November 24, 2003

Success of Edgar Bronfman Jr's deal to buy Warner Music from Time Warner for $2.6 billion hinges in large part on his conviction that embattled music industry can tame online piracy and reverse three-year sales slump; Bronfman is betting on untested new Internet business, sale of music online; unlike his earlier deal, when he sold his family's Seagram liquor empire for shares of Vivendi, this time he has assembled well-healed cadre of investors that shore his vision, including group led by Thomas H Lee Partners; Bronfman himself is expected to contribute $250 million to deal; in wooing investors, he argued that online music piracy is already abating thanks to lawsuits by music industry and legal online music sales by companies like Apple Computer and Wal-Mart; photo (M)

New York Democrats prepare to get behind presidential hopefuls, but absence of groundswell of support for any one of party's nine presidential candidates has created kind of political free-for-all in political clubhouses across city and state; leading New York Democrats are either sitting on fence or maneuvering behind scenes to rally support for their favored candidate (L)

Series of crimes by young people in Mount Vernon, NY, sends shock waves through schools and community, whose demarcations of race and class in many ways mirror those of Westchester County as whole; northern parts of city and Fleetwood section have solid middle-class population, which includes many black professionals; schools officials worry about 'bright flight,' tendency of wealthier residents, white and black, to send their children to private schools; photos; map (L)

New federal rules allowing customers to keep their cellphone numbers when they move from one wireless carrier to another are going into effect, and they are expected to intensify industry's brutal marketing wars, aggressive price competition and heated technological one-upmanship; will probably hasten what is seen as inevitable consolidation of industry by making it easier to change providers; chart gives subscription data and chief selling points of six largest companies -- Verizon, Cingular, AT&T Wireless, Sprint, Nextel and T-Mobile -- along with analysts' views on their chances for survival; photo (M)

Three American soldiers were killed in Iraq, military officials said, including two who came under attack in the northern city of Mosul. In Baquba, north of Baghdad, where at least five people were killed in a suicide bombing on Saturday, a soldier from the Fourth Infantry Division was killed by a roadside bomb. Article, Page A10.