Character encoding problems in 4.4

Multiple reports of character encoding problems in 4.4.

Currency symbols incorrect on fresh install:
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=30427
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=30729

This issue, Taoasg Datta reports:
" Â " sign always appearing next to " £ " in language files.

The problem seems to be isolated to parsing sql files with php. So it happens when using the installer UI, but not when setting up with setup.sh. It also seems to happen in some environments and not others.
One guess as to the cause is that perhaps we upgraded a sql library in packages that either has a regression bug or is being incorrectly used (perhaps we need to be passing file encoding as a param somewhere).