January 26, 1985

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.