What was going on when I was born?

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1984 International An inferno engulfed a slum area near Mexico City as a storage center for liquefied gas exploded in flames, reportedly killing at least 261 people and seriously injuring 500. The authorities said that 100,000 people had been evacuated in buses from the neighborhood of wooden shacks. (Page A1, Column 6.) Food supplies were cut off for thousands of famine victims as secessionist rebels seized a major refuge center in northern Ethiopia, according to sources in the relief effort. They said the center, at Korem, which contains up to 40,000 refugees, 15,000 of them children, had been overrun after a daylong battle between the rebels and Government troops. (A3:4-6.)

In early 1964, for the first time in medical history, surgeons at the University of Mississippi Medical Center transplanted an animal heart into a human. They were treating a 68-year-old man whose heart was failing. No human heart was available, so they used a chimpanzee heart instead. The heart lasted only an hour before it proved incapable of handling the larger blood flow of an adult man, and the patient died. The experiment was disclosed only after it had failed. News coverage was scant. There were some professional objections to the operation, but little hint of the criticism ever reached a national audience. The contrast between that operation and the recent transplant of a baboon heart into Baby Fae could hardly be more striking. Daring research, for a variety of reasons, has clearly become a public affair. And it is open to the critical scrutiny - the applause and the censure - of everyone from ethical leaders to the man in the street.

The Justice Department said today that it had closed, at the direction of President Reagan, a criminal antitrust investigation into passenger air travel that has soured relations between the United States and Britain. The department, in a terse two-sentence statement, said the President's decision was ''based on foreign policy reasons.'' The department's spokesman, Mark T. Sheehan, declined to elaborate on the reasons. ''You can't expect the President to explain foreign policy decisions,'' he said. ''It is enough for him to consider the factors and decide, for the good of the country.''

Long-distance customers in Minne- sota may get to defer some payments to A.T.&T. but pay interest. Page D9. In its first rate proposal since the breakup of the Bell System last January, the New York Telephone Company yesterday sought permission to raise its charges by 16.3 percent. The changes, if approved by the State Public Service Commission, would take effect late in 1985. The company said the new charges would total $775 million and would raise the average monthly home telephone bill in the state by about $4, to $29.67 from $25.52.

President Reagan's key budget team has begun to call attention to the soaring national debt as a way of persuading him to make a more aggressive attack on the Federal deficit, Administration officials said today. The advisers have stressed that the debt's growing share of the American economy and the prospect that it could force interest rates higher are more serious than any one year's deficit. Using that argument, the officials said, the nine-member economic ''core group'' is pressing Mr. Reagan to accept targets for a fairly steep decline in Federal spending for the next three years. No Indication From Reagan With the deficit now at more than 5 percent of the national output of goods and services, the proposed goals were to push it down to 4 percent of the gross national product in the fiscal year 1986, which begins next October; to 3 percent in the fiscal year 1987, and to 2 percent in 1988.

The Reagan Administration is considering proposals to restrict veterans' health benefits to help control the costs of the program as millions of World War II veterans reach the age of 65. At that age, a veteran is automatically eligible for medical care on request, without regard to financial need, if space is available in Veterans Administration hospitals and nursing homes. Reagan Administration officials said they were considering proposals to charge veterans at least a nominal amount for health-care services; to make benefits contingent upon financial need, or to curb benefits for veterans who sought treatment for illneses and disabilities unrelated to their military service. White House Initiative The push for the latest proposals came from White House policy analysts, the Office of Management and Budget and the President's survey on cost control. They have warned of huge growth in the veterans' health system unless Congress changes the law in the next few years.

The Pacific Gas and Electric Company appears to be within months of getting its Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant into commercial service. Yet questions about potential damage to the utility's financial health are expected to remain at least two years. That is the most optimistic view of how long it will take the California Public Utilities Commission to decide how much, if any, of the much-contested plant's $5.3 billion cost will not be borne by Pacific Gas's customers through electricity rate increases. The plant's cost increased by $2.1 billion in the last three years since Pacific Gas disclosed construction errors that raised doubts about the reactors' ability to withstand a severe earthquake. By most accounts, Pacific Gas, one of the country's largest and most financially sound utilities, would face a write-off equal to roughly 40 percent of its equity, which was $5.2 billion at the end of September, if the California commission placed full blame on the utility's management for the plant's construction errors and delays.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1984 The Economy State-chartered banks could underwrite securities through units that would be physically separate from their parent banks and would operate under separate names, the F.D.I.C. ruled. F.D.I.C. officials said they acted partly out of frustration with the inability of Congress to clarify the law that is separating the securities and banking industries. (Page D1.) Budget planners are pointing to the soaring national debt as a way of persuading the President to attack Federal spending more aggressively, Administration officials said. (A1.)

Americans' personal income rose six- tenths of 1 percent in October but consumer spending slipped one-tenth of 1 percent, the Commerce Department said today. The drop in spending was the first since February, when it was off nine-tenths of 1 percent, and a further indication of a slowdown in economic growth. One private economist said the downturn was just a ''lull'' before the holiday buying season, but others predicted that economic growth was likely to remain stagnant for some months.

''All in favor of adjournment, please say 'aye,' '' Assemblyman Richard J. Conners proclaimed in that official tone that legislators adopt for such things. He smiled, a private sort of smile. ''Aye,'' he said. Then he looked at the sea of seats in the amphitheater where the Assembly meets, deserted during this off- season in the state's capital, and he rapped the gavel. As he has done for 410 consecutive weeks now, Mr. Conners had kept the Assembly of the State of New York in official session.

An 85-foot tugboat that vanished with six crewmen Saturday night in a moderate blow on Long Island Sound was found sunk off the Connecticut shore yesterday. Divers recovered three bodies from the pilothouse and a fourth from the galley. The captain and a deckhand were still missing. The cause of the sinking, off Norwalk a mile south of Sheffield Island, was not immediately determined. But Coast Guard officials said the tug had been lashed to a 140-foot barge loaded with scrap iron and might have been dragged to the bottom if the cargo shifted and the barge went down.

''Just because I called someone a fat pig, we're in this whole mess,'' said Edith Perlman. It is a mess, an extraordinary mess for a village so tiny, just 216 people. And it keeps getting more complicated and messier. Three and a half years ago Mrs. Perlman, the Mayor's wife, was convicted of calling a local reporter a ''fat pig'' - formally ''verbal assault,'' a Town Court violation punished by a $250 fine.