If those symbols really represented quote marks they wouldn't show up as ‘
on the newsgroup.  The fact that they show up as ‘ is evidence that they are
valid UTF-8 characters, given that your message was encoded that way to the
group.  This supports the conclusion the others have reached.

You can also use a Reader with UTF-8.  Here is the code from the File
I/O Amanuensis.

// Read Locale-encoded chars ( usually 8 bit ) from a buffered
sequential file.
// WARNING! unsigned Applets may not read the local hard disk.
// To copy/download files see
http://mindprod.com/products.html#FILETRANSFER.

// import java.io.*;

// O P E N
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream( "C:/temp/temp.in" );
InputStreamReader eisr = new InputStreamReader( fis,"UTF-8" );
// usually UTF-8 for Unicode 8-bit giving the full Unicode set, no
BOMs.
// Cp437 is IBM OEM.
// See "encoding" in the Java glossary for alternatives
// such as UTF-16BE for 16-bit, big-endian Unicode characters.
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader( eisr, 4096 /* buffsize */ );

// R E A D
char[] ca = new char[1024];
// -1 means eof.
// You don't necessarily get all you ask for in one read.
// You get what's immediately available.
int charsRead = br.read( ca );
String line;
// File being read need not have have a terminal \n.
// File being read may safely use any mixture of \r\n,  \r or \n line
terminators.
line = br.readLine();
// line == null means EOF
int aChar;
aChar = br.read();
// aChar == -1 means EOF

// C L O S E
br.close();

--------------------------------------

// Write Locale-encoded chars ( usually 8 bit ) into a buffered
sequential file.
// WARNING! unsigned Applets may not write to the local hard disk.
// To copy/download files see
http://mindprod.com/products.html#FILETRANSFER.

// import java.io.*;

// O P E N
FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream( "C:/temp/temp.out" );
OutputStreamWriter eosw = new OutputStreamWriter( fos,"UTF-8" );
// usually UTF-8 for Unicode 8-bit giving the full Unicode set, no
BOMs.
// Cp437 is IBM OEM.
// See "encoding" in the Java glossary for alternatives
// such as UTF-16BE for 16-bit, big-endian Unicode characters.
BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter( eosw, 4096 /* buffsize */ );
PrintWriter prw = new PrintWriter( bw, false /* auto flush on println
*/ );

// W R I T E
prw.write( "platypus" );
prw.println( 149 );
prw.flush();

// C L O S E
prw.close();

--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary
http://mindprod.com