What was going on when I was born?

Searchers combed the snow-dusted woods near the international airport here today, recovering bodies and searching for clues to the jetliner crash Thursday that killed a 248 American soldiers going home from the Middle East. The investigators said they still did not know what caused the disaster. There were no survivors among the 256 people aboard, who included eight crew members. The chartered DC-8 had stopped to refuel at Gander. ''I have not specifically and categorically ruled out anything at this time,'' Peter Boag, the chief investigator from the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, told reporters at a briefing in the airport terminal late this afternoon.

Intensifying a bitter dispute over who first established the cause of AIDS, officials of the Pasteur Institute, a leading French research organization, announced today that it had sued the United States Government. The director of the institute, Raymond Dedonder, contended at a news conference that its research team headed by Dr. Luc Montagnier found the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome and developed the first test to detect antibodies to the virus in 1983, a year before an American team led by Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute. Professor Dedonder said that after months of fruitless negotiations with American officials over recognition of the institute's contributions to AIDS research and related commercial rights, the institute was suing to have its ''rights recognized in the name of the scientific ethic.'' But Dr. Gallo, the American researcher, said in a telephone interview that the Pasteur Institute was exaggerating its contributions. ''We helped them a lot more than they helped us,'' he said.

The United States today announced its readiness to serve as a guarantor of a peace settlement in Afghanistan that would include both a withdrawal of Soviet troops and an end to American aid to the rebels. Formal notification of the American position was made in a letter sent Wednesday to the United Nations Secretary General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, and made public in a speech tonight by John C. Whitehead, Deputy Secretary of State. He said the letter had conveyed the Administration's acceptance of a draft text of a document being negotiated indirectly between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the United Nations as a mediator. The text, which has not been made public, reportedly includes provisions for noninterference.

Four Cuban Embassy employees tried to kidnap a former Cuban official here today but were foiled when about 30 bystanders intervened, the police said. The four embassy employees, including a vice consul waving a pistol, were arrested after the bystanders and a passing taxi blocked the Cubans' car and helped the former official to escape, the police said. The police identified the former official as Manuel Antonio Sanchez Perez and said he had been a senior economic official in the Government of Fidel Castro. Spanish Interior Ministry officials said that he had asked for political asylum 10 days ago during a stopover en route to East Berlin and that it had been provisionally granted.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted yesterday to raise bus and subway fares to $1, tolls on major bridges and tunnels to $1.75 and commuter railroad fares by 11 percent. The increases take effect Jan. 1. The increases, expected since October, when the authority projected a $267 million operating deficit for 1986, were approved at a special meeting of the authority's board at the Roosevelt Hotel. They are projected to raise an additional $198.8 million next year. That estimate takes into account an expected drop in subway and bus ridership of 1 to 2 percent.

The state's charges against Dr. Elliot M. Gross, the city's Chief Medical Examiner, accuse him of improperly failing to determine that the deaths of four people in police custody were homicides. He also deviated from standard professional practice in five other cases, according to the charges. The charges, made July 30 by the State Health Department's Office of Professional Medical Conduct, have not been fully made public. A copy was obtained by The New York Times.

President Reagan's draft budget for the fiscal year 1987 contains a proposal to sell the Federal Housing Administration to ''private bidders'' by the end of 1989. The agency has provided mortgage insurance for more than 51 million home buyers, enabling many to get mortgages they might otherwise not have been able to obtain. The agency was created by the National Housing Act of 1934 to combat the effects of the Depression. Its policies continue to set standards that are widely followed in the home-building and mortgage industries.

House and Senate negotiators agreed tonight on a 1986 Pentagon budget of $298.7 billion and approved limited production of chemical weapons beginning next year, ending a 16-year ban. In separate bargaining on Capitol Hill, an agreement was reached on legislation to subsidize the sale of surplus tobacco to cigarette companies, bailing out the troubled program that aids tobacco producers. The military negotiators, from the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, also agreed to ban testing of antisatellite missiles and approved $2.75 billion for President Reagan's program for a shield against missile attacks. The accord tonight needs the approval of the full conference committee.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz refused to comment today when asked about President Reagan's executive order requiring polygraph, or lie-detector, testing for high officials, inluding Cabinet officers.

On this sunny speck of an island in the Mediterranean, the color a Maltese wears and the beverage he drinks betray more than esthetic preferences: they are political statements. Supporters of the ruling socialist Labor Party wear red; members of the conservative opposition Nationalist Party wear blue. Labor Party members drink Coca Cola; Nationalist Party people sip Pepsi. Most towns and villages - no matter how small - have two ceremonial bands: Labor and Nationalist.

A House subcommittee looking at purported holdings in the United States of President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines and his wife, Imelda, bogged down today amid partisan disputes and conflicting statements during public and closed sessions. Representative Stephen J. Solarz, Democrat of Brooklyn, and chairman of the subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs of the House Foreign Affairs Committee clashed with a subcommittee member Representative Gerald B. H. Solomon, Republican of upstate New York, over whether the committee's investigation was interfering with elections set for Feb. 7 in the Philippines.

Israel said today that the United States Government had cooperated in the export of technology for producing tank cannon barrels. It denied involvement in any illegal scheme to export the technology without proper licenses. On Thursday, agents of the Customs Service raided factories in three states as part of what Government officials said was an investigation of the possible illegal export of devices needed to manufacture the cannon barrels. An affidavit filed Thursday said that the technique, developed for the M-1 tank by the Watervliet Arsenal, a United States Army center near Albany, produced a gun barrel that was more accurate and more durable than those manufactured with other processes. It said the United States Government had never approved the dissemination of plans for the technique to the Government of Israel.