I'm using Arabic (UTF8)
When I upgraded to the latest version, my data looked like this:
???????
both on the site and on phpmyadmin.
I deleted the tables, and restored them via a backup I had through phpmyadmin, and it worked.
So, I though I should report this.
Another thing (sorry for drifting away)

Is there a way that we get notified about new releases via RSS, twitter, mailing list.
I only know that there was a new release today. :S
Thanks