February 5, 2005

About 600 paid volunteers will help install 'The Gates,' giant $20 million project by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude that opens in Central Park on Feb 12; workers' task is to assemble 7,500 gates festooned with saffron-colored fabric panels along 23 miles of park's pedestrian walkways; photos (M)

Cablevision, which is trying to prevent New York Jets and city from building football stadium on West Side, says it will pay $600 million to Metropolitan Transportation Authority for right to build office buildings and housing at 13-acre West Side railyards ; offer by Cablevision, which owns Madison Square Garden, includes price of $250 million deck over yards for development; Jets have offered MTA $100 million for land; Cablevision offer throws deliberate wrench into politically charged negotiations (M)

Labor Department reports modest expansion of labor market in January, with addition of 146,000 new jobs; unemployment rate drops to three-year low of 5.2 percent; labor participation rate reaches 65.8 percent, lowest level since 1988; number of discouraged workers--those who have stopped looking for work--rises to 515,000, almost 20 percent increase over year ago; graphs; charts (M)

US Airways, defying critics and rivals despite being paralyzed six weeks ago by Christmas debacle that bungled its baggage operations, has managed to survive predictions that it would not last the winter; airline has avoided fate that brought down TWA, Eastern and Pan Am as result of government's pledge to secure loan guarantees and GE Capital Aviation Services' timetable requiring it to leave bankruptcy protection by June 30; airline has instituted series of union concessions and other cost-cutting measures as it seeks to position itself as competitor in low-fare airline market; photos; graphs; chart (M)

Nearly third of $2 billion that Mayor Michael R Bloomberg pledged to modernize and preserve public housing will be borrowed from bond market, highlighting significant change in which New York, following lead of several other cities, plans to add to its debt to make repairs; plan requires that city use part of its annual capital subsidy from federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to repay debt (M)