A Notes on UTF8 in PHP & MYSQL

According to Wikipedia, the Congo Region has 3 countries, the 2 Congo countries and the Angola.

I was tasked 2 list the countries all over the world and that includes the two (2) countries of Congo called Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa).

The addition of the dash - thing on the country to identify that separate country rendered some special unknown characters in both IE and Firefox browser. So upon seeing the content of the combo-box that contains the list of the country, this 2 country was rendered then as Congo <special character> Kinshasa and Congo <special character> Brazzaville. I thought that was just the result of the uploads via LOAD DATA INFILE command of Mysql yet when I browse the code via mysql client console, the dash stays there. Later I realize that this UTF8 thing really made that difference.

Thus using the command :
mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");
resolves that issue.