FMX-html Entities in text field

Hi!
I am dinamically loading and external text from a text file (data.txt) into a text field in flash. That text field reads the external string as html text so I can format the text (face, color, etc) in the text field externally. Easy huh? The problem is that for some reason flash doesn’t detect html entities. Example: If flash encounters an ampersand in that external text it doesn’t load the rest of the text. If I use the html entity for that character (that is &amp) it doesn’t work either.
Any ideas why all the html tags are recognized but not the entities?
thanx.