Strange issue with special characters and "select failed" messages

Hello,

I successfully installed refdb and I really  like it. But there is two annoying issues I cannot solve by myself:

Whenever I add an entry with special chars (such as the german ö ä ü), they are mangled in my mySQL Database. If I fix them in the table (with phpmyadmin) they are correct. Then they are correctly downloaded if I query for this reference. So this is a "one way" issue, that makes the whole story even more strange. Can you help me with this?

The second issue is the "select failed" message when I should get a reference. For example: :ID:>0 gives this message or :AU:~Muel where :AU:~Rodd works. How can I resolve this issue=

Thanks a lot for helping with your great tool,

Sebastian

-- 
Sebastian Höhn
Schauinslandstr. 136F

79100 Freiburg