What was going on when I was born?

Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato said today that he had worked out a plan for New York to begin receiving Federal money from the Westway trade-in immediately, a year earlier than had been expected. The Federal highway funds would be the first installment of the $1.725 billion that the state is to receive from trading in the Westway highway and development project, which was abandoned last month by New York. Under Mr. D'Amato's plan, New York would receive about $150 million over the next year for highway projects, rather than waiting until next October for the first funds. ''It's a bonanza,'' said Mr. D'Amato, when asked about his plan. ''It starts the flow of dollars one year early.''

The White House backed away today from its firm support of the Israeli air strike on Tuesday at the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Tunisia. A carefully phrased White House statement called the raid ''understandable as an expression of self-defense'' but said the bombing ''cannot be condoned.'' In its initial statements Tuesday, the White House had called the Israeli action ''a legitimate response'' to ''terrorist attacks.'' The P.L.O. said 67 people were killed in the bombing. Israel said it attacked the P.L.O. headquarters in retaliation for the slaying of three Israeli civilians in Larnaca, Cyprus, last week. P.L.O. officials in Cyprus denied at the time that they or any group affiliated with the P.L.O. were responsible, although an anonymous caller took responsibility on behalf of a Palestinian commando unit.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has been criticized by some in Congress for lax enforcement of futures industry regulations, announced a series of fines and other actions today against nearly a dozen commodities firms, including what agency officials called the largest civil penalty ever levied against a single respondent to one of its complaints. In announcing the actions at a news conference here today, Dennis Klejna, the director of the C.F.T.C.'s enforcement division in Washington, said that the futures industry was ''not rank with abuse, but we want to convey the message to transgressors that we'll take them to task.'' Mr. Klejna said that the agency had undertaken 85 enforcement actions in the recently concluded fiscal year, compared with 73 the previous year. Some futures industry analysts speculated that the commission's multi-count enforcement actions might be aimed at winning support for the commission, which comes up for Congressional reauthorization next year.

The bogged-down computer system in New Jersey's Division of Motor Vehicles was programmed with a relatively new computer language even though its manufacturer and state officials said they urged that a more universally accepted and proven language be used. The dispute over the selection of programming language has emerged as a key element in the initial failure of the division's $15 million computer modernization project to improve services for the state's 4 million motorists, to store data centrally and to cut $3 million a year from operating costs. Instead, the state said, it is now spending $160,000 a month in overtime to clean up a backlog of 1.4 million vehicle registration and ownership records that have piled up in the division's headquarters here since the start of the project in July. This work is expected to last until early next year.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said last night that South Africa's apartheid system ''is doomed'' and that efforts must be made to reach political compromise before a violent revolution topples the Government. Otherwise, he warned, ''the black majority might likely wind up exchanging one set of oppressors for another and, yes, could be worse off.'' In a speech to the National Committee on American Foreign Policy at the New York Hilton, Mr. Shultz said that the present system of racial separation ''must go'' and that ''the only alternative to a radical, violent outcome is a political accommodation now, before it is too late.'' Impassioned Appeal on Mideast Mr. Shultz, in addressing the black-tie audience of 600, broke into his prepared text with an impassioned appeal for an end to violence in the Middle East. He seemed to express understanding for Israel's attack Tuesday on the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunisia, saying the air strike occurred ''in the face of rising terrorist attacks on the citizens of Israel.''

The Hell's Angels motorcycle club and the California Highway Patrol seldom have much in common, but they could chat about their mutual admiration for recent models of Harley-Davidson motorcycles. ''It's amazing, the difference,'' Michael (Irish) O'Farrell, president of the Hell's Angels chapter in Oakland, Calif., said of the latest models. ''They don't beat you to death any more, and your kidneys are still intact.'' Mr. O'Farrell is delighted with his 1985 Harley, and expects the Hell's Angels will continue to require all members to have Harleys rather than Japanese-made bikes. For one thing, he said, the club prefers to buy American. Likewise, the California Highway Patrol is buying Harleys again, after a 10-year period in which it purchased Kawasakis and Suzukis.

A former officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, identified as a double agent working for the Soviet Union, disappeared while under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, law-enforcement officials and intelligence sources said today. The sources said the former C.I.A. officer, Edward L. Howard, used the cover of a moonless night to elude F.B.I. agents watching his home near Santa Fe, N.M. Officials said Vitaly Yurchenko, a Soviet intelligence officer who defected to the West in July, identified Mr. Howard as a double agent. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said tonight that a warrant had been issued for Mr. Howard's arrest charging him with espionage in that he conspired to deliver ''national defense information'' to a foreign government. The bureau said Mr. Howard worked for the C.I.A. from January 1981 to June 1983.

The Soviet Union said a man found shot dead in West Beirut today had been positively identified as one of four Russians abducted in the Lebanese capital Monday by Moslem extremists. Moscow called the killing ''an atrocity which cannot be pardoned.'' At the same time, the Kremlin, in an official statement broadcast tonight on the television news and published by the Tass press agency, said it held Israel indirectly responsible for the abductions. But the Kremlin stopped short of threatening any retaliation. [In Lebanon, officials said the body of the slain man, whom they identified as Arkady Katakov, a secretary at the Soviet Embassy in West Beirut, had been recovered from an open lot near Beirut's shell-ravaged stadium. Page A14. [In Paris, a Soviet official accompanying Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Moscow had asked Syria, its closest ally in the Middle East, for help in winning release of the hostages.] Reaction Closely Monitored Western diplomats, closely monitoring Moscow's reaction to the first terrorist attack against the Soviet Union in the Middle East, said that some kind of retaliatory strike could not be ruled out but that one seemed unlikely.

Only days after its trade association predicted that business would soon improve, the semiconductor industry is demonstrating again this week the effects of a relentless yearlong depression. The National Semiconductor Corporation today reported a loss of $53.5 million for its first fiscal quarter, the largest in its history and the worst so far in the industry's yearlong slump. The report followed announcements earlier this week of austerity measures that included pay cuts by the Intel Corporation and layoffs and salary reductions by the semiconductor operations of Motorola Inc. 'Like Waiting for Godot' The industry that makes the silicon chips used in computers and other electronic equipment has been mired in a slump caused by persistent excess inventories, slowing computer sales, and severe competition from Japan. As for the outlook for a turnaround, ''it's like waiting for Godot,'' said John J. Lazlo Jr., semiconductor industry analyst for Morgan Stanley & Company. ''I don't look for any material improvement over the short term.''

International A man found slain in West Beirut has been identified as one of the four Russians abducted in the Lebanese capital Tuesday, the Soviet Union said. Moscow called the killing ''an atrocity which cannot be pardoned.'' The Kremlin also said it held Israel indirectly responsible for the abductions by Moslem fundamentalists. [Page A1, Column 6.] The White House backed down from its firm support of the Israeli air strike on the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization Tuesday in Tunis. A new statement termed the raid ''understandable as an expression of self-defense'' but said the bombing ''cannot be condoned.'' The White House statement followed what Administration aides termed displeasure at the Israeli attack by key State Department officials, especially Secretary of State George P. Shultz. [A1:4-5.]

The caption of a front-page picture grouping by Reuters yesterday, showing the four Soviet Embassy employees taken captive in Lebanon, reversed two of their identities. Valery K. Mirkov was at the upper left, Dr. Nikolai Versky at the lower right.

The Reagan Administration's decision to promote a new strategy to deal with Latin America's debt marks a turning point in the region's three-year-old financial crisis, foreign bankers and Government officials said here today. They said Washington now accepted the Latin American argument that growth-oriented policies would enable the region to meet its huge debt obligations more effectively than the austerity programs demanded until now by the International Monetary Fund. The sources also noted that, in preparing an initiative to be announced in Seoul, South Korea, next week, the Administration had for the first time endorsed the principle that the governments of leading Western nations should play a direct role in easing the debt crisis. 'First New Approach' ''This is the first new approach that we've seen since the debt crisis began,'' one Brazilian official said. ''It's still too early to know whether it will be radical enough, but it nonetheless marks a significant shift in U.S. thinking.''