My b2evolution Version: Not Entered

There seems to be two anomalies using 2.4rc2 and the current Live Writer build:

The Live Writer publication date isnt honoured (or maybe not received by b2evo) and all publications have the current date

Live Writer defaults to UTF-8 but the browser seems to interpret the file as Western European so sequnces like ‘Down render as &#8216(Smilie)own. I have tried adding a AddDefaultCharset UTF-8 directive to the .htaccess file in the blog directory but it doesnt seem to correct the display (indeed IE still reports the file as Western European)

Any insights would be appreciated.