Koch Is Hospitalized for Lung Ailment

Edward I. Koch, the former mayor of New York, was admitted to a hospital late Saturday night, and tests there showed that he had fluid on the lungs, according to a spokesman. It was the third time that Mr. Koch has been hospitalized in recent months.

Mr. Koch, 88, who led the city for 12 years, beginning in 1978, looked unwell and complained of swollen ankles at a lunch on Saturday with former aides, said George Arzt, his former press secretary and a longtime friend. A physician that he had dinner with that night examined him, Mr. Arzt said, and recommended that he seek medical attention.

Mr. Koch was admitted to NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital about 10 p.m., according to a spokeswoman for the hospital.

Mr. Arzt said that Mr. Koch was in fine spirits, when the two men spoke on Sunday evening. “He joked that ‘it’s not death dealing’,” Mr. Arzt said. The former mayor added: “I could die but not from this.”

Doctors have told Mr. Kochthat they were waiting for the swelling in his ankles to go down, and that he might be released from the hospital as early as Wednesday, Mr. Arzt added.

Mr. Koch was last hospitalized in December when he was treated for a lung infection. He was released in time for his 88th birthday. Last September, he was admitted for treatment of anemia.

Malian Musicians Call for Peace

More than 40 pop musicians from Mali have recorded a song pleading for peace. The country has been hit in recent days by fighting between government forces aided by French troops and warplanes and Islamic rebels who control the north.

Calling themselves “Voices United for Mali, the musicians were assembled at Studio Bogolan in the capital, Bamako, by the singer Fatoumata Diawara. The group includes internationally known Malian pop stars like Amadou & Mariam, Bassekou Kouyate and Vieux Farka Toure. The group has released a song with an accompanying video called “Mali-Ko” or “Peace.”

“What’s going on in Mali” Ms. Diawara sings. “Do we really want to kill each other Do we really want to betray one another Allow ourselve to be divided. Remember we are all children of the same mother country.”

At a news conference last week, Ms. Diawara said she believed that the Malian people were looking to musicians to provide moral principles in a chaotic and fast-moving conflict. “They have lost hope in politics,” she said. “But music has always brought hope in Mali.”

The lyrics call for peace, but several musicians added verses that seemed to be a rallying cry for southerners to resist the Islamic forces in the north, reflecting a fear that the militants intend to take over the country and impose sharia law. Before the French intervened, Islamic rebels had consolidated their power on their stronghold around Timbuktu, carrying out public amputations, whippings and stonings as the weak Malian army retreated south.

One musician on “Mali-ko,” Soumaila Kanouté, sings in French: â€! œNever Have I seen such catastrophe, such desolation. They want to impose sharia law on us. Tell the north that our Mali is one nation, indivisible.”

And Doussou Bakayoko added this verse: “Our Mali will never belong to those people. This great nation will not be their victim.”

Schwarzenegger Stumbles at the Box Office

What if the Terminator tried to make a movie comeback and almost nobody cared Arnold Schwarzenegger faced that question over the weekend as “The Last Stand,” his first star vehicle since returning to Hollywood from politics, took in an abysmal $6.3 million at the North American box office. That total was good enough only for 10th place at theaters. Mr. Schwarzenegger found box-office gold time and again as the Terminator, but now Lionsgate finds itself counting on his overseas fans to make up for the roughly $45 million it spent to make this new movie.

“Mama,” meanwhile, a low-budget thriller from Universal Pictures starring Jessica Chastain, was a bigger-than-expected No. 1, taking in about $28.1 million, according to Hollywood.com, which compiles box-office data. “Zero Dark Thirty” (Sony) finished second â€" it also features Ms. Chastain â€" by selling about $17.6 million in tickets, for a five-week total of $55.9 million.

Lifted y a wider release and eight Oscar nominations, “Silver Linings Playbook” (the Weinstein Company) soared to third place in its 10th week in theaters, taking in an estimated $11.4 million, for a total of $55.3 million. “Gangster Squad” (Warner Brothers) limped along in fourth place, with $9.1 million in sales, for a two-week total of $32.2 million. “Broken City” (20th Century Fox), a crime drama starring Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe, was a weak fifth; it might have siphoned interest from “The Last Stand” but still managed to take in only about $9 million in its first weekend in theaters.

Gun-Control Advocate Looking for a Million Good Moms

Shannon Watts of Zionsville, Ind., did not want her 12-year-old son to hear about the Sandy Hook massacre. The memory of what had happened last summer after the movie theater shootings in Aurora, Colo., was too raw.

The day after the Colorado shootings, her son Sam went to see “The Dark Knight Rises,” the same Batman movie that had been playing when James E. Holmes opened fire, killing 12 people and wounding 58 others. Sam had what Ms. Watts described as a panic attack.

“He became obsessed with the idea that the person next to him had a gun,” she said, adding that he was soon afflicted with nervous tics and had a hard time sleeping. He has since seen a psychologist, she said.

Ms. Watts’s first response to word of the carnage at the elementary school in Newtown, Conn., was: “We can’t let Sam know.” Her second response was to start a grass-roots group, One Million Moms for Gun Control, to press for more effective firearms legislation and for wat she called “a sensible interpretation of the Second Amendment.”

The group, working with newly formed chapters from Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, plans to gather at 9:15 a.m. on Monday at Cadman Plaza Park in Brooklyn, march across the Brooklyn Bridge at 9:35 a.m. and hold a rally in City Hall Park at 10:30 a.m. Ms. Watts will speak, as will Jackie Rowe-Adams, a founder of Harlem Mothers SAVE, which assists parents whose children have been killed by gun violence.

“The time has come, just like in the 1980s when the time was right for Mothers Against Drunk Driving,” Ms. Watts said. “We need MADD for gun control.”

Ms. Watts, who said she was a corporate public-relations executive for 15 years and has been “a stay-at-home mom” for the last five, started the group with a Facebook page. By Saturday! , more than 31,600 Facebook users had “liked” the group.

“There was no focus group testing,” she said. “I came up with the name off the top of my head. I had a feeling that every other mom in America had a similar idea. I just happened to create the page that they found.”

Since then, she said, the group has applied to the Internal Revenue Service for nonprofit tax status and has set up more than 70 chapters. But she said she was determined to use social media to counter the influence of the National Rifle Association and its success in lobbying to loosen or eliminate gun regulations.

“We had a whole tool created so moms can get online and e-mail and tweet their representatives, ‘We demand action now,’” she said. “We see this as very much a long-term effort on the state and federal levels to create stronger gun control laws that will protect our families.”

The group issued a statement on Wednesday applauding President Obama’s proposals to ban military-style asault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines and to widen background checks for gun buyers. The One Million Moms group also called for regulating and tracking ammunition and for limiting state concealed-weapons laws.

Ms. Watts, in a telephone interview, praised the gun control bill that the New York Legislature approved and that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed into law on Tuesday. The measure expanded the existing ban on assault weapons and limited magazine clips to 7 rounds of ammunition instead of 10.

She suggested that New York’s success in passing a gun-control bill should serve as an example for Congress. “The fact that Governor Cuomo was able to find common sense and common ground with a Republican-led State Senate shows it can be done,” she said.

She said the Sandy Hook shootings were “the tipping point” in the national dialogue on gun violence.

“When you see 6- and 7-year-old babies shot 11 times in a classroom, a place we consider a safe haven, that’! s a tippi! ng point,” she said. “The N.R.A. outlined how they saw the vision of America. That future is everyone is armed and the bad guys shoot it out with the good guys over our children’s heads. That’s not tenable, and it’s not the American way.”