January 12, 1985

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.''