was born?

Calling the Reagan Administration's policy on Central America ''confused and dangerous,'' two Democratic Senators proposed legislation today to require prior Congressional approval for military action and covert intelligence operations in the region. The Senators, Paul E. Tsongas of Massachusetts and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, said they would try to attach their bill to President Reagan's Caribbean Basin Initiative or to any other legislation that offered a chance for quick action. The measure is the most comprehensive introduced so far with the aim of giving Congress greater control over Administration moves in Central America. It reflects a growing determination on Capitol Hill to check any active intervention by the United States before it goes too far in the view of legislators.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced its ''national contingency plan'' for dealing with abandoned hazardous waste sites today. The plan is intended as the Federal Government's response to the problem posed to public health and environmental quality by thousands of such waste dumps throughout the country that, until now, have been largely ignored. In the past, health emergencies such as that caused by the seepage of chemical wastes in the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls, N.Y., have been dealt with piecemeal. Criticism and Praise The contingency plan, which was required by law to provide a comprehensive approach to the threat of toxic wastes, met with immediate criticism from environmentalists and some members of Congress but was praised the chemical industry.

For the first time in six years, the Government's Producer Price Index fell last month, providing the most dramatic evidence thus far that inflation is falling. The decline was small, one-tenth of 1 percent, an annual rate of 1.7 percent, the Labor Department reported today. That was down from an average rise of nearly four-tenths of 1 percent in the three preceding months. Most economists had expected that the index, which foreshadows the direction of retail prices, would show another modest increase despite the severe recession.

A White House official said today that the Reagan Administration would cancel its offer to pay all state Medicaid costs if the nation's governors persisted in their refusal to take over Federal food stamp and welfare costs. Richard S. Williamson, President Reagan's assistant for intergovernmental affairs, said the Administration was seriously considering scaling down its ''new federalism'' proposals in the face of the governors' opposition to major elements of the package. The President wants the states to take responsibility for food stamps and the program of Aid to Families with Dependent Children as part of a sweeping realignment of Federal and state responsibilities. But several governors have said that welfare and food stamps should be ''set aside'' in the negotiations.

When the siren screams, police chases, milling throngs and traffic jams had subsided around the Empire State Building yesterday at lunchtime, a passer-by asked a security guard what had happened. The guard sighed. ''What's the use?'' he said. ''If I told you, you wouldn't believe me.''

The Reagan Administration thought it had a persuasive witness in Orlando Jose Tardencillas Espinosa, a Nicaraguan captured last year in El Salvador while fighting with the guerrillas. He told the Salvadoran Army, and later the American Embassy, that he had been trained in Cuba and Ethiopia, then sent to El Salvador by the Nicaraguan Government. But when the State Department presented Mr. Tardencillas to the press today to confirm Nicaraguan and Cuban involvement in El Salvador, he said he had never been to Cuba or Ethiopia, had never seen another Nicaraguan or a Cuban in El Salvador and had made his previous statements under coercion. To the visible consternation of his hosts at the State Department, who had advertised him as further proof of outside interference in El Salvador, Mr. Tardencillas coolly announced that he had ''obviously been presented for purposes of propaganda'' and proceeded to deny that Nicaragua has provided aid to Salvadoran guerrillas.

It comes as no surprise to most economists to see the inflation rate falling. That is typically what occurs during a recession, and in that respect, at least, this downturn is no different from others. What is new, however, is the growing belief that much of the relief may well be permanent, something that will remain after the recession has given way to recovery. Economists are beginning to speak of downward momentum in inflation, a momentum sparked by some good luck in food prices, thanks to abudant harvests, and in energy conservation and moderation of wage demands.

A plan to protect the nearly 300,000 people who live near Indian Point in case of a nuclear accident is inadequate and may never be workable, according to some officials at the county, town and schooldistrict level who would be responsible for carrying it out. Even those officials of the governments and the utilities who say the plan can be made workable cannot say when it could be. The safety plan for the two Indian Point reactors in Buchanan, N.Y., on the east bank of the Hudson River, is of special concern because the plants are in the most densely populated area of any reactor in the country. Planners say that the plants at Indian Point present special difficulties because of the population density. Some of the problems raised by critics of the Indian Point plan are present at other reactor sites around the country, with similarly fragmented governmental units and population centers nearby.

Every Wednesday and Friday afternoon, as the regular Scandinavian Airlines System flight leaves here for Copenhagen, many of the people at this outpost on the Arctic Circle pause a moment in whatever they are doing to watch. It is perhaps their most important link to the outside world. ''In less than five hours, that plane will be in Denmark,'' a Danish woman here said, musing as the blue and white DC-8 roared into the clear, cold air. ''Europe seems so very far away from Greenland, but the airplane makes us feel a bit less lonely here.'' Loneliness and isolation are common themes in Greenland, whose 50,000 people are widely scattered around the perimeter of an empty, frozen island three times the size of Texas. Because there is no road from any town to any other town, travel is by sea during the short summer or by air if the weather permits, and it is not unusual for a settlement to be inaccessible for weeks at a time.

After 16 months of deliberations, the Madrid Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe adjourned today for eight months with East and West at loggerheads over Poland. Taking advantage of the last day of the conference, which is supposed to reconvene here on Nov. 9, both the Soviet Union and the United States and its allies fired parting salvos that reflected widely varying interpretations of the 1975 Helsinki accords that this conference was set up to review. Calling the Madrid talks ''a stage of lost opportunities,'' the Soviet delegation, in a press statement, blamed ''the U.S. delegation and the delegations of those NATO countries that have supported the U.S. destructive obstructionist line.'' The Soviet statement, repeated in a closed session of all members, said the West was being led ''upon the path of cold war, the path of destroying everything positive that has been achieved over the years of detente, of the life of the process initiated in Helsinki.'' Clearly alluding to Poland, the Russians accused the United States of trying to dictate the ''internal and foreign policy'' of some nations.

Reporters and editors at The Times have split into two camps over the question of the paper's leadership. Rupert Murdoch, the Australian owner of The Times, is scheduled to fly to London from New York this weekend to try to resolve the impasse created by his repeated and so far futile attempts to replace his editor, Harold Evans. Mr. Evans and the man chosen by Mr. Murdoch to replace him, Charles Douglas-Home, the present deputy editor, faced each other across a conference table to plan tonight's issue. They barely spoke, participants said, and the atmosphere was described as ''very tense, like that in a divorce court.''

The official Soviet press agency said today that the scheduled sale of American submarine missiles to Britain further complicated arms talks with the United States. ''The Reagan Administration's decision to sell Britain Trident II missiles for atomic submarines again casts doubts on the sincerity of statements made by Washington spokesmen about the United States' striving to work for a fair agreement on the limitation of nuclear arms in Europe,'' Tass said.