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The behaviour of python in this area is confusing. See a
session with my Spanish keyboard:

>>> print "á"
á
>>> print len("á")
2
>>> print "á".upper()
á
>>> str("á")
'\xc3\xa1'
>>> print u"á"
á
>>> print len(u"á")
1
>>> print u"á".upper()
Á
>>> str(u"á")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
__builtin__.UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode
character u'\xe1' in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)


I guess this is what is happening to the reporter.

This violates the least surprising behavior principle in so
many different ways that it hurts. Can anybody make sense of it?