title: How to create a pandas dataframe containing columns with special characters?
body: <p>I try to create a Pandas data-frame from a list of dictionaries:</p>
  
  <pre><code>df = pandas.DataFrame(ls, columns = cols)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>As a result I get the following error message:</p>
  
  <pre><code>UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 6: ordinal not in range(128)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I assume that the errors is caused by the fact that some values of the dictionary contains "special characters" (like <code>ä</code> or <code>ö</code>).</p>
  
  <p>How can I make pandas to accept these characters?</p>