title: Display special characters returned from mySQL in drop down select box
body: <p>I am trying to display utf8 characters in a drop down box which is pulled from mySQL (utf8_general_ci) the characters are returning as diamonds with a ? in the middle on.</p>
  
  <p>I have tried htmlspecialchars and htmlentities. And it returns a blank string.
  Site also has the charset set to utf-8.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you very much.</p>