As commented by Dagon,  is the BOM and may be causing problems with the file being read (specially if it is done in CMD on Windows). Remove the BOM from your script file.
As for the special characters, you may need to convert them, specially if your source isn't UTF-8.
I had a similar problem once and the solution for me was to certify that the input was being read correctly and converting them before outputting.
For converting the characters, I did something like this:
mb_convert_case($result['products_name'], MB_CASE_UPPER, "UTF-8");
To certify I was working with UTF-8, I issued
$connection->set_charset("utf8");
when connecting to my database.
Take care.