Easter Week

The Roman Catholic cardinals of the United States yesterday urged President Clinton to "use his influence" to halt the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and called on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to cease his assaults on Kosovar Albanians. "The unfolding human tragedy demands immediate attention," the eight cardinals told Clinton in a joint letter, adding, "there must be no time lost in an effort to return to the negotiating table. " In a separate letter to Milosevic, the eight prelates also urged "an immediate cessation of Serbian military and police operations against the population of Kosovo.

In some parts of the city, where concrete gives way to patches of earth, the crocus used to be the first sure sign that spring was on its way. But where Philadelphia's Italian Market runs along Ninth Street, the first harbinger of each year's warming season was the bleating of young, woolly lambs. "We used to have the baby lambs right outside in pens, on the sidewalk," said John Giunta, pointing through the meat-market window that bears the inscription Frank Giunta & Son. "The people would pick out their lambs at Easter, and we would slaughter them.

Calvary Presbyterian Church in Wyncote will hold its Palm Sunday service at 10:30 a.m. Sunday. The service will feature an introit sung by the children's choir and a palm procession. On Maundy Thursday next week, the church will hold a potluck supper at 6:30 p.m. followed by a worship service at 7:30, with Communion and music by the Chancel Choir. All are welcome to both the service and supper. On Good Friday, Calvary Presbyterian will join other churches in the Glenside area - including Carmel Presbyterian Church, St. Luke's Roman Catholic Church and Glenside Methodist Church - for a walk through the neighborhood to share reflections and sing.

A costumed person depicting Jesus will drag a cross and be surrounded by a handful of people dressed as Roman soldiers during the second annual "Walk Behind the Cross" procession set for 6:30 p.m. today, beginning at the Bristol Wharf at Mill and Radcliffe Streets in Bristol Borough and concluding at the Presbyterian Church at Bristol, 225 Radcliffe St., Bristol Borough, which is sponsoring the event. More than 100 people attended last year's procession, according to church secretary Linda Conveys.

SEPTA and all three striking divisions of its striking Transport Workers Union reached tentative agreement on a three-year contract today after an all- night bargaining session. As the city transit strike dragged into its 14th day, negotiators reported they had settled all key contract issues. "I got a good deal," said a hoarse-voiced TWU president Harry Lombardo, a smile spread across his wan face at 6:30 a.m. He added: "We're happy that it's over. We're happy it's a package we can live with, given the climate that we negotiated in. " The union's executive board members were summonned to the Wyndham Franklin Plaza hotel this morning to review the tentative settlement.

I've been waiting for this Sunday for 35 years. For the first time, my birthday is on Easter. When I was 4, it came close. My birthday was Saturday and the Easter Bunny was coming Sunday, and in the balmy spring of late March in Austin, Texas, I was pretty wound up. It was in the car going to Crenshaw's Athletic Club for the Easter party of my pre-school fun-and-games "class" that I asked my mother if Easter would ever be on my birthday....

Roberta Achtenberg is a lesbian and Jerry Falwell doesn't like her. Achtenberg is President Clinton's nominee for assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. She is 42, an attorney from San Francisco where she has held public office and where she founded the National Center for Lesbian Knights (NCLR). Her partner of over 10 years is a judge, and the women have a 7- year-old son together. Falwell finds it all pretty loathsome.

It was only in October 1990 that gasoline prices peaked at $1.378 a gallon for unleaded regular. Now, at some area stations, prices are 99.9 cents a gallon or less. While that's the lowest that gasoline prices have been in almost two years, analysts predicted yesterday that they could go even lower. And you have the world oil glut to thank. OPEC oil ministers over the weekend agreed to cut crude output by 1.2 million barrels a day. But while the decrease was intended to help prop up falling oil prices, industry analysts said yesterday that it was not deep enough to staunch the surplus of oil. As a result, they said, gasoline prices could fall further.

Arab sheiks are trying to prop up sagging oil prices, but one local gasoline retailer says nuts - let's have a price war. Ron Bets has cut the price to 99.9 cents a gallon for self-serve unleaded regular at five Amoco and Mobil Gas 'n Wash stations he owns in Delaware County, his lowest price in almost a year. "We are passing on to customers the lower wholesale prices for gasoline," says Bets, who owns nine other stations in the five-county Philadelphia area. Customers are lining up to buy Bets' cheap fuel at stations in Upper Darby, Fernwood, Parkside, Aston and Springfield.

DREXEL SUES FOR BONUSES Drexel Burnham Lambert, once one of Wall Street's most powerful investment- banking firms, yesterday sued more than 200 people who once were among its highest-paid executives to try to recoup about $260 million in bonuses. Drexel is seeking the most money - $16.6 million - from Leon Black, the former managing director in charge of mergers and acquisitions. In October, the Securities and Exchange Commission released a report criticizing Drexel for having raised its top officers' pay even as it headed for bankruptcy, but concluding that Drexel had done nothing illegal.