mysql_query('SET NAMES UTF8');

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

...
        public function connect()
	{
		if ($this->_connection)
			return;

		if (Database_MySQL::$_set_names === NULL)
		{
			// Determine if we can use mysql_set_charset(), which is only
			// available on PHP 5.2.3+ when compiled against MySQL 5.0+
			Database_MySQL::$_set_names = ! function_exists('mysql_set_charset');
		}

		// Extract the connection parameters, adding required variabels
		extract($this->_config['connection'] + array(
			'database'   => '',
			'hostname'   => '',
			'port'       => NULL,
			'socket'     => NULL,
			'username'   => '',
			'password'   => '',
			'persistent' => FALSE,
		));

		// Prevent this information from showing up in traces
		unset($this->_config['connection']['username'], $this->_config['connection']['password']);

		try
		{
			if (empty($persistent))
			{
				// Create a connection and force it to be a new link
				$this->_connection = mysql_connect($hostname, $username, $password, TRUE);
			}
			else
			{
				// Create a persistent connection
				$this->_connection = mysql_pconnect($hostname, $username, $password);
			}
		}
		catch (ErrorException $e)
		{
			// No connection exists
			$this->_connection = NULL;

			throw $e;
		}

		// \xFF is a better delimiter, but the PHP driver uses underscore
		$this->_connection_id = sha1($hostname.'_'.$username.'_'.$password);

		$this->_select_db($database);

		if ( ! empty($this->_config['charset']))
		{
			// Set the character set
			$this->set_charset($this->_config['charset']);
		}
	}
...

preg_replace('/(\s+)\s{1,}/', "\n", $request->response);