What was going on when I was born?

Pope John Paul II announced tonight that he was calling an extraordinary general assembly of Roman Catholic bishops to examine the results of the Second Vatican Council, which ended two decades ago. The Pope added drama to the surprise announcement by reading it at the end of a mass at the Basilica of St. Paul's Outside the Walls. It was at that church that Pope John XXIII called Vatican II exactly 26 years ago today. John Paul said this year's synod would seek to ''relive, in some way, that extraordinary atmosphere of ecclesiastical communion that characterized'' Vatican II.

Under pressure from business people and Congressional leaders, the Internal Revenue Service announced today that it was relaxing its record-keeping requirements for some taxpayers who drive company cars or drive their own cars on business. Under the new rules, many people who use the cars only incidentally on personal matters would not have to keep detailed ledgers documenting each trip. Salesmen and others who drive partly for business and partly for other reasons would still have to keep careful records. Last year, Congress passed a law intended to insure that taxpayers pay taxes on the value of their personal use of company cars and that they did not take excessive deductions for the business use of their own cars.

A Manhattan grand jury indicted Bernhard H. Goetz yesterday on charges of criminal weapon possession but refused to charge him with attempted murder in the shooting of four youths on a subway train last month, Late in the afternoon, after a final 70 minutes of debating whether the shooting was justified, the 23-member grand jury informed the prosecutor that Mr. Goetz would be indicted only on three gun possession charges. The most serious charge is a felony and carries a maximum prison sentence of seven years. If Mr. Goetz is convicted, it would be his first offense and therefore unlikely that he would receive the full sentence. ''It was the view of the grand jurors that Mr. Goetz was justified in taking the force that he did,'' the Manhattan District Attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said after the grand jury's action. Offers of Support The decision was the latest development in a case that began on Dec. 22, when, by his own admission, the 37-year-old electronics specialist shot the youths on an IRT train after they surrounded him and one of them demanded $5.

Senator Bob Dole said today that efforts to assemble a deficit-reducing package would probably fail if President Reagan did not agree to smaller increases in military spending. Mr. Dole, the Senate majority leader, also leveled his sights at Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger for his resistance to reductions beyond those the Secretary said he made in negotiations with the White House. Mr. Dole also contended that Mr. Weinberger had used unduly large estimates of expected inflation in calculating the military budget. He said the Secretary had to be brought ''into the game.'' Strongest Attack Yet Mr. Dole's remarks were his strongest attack yet on the Administration's adamance on big increases in the military budget. It could presage an effort to shift the blame to the Administration if the Senator cannot put together a deficit-reducing package of $50 billion that he has set as a goal for the fiscal year 1986, which begins Oct. 1.

An official of the Union Carbide Corporation said today that ''immediate attention'' had been given to an internal safety report warning of a possible ''runaway reaction'' in a tank storing a toxic chemical in West Virginia. The official, Jackson B. Browning, vice president for health, safety and environmental affairs, said ''a simple change in operating procedures completely eliminated the concern'' raised Sept. 11 in the report by the company's safety inspectors. In any case, Mr. Browning said the inspectors had found the threat ''in no way imminent'' but had raised the concern as a ''hypothetical scenario.'' Report Was Not Sent to India The tank at the plant in Institute, W. Va., contained methyl isocyanate, the chemical that leaked from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, on Dec. 3, killing more than 2,000 people and injuring thousands more. Mr. Browning said the safety report on the West Virginia plant was not sent to India before the disaster there.

The United States and the Soviet Union have agreed to resume arms negotiations in early March, Reagan Administration officials said tonight. The officials said both countries would shortly make a joint announcement, to be followed by public comments by President Reagan. According to Administration sources, the American announcement is expected to come at 11 A.M. Saturday in Washington. Last week, Washington proposed that the arms talks resume in Geneva in early March, and tonight officials said Moscow had essentially agreed to that proposal. ''There's no radical difference from what we suggested,'' an official said.

From Tokyo's gleaming busine en place in the central assumptions which underlay the ABM treaty,'' he said. ''The underpinnings of that are less strong than when we went into the ABM Treaty and that troubles us.'' Soviet leaders have also said the President's space- based defense plan is undermining Moscow's confidence in existing arms accords.

The State President of South Africa promised blacks living outside the country's tribal homelands a greater political voice today. But he made it clear that his Government had no plans to dilute the white Afrikaner power that has prevailed since 1948. The President, P. W. Botha, said, ''It remains the Government's point of departure that because of the diversity of South African society, it is neither desirable nor practicable to accommodate all communities in the same way.'' His comments came at the opening in Cape Town of South Africa's new three- house Parliament, based on racial segregation and made up of separate chambers for whites, ''colored'' or mixed-race deputies, and Indians.

One by one the four men could be seen being led into the strobe-lighted room, carrying the chains that bound their feet. The small room in the prison resembled a cheap cafe.Half-empty tea glasses were strewn across the table, which was covered by a plastic tablecloth. Flies buzzed overhead.

A French Defense Ministry official was shot to death outside his suburban home tonight. A left-wing guerrilla group took responsibility. The police said the official, Rene Audran, director of international affairs at the ministry, died immediately after he was hit by six bullets.

Three former security police officers on trial for murdering a dissident priest buried their heads today as a videotape was played in court showing the recovery of the priest's bound body from a reservoir. One of the men shuddered as he bowed his head, apparently sobbing. The fourth defendant, Col. Adam Pietruszka, who has denied a charge of aiding and abetting the killing, looked without expression at the television monitor. The half-hour police film, a few seconds of which were broadcast later on national television, showed the body of the Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko as it appeared just after it was found on Oct. 30. The three men charged with the killing, led by former Capt. Grzegorz Piotrowski, have admitted that they threw the body into the water 11 days earlier.

A senior Taiwan official said today that Henry Liu, a Chinese-American author killed in California last October, had been a paid informant for the Nationalist Government for more than three years before his death. The official, who asked not to be identified, said Mr. Liu supplied the Taipei Government with information about China, mainly military intelligence, based on four trips he had made to the mainland. Earlier this week, Mr. Liu's widow, Helen, denied unconfirmed reports that her husband had been a paid agent of the Taiwan Government or an informer for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Taiwan official said he was making the disclosure to show that Mr. Liu was a ''complicated identity'' and that the Taiwan Government had no motive to have him killed.