diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 98acb429..9db33953 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,5 +1,8 @@
 # Changelog
 
+## 0.7.0 (February 5th, 2010)
+* ensure utf8 encoding is set on relevant strings during parse/encode in 1.9
+
 ## 0.6.9 (January 26th, 2010)
 * HttpStream patches merged in from Luke Redpath <contact@lukeredpath.co.uk>
 * Changed how Yajl::Parser was calling IO#read to better conform to the Rack spec and thus can be used to directly parse a rack.input stream
diff --git a/lib/yajl.rb b/lib/yajl.rb
index 6945f6d4..d07860e9 100644
--- a/lib/yajl.rb
+++ b/lib/yajl.rb
@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@
 #
 # Ruby bindings to the excellent Yajl (Yet Another JSON Parser) ANSI C library.
 module Yajl
-  VERSION = "0.6.9"
+  VERSION = "0.7.0"
   
   # For compatibility, has the same signature of Yajl::Parser.parse
   def self.load(str_or_io, options={}, read_bufsize=nil, &block)
diff --git a/yajl-ruby.gemspec b/yajl-ruby.gemspec
index f63b7845..3758b2a9 100644
--- a/yajl-ruby.gemspec
+++ b/yajl-ruby.gemspec
@@ -5,11 +5,11 @@
 
 Gem::Specification.new do |s|
   s.name = %q{yajl-ruby}
-  s.version = "0.6.9"
+  s.version = "0.7.0"
 
   s.required_rubygems_version = Gem::Requirement.new(">= 0") if s.respond_to? :required_rubygems_version=
   s.authors = ["Brian Lopez", "Lloyd Hilaiel"]
-  s.date = %q{2010-01-26}
+  s.date = %q{2010-02-05}
   s.email = %q{seniorlopez@gmail.com}
   s.extensions = ["ext/extconf.rb"]
   s.extra_rdoc_files = [