MUBARAK . . . THE UPSIDE

As Egyptian officials investigateMonday's assassination attempton President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia,TIME's Lara Marlowereports that Mubarak is awash in newfound popularity back home. In Cairo today, Mubarak held a rally to celebrate the failed assassination attempt in Addis Ababa, thought to have been staged by fundamentalist advocates of Islamic rule. "All day," Marlowe reports, "Egyptian television showed him receiving the masses, many of them women in veils. Egyptians are very deeply Muslim, and the government is constantly trying to show it represents Islam every bit as much as the fundamentalists." Surrounded by dozens of security guards at the ornate Qubba Palace, Mubarak told 5,000 supporters: "I'm a believer. God is there." Many in the crowd wept openly, some simply from relief that the gunmen failed to eliminatethe one man with a clear claim to power in Egypt.