Special characters from XML issues, wtf!

I’m having problems getting special characters encoded in Unicode to display in Flash. I’ve done this many other times with no problems. Whats interesting is that when the XML is parsed, the special character appears in my trace in the output box. With that in mind I hoped it was just a font issue, but all necessary characters are embedded…

the xml node is as follows: [COLOR=Sienna]<text>Dr. Daña Garcia is the mother of five, a dedicated educator, and one of 14 researchers nationwide to receive a Hope for Vision grant.</text>

[COLOR=Black]the trace in output appears as:[/COLOR] FUNCTION - grabXML() | banner NODE text is: Dr. Daña Garcia is the mother of five, a dedicated educator, and one of 14 researchers nationwide to receive a Hope for Vision grant.
[COLOR=Black]
and yet, it appears like this:[/COLOR] [/COLOR][COLOR=Sienna]Dr. Daa Garcia is the mother of five, a dedicated educator, and one of 14 researchers nationwide to receive a Hope for Vision grant.[/COLOR]

The Flash slideshow application can be seen at http://www.txstate.edu

The source .FLA, .XML and images are here: http://www.efcmusic.com/rob/RS_unicode.zip

Any help would be appreciated!!