May 13, 1982

International Two Argentine jets were shot down when they attacked a British warship off the Falklands, the Defense Ministry announced. Reports reaching London said that the two American-made A-4 Skyhawks had been escorting transport planes trying to run the British blockade when they were brought down in dense fog and clouds by missiles about 25 miles west of the islands. (Page A1, Column 6.) Foreign journalists were abducted or detained in Buenos Aires. One American journalist was said to be under detention, and two Norwegians were reported by Norwegian diplomats to have been put on separate planes and sent out of the country. (A1:5.) Military aid for El Salvador totaling $60 million was approved overwhelmingly by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The Reagan Administration's request was granted after a heated debate in which the panel struck down proposals to halt or limit the assistance.(A1:2.)

The House Foreign Affairs Committee today overwhelmingly approved the Reagan Administration's proposal for $60 million in military aid to El Salvador. Approval was by voice vote after heated debate and after the committee struck down a series of proposals to limit or halt military aid to the Salvadoran Government. Several Congressmen strongly criticized the opponents of military assistance, accusing them of trying to ''write off'' the Government and hand the country to the leftist guerrillas. But those who wanted to deny El Salvador aid argued that approving the measure would seem a signal of support for a ''repressive'' Government.

The authorities expelled three foreign journalists today and three others were abducted by unknown people and later released naked. Col. Bernardo Menendez, Deputy Minister of the Interior, said tonight that one American journalist and two Norwegians had been expelled for ''compromising national security.'' He declined in an interview to be more specific about the charges. The American, Holger Jensen of Newsweek magazine, was put on a flight tonight to Montevideo, Uruguay, with Ivar Hippe of Dagbladet, an Oslo daily. Frode Holst of the Oslo daily Verdens Gang was put on a plane earlier to Brazil.

Since its founding in 1919, the New School for Social Research has lived by its wits in Manhattan. Take the way Alvin Johnson, who founded the school in 1919, obtained the main building. Mr. Johnson approached Daniel Cranford Smith, a friend of the school who owned a string of three houses on West 12th Street, and proposed that in return for allowing the school to ''commandeer'' them, Mr. Smith and his wife be allowed to spend the rest of their days in a penthouse apartment with a lovely terrace. He argued that the Smiths, who frequently caught cold, would be healthier and ''live much longer'' at the higher elevation. The Smiths bought the argument and lived there for years. The New School bought the buildings, and the terrace is now an extension of the newly renovated office of John R. Everett, the president of the school.

Robert L. Vesco, the fugitive American financier, was briefly detained when he landed in Costa Rica this morning and then expelled from the country as ''an undesirable,'' a Costa Rican Government spokesman said. The spokesman said that Mr. Vesco, who lived in Costa Rica for six years in the 1970's, had flown to neighboring Nicaragua, but officials in Managua said it was ''totally false'' that he had arrived there. Mr. Vesco, 47 years old, faces charges in the United States of ''misappropriating'' more than $224 million from his mutual funds company, Investors Overseas Services, and of making illegal contributions to President Richard M. Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign. But United States requests for his extradition from both the Bahamas and Costa Rica in the early 1970's were turned down by local courts, and no new extradition attempt has been made in almost a decade.