What was going on when I was born?

Israel's parties began negotiating for coalition partners after an indecisive parliamentary election Monday that gave the two major political alignments nearly equal strength. With 98 percent of the votes counted, the Labor alignment had 44 or 45 seats and the ruling right-wing Likud bloc had 40 or 41. (Page A1, Column 1.) Jose Napoleon Duarte, although embroiled in a civil war at home, has spent much of his first seven weeks as President of El Salvador working to improve his country's standing abroad. Mr. Duarte has met with some success in two visits to the United States and one to Western Europe. (A1:2-3.)

President Reagan said tonight that he had no plans for a tax increase next year as Walter F. Mondale has charged in his Democratic Presidential challenge to Mr. Reagan. Asked if he would rule out a tax increase next year, he replied, ''Yes.'' Mr. Mondale, the President said, attempting to turn the issue back on the Democratic nominee, ''has repeatedly and on any number of occasions supported tax increases over the years.'' Mr. Reagan, in the 26th televised news conference of his 42 months in office and his first since the nomination of Mr. Mondale, showed his sensitivity to election-year politics by announcing that he would ask Congress to permit a cost-of-living increase in Social Security benefits even if inflation fell below 3 percent. Under the law now, there would be no rise in benefits if prices rose less than 3 percent a year. (Page A15.)

WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 1984 The Economy Factory orders for durable goods dropped 3.2 percent in June, the second drop in the last three months. The decrease indicated that factory output would slacken correspondingly in coming months, but was not taken as a sign of any abrupt halt to the economy's expansion. (Page D1.) Consumer prices were up only 0.2 percent in June, indicating that the low inflation that has persisted since the recession may be moving even lower. The rise, equal to May's, represents a compound annual rate of 2 percent. Prices of services were up, but gasoline and clothing were off with food barely higher. (D1.) Prices in the New York-northeastern New Jersey area rose 0.3 percent. (D6.)

A headline in some copies of Sports Pages yesterday with an article about a legal dispute between Dave Winfield and George Steinbrenner misrepresented remarks by the judge in the case. He urged both sides to settle, and at several points was critical of Mr. Steinbrenner's position.

President Reagan said tonight that the Democrats' nomination of Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro for Vice President was ''a logical step and one that possibly is overdue'' but that her critcism of his social spending program was without merit. ''I know there's been a lot of demagoguery about that,'' he said at his news conference when asked about Mrs. Ferraro's charge that he was not a ''good Christian'' because his budget- cutting policies were so ''totally unfair.'' Mr. Reagan, dealing gingerly with Mrs. Ferraro's candidacy, smiled and said, ''The minute I heard she'd made that statement, I turned the other cheek.'' Reagan's Strategy The President denied that in an earlier reaction to the nomination he had intended to characterize the choice of Mrs. Ferraro as ''tokenism.''

Israel's political parties started negotiating today for coalition partners after an indecisive national election that saw the two major political alignments display almost equal strength. With 98 percent of the votes from the election Monday counted, the Labor Alignment had 44 or 45 seats in Parliament and the ruling right-wing Likud bloc 40 or 41. The results, however, also suggested that the Likud bloc had a slightly better chance to form a Government coalition, which requires 61 seats, because Likud apparently has more potential partners than Labor among the 13 smaller parties that also gained seats in Parliament. Likud and other right-wing parties are also expected to benefit more than Labor when the votes of Israeli soldiers are counted on Thursday. Shamir Meets With Cabinet The Likud leader, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, met with his Cabinet during the day to discuss the political contacts that were made throughout the early morning hours, even as the returns were coming in over the Israeli television.

At the time, candor seemed like the right strategy. In the wake of the collapse earlier this year of the Empire Savings and Loan Association of Mesquite, Tex., Edwin J. Gray, the Federal official who regulates the thrift industry, acknowledged before a Congressional subcommittee that supervisory neglect may have contributed to Empire's demise. Now, in lawsuits, Mr. Gray's words are being used against him. The suits charge, among other things, that the Federal Home Loan Bank Board was negligent in not moving fast enough to close Empire, which it declared insolvent on March 14.

The White House has decided to give up its effort to gain Congressional approval for $21 million in additional aid to Nicaraguan rebels in the current fiscal year, senior Administration officials said today. Instead, the officials said, the Administration will try to obtain money for the rebels in the 1985 budget. In its 1985 budget request, the Central Intelligence Agency asked Congress for $28 million for the rebels. If the full $28 million cannot be obtained, according to the officials, the White House is prepared to settle for a reduced sum.

President Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador, although embroiled in a civil war at home, has spent much of his first seven weeks in office working with some apparent success to improve his country's standing abroad. In two visits to the United States and one to Western Europe, Mr. Duarte, who was in New York yesterday after meeting in Washington Monday with President Reagan, has relied on his status as the first freely elected Salvadoran president in five decades to win increased international support. ''In 1980 we wouldn't even talk to him,'' a senior Western European diplomat in New York said yesterday. ''Now he's seeing heads of state in Europe. It's a big change.''

The big airport here that the Cubans started and that the United States is finishing is supposed to go into operation in about three months, making it possible for jet airliners to fly to Grenada from anywhere in the world. But Grenada, which has wanted a modern airport for so long, does not appear quite ready for this. First of all, there is no place to put large numbers of visitors. Grenada is used to dealing with tourists on a small scale. When it counts all its available rooms, including 200 in guest houses and cottages, it comes up with a total of 461, which is not many more than the number of seats on one 747 jumbo jet.

''Based on the limited record before us, the battered women's syndrome is an appropriate subject for expert testimony.'' - Chief Justice Robert N. Wilentz of the New Jersey Supreme Court. (B6:3.)

Consumer prices rose only two-tenths of 1 percent in June, the Labor Department reported today, indicating that the low rates of inflation that have persisted since the recession may be moving even lower. ''The surprising thing has been the slowdown of the last two months,'' said Leif Olsen, chief economist at Citibank. Today's report on the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers, showed that, for the 12 months through June, prices rose 4.1 percent, but in the April-to-June quarter the rate of increase dropped to 3.3 percent. The June rise, equal to May's, represents a compound annual rate of 2 percent.