htmlentities and htmlspecialchars refuse to process string

Since the last update to PHP5 5.4.0-3 on my Debian box I noticed that some pages have empty fields where text from the MySQL database should be. I played around a bit and found the problem. ``` <?php $scselect = mysql_query("SELECT `name` FROM `forum_threads` WHERE `forum` = '1' ORDER BY `timestamp` DESC") or exit((mysql_error())); while ($scrow=mysql_fetch_array($scselect)) { var_dump($scrow['name']); var_dump(htmlentities($scrow['name'])); } ?> ``` strangely this is whats printed: ``` string(18) "php hu3: the Forum" string(0) "" string(18) "php hu2 score-rule" string(0) "" string(6) "php hu" string(0) "" string(15) "HU 8: Binarycnt" string(0) "" ``` but if I use htmlentities with hardcoded content -> htmlentities("test"); it works like charm. Also if I do this: ``` var_dump("a".$scrow['name']); ``` it also says ``` string(0) "" ``` But it gets stranger. If I use htmlentities or htmlspecialchars with any other variable from the database it works just perfectly. ``` var_dump(htmlspecialchars($scrow['ID'])); // prints for example string(2) "87" ``` what can be the cause of this?