What was going on when I was born?

The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods, the leading measure of industrial price changes, edged up one-tenth of 1 percent in December, the Labor Department reported yesterday. The increase put the inflation rate for producer prices at only 1.8 percent for all of 1984. The report showed that the trend toward lower inflation had not weakened, and economists said there was nothing on the horizon - with oil prices falling and food prices leveling off - to push prices higher through the first half of this year. Energy prices in December fell 1.3 percent and food prices rose only five-tenths of 1 percent.

New York City said yesterday that unknown thieves were stealing its streets. In the last year, the City Department of Transportation says, someone has been tearing up some of the city's oldest streets, paving stone by paving stone, and carting them away. Neither the police nor city officials know who is responsible. Since the summer, the thieves have stolen all the paving stones from nine emergency parking turnouts on the northbound and southbound sides of the Henry Hudson Parkway, from 96th to 125th Street, according to Charles Foti, general manager of the city's Bureau of Highway Operations.

They say the corn has not grown very high this year in this remote corner of one of South Africa's tribal ''homelands.'' And the children, they say, are stunted as well. Godfrey Nchabeleng, for instance, is 4 years old, and today he weighed just under 16 pounds. Amos Shongwe is 3 months old. His weight is just over seven pounds, the same as at birth. Amos has an old and wizened look - an image, almost, of Ethiopia's drought transposed to Africa's richest nation.

Israel appeared headed today for another major political debate over the question of who is a Jew. In the midst of an economic crisis, the arrival of Ethiopian Jews and a national debate over the question of withdrawing troops from Lebanon, Israel's religious parties have again introduced a bill in Parliament that would amend Israel's Law of Return to redefine who is a Jew. The proposal has prompted a storm of protests from American Jewish groups that oppose the amendment because it would invalidate the Jewishness of anyone who converted through a ceremony performed by a non-Orthodox rabbi - meaning rabbis of the Reform and Conservative Jewish movements. Would Affect Some Decendents The amendment would also bar recognition of those converted by Orthodox rabbis not recognized by the Israeli rabbinical authorities and would apply as well to the descendants of anyone who was converted by non-Orthodox rabbis.

President Reagan has decided not to abolish his Council of Economic Advisers or remove it from the White House, a senior Administration official said today. ''We'll keep it,'' the official said. A ranking Administration economist confirmed the report. The official said the President had not yet approved his senior advisers' recommendation to retain the council but was likely to do so. ''We took a whole list of things to him yesterday,'' he said, ''and I feel rather confident that he has made up his mind.''

The American Telephone and Telegraph Company is cutting prices on its most advanced home telephones to sell off unsuccessful products and to shore up its position in the telephone market. The company said this week that it would also eliminate some slow-selling telephones as part of a re-examination of its product line. It has already phased out its decorator phones, such as those resembling Mickey Mouse, Snoopy and Kermit the Frog. In addition, A.T.&T. will close up to 700 of its 900 remaining Phone Center stores within five years. The company has already closed about 600 Phone Centers, which analysts say were marketing disasters.

McKENZIE BRIDGE, Ore. - This is the forest primeval. But whether it should remain that way is a matter of intense dispute between the Reagan Administration, which wants to speed the harvest of virgin timber from the National Forests, and conservationists who seek an emphasis on recreation and protecting wildlife. Here in the heart of the Willamette National Forest there are still large remnants of the ''old growth'' conifer forests that covered much of the Pacific Northwest until the beginning of this century. Ancient Douglas firs, shaggy barked and draped with moss, tower hundreds of feet over a forest floor now carpeted with the thin layer of snow that has managed to penetrate the tangle of thick branches high overhead.

The Indian coast guard seized a Sri Lanka naval vessel today in the waters separating southern India from its island neighbor. The two Governments gave sharply differing accounts of the incident, which officials here said was the first of its kind between the countries. Indian press reports said the incident began after the Sri Lanka vessel opened fire on a fleet of Indian fishing boats in Indian territorial waters. The Sri Lanka Embassy here disputed this, saying the vessel had been seized while on routine patrol in Sri Lanka waters.

An elderly man was found dead today in his unheated house in the Burgundy region, increasing the unofficial death toll to 65 in a week of unusually cold weather in France. The cold, which has eased slightly in the last two days, is expected to worsen over the weekend, forecasters said.

When an employee of Canada's Employment and Immigration Commission requested a disability parking permit, she was instructed to fill out a blanket medical form, including such details as her mental health, alcohol intake and family medical problems. The woman reluctantly complied, but later asked Canada's Privacy Commissioner whether so much information was necessary. He checked and said it was not. As a result, the medical form has been revised.

The Defense Department today named Lieut. Gen. John R. Galvin, head of the Army's VII Corps in Europe, to become the new commander of United States forces in Latin America. General Galvin, who is 55 years old, will succeed Gen. Paul F. Gorman in what has become in recent years one of the military's most visible and sensitive assignments. Under General Gorman, the United States Southern Command, based in Panama, played a major role in Central America, aiding the military forces of El Salvador and Honduras and staging demonstrations of American military might aimed at the Government of Nicaragua, which the Administration accuses of underwriting Communist subversion in the region.

The solid-fuel motor of an unarmed Pershing 2 missile caught fire and burned in southern Germany today, killing three American soldiers and injuring seven others, the United States Army announced. The accident was the most serious so far involving the American-built ballistic missiles, and it seemed certain to sharpen West German anxieties over the issue of nuclear weapons stationed in the country. The Pershings were first deployed in late 1983 after heated controversy in West Germany. At a news conference at Heilbronn, Brig. Gen. Raymond E. Haddock, the commander of the 56th Field Artillery Brigade, said the accident occurred at 2 P.M. when the first-stage motor of a Pershing missile was being removed from its container after arrival from the United States.