As if the ongoing excitement around fallen Chongqing Communist Party boss WASN’T already enough, news arrived Friday that blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng -- a prominent human-rights advocate confined to his home for a year and a half -- has escaped.

Mr. Chen, who made waves several years ago with a campaign against forced abortions, spent more than four years in prison on charges of disturbing public order and had been subject to “soft detention” in his home village of Dongshigu in Shandong province since September 2010.

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