FCC API: addressing unexpected error

[Ofnuts]

Error:
ubuntu@euca-100-00-00-00:~/Twitter$ python 5_df__cancer_14.py
WARNING:root:Caught an Error: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 71-72: ordinal not in range(128). Retrying in 1 seconds. ((32.35204448, -106.77485461, None, 'json', None), {})
WARNING:root:Caught an Error: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 71-72: ordinal not in range(128). Retrying in 6 seconds. ((32.35204448, -106.77485461, None, 'json', None), {})
WARNING:root:Caught an Error: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 71-72: ordinal not in range(128). Retrying in 36 seconds. ((32.35204448, -106.77485461, None, 'json', None), {})
WARNING:root:Caught an Error: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 71-72: ordinal not in range(128). Retrying in 1 seconds. ((32.35204448, -106.77485461, None, 'json', None), {})                                                                 
WARNING:root:Caught an Error: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 71-72: ordinal not in range(128). Retrying in 6 seconds. ((32.35204448, -106.77485461, None, 'json', None), {})
WARNING:root:Caught an Error: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 71-72: ordinal not in range(128). Retrying in 36 seconds. ((32.35204448, -106.77485461, None, 'json', None), {})
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "5_df__cancer_14.py", line 10, in <module>
   df['fips'] = df.apply(lambda row: census_block_fips(row['latitude'], row['longitude']), axis=1)
 File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pandas/core/frame.py", line 3972, in apply
   return self._apply_standard(f, axis, reduce=reduce)
 File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pandas/core/frame.py", line 4064, in _apply_standard
   results[i] = func(v)
 File "5_df__cancer_14.py", line 10, in <lambda>
   df['fips'] = df.apply(lambda row: census_block_fips(row['latitude'], row['longitude']), axis=1)
 File "/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/fcc/census_block_conversions.py", line 48, in census_block_fips
   return census_block_dict(latitude, longitude, year)['Block']['FIPS']
 File "/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/fcc/census_block_conversions.py", line 39, in census_block_dict
   raise e
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 71-72: ordinal not in range(128)

Could you please help me determine the problem and also suggest if there is a way to "safeguard" from it (e.g., just drop "problematic" values if they occur). Thank you in advance!

Looks like your JSON contains invalid characters due to unescaped characters (if it's in the US look for Spanish names with a n-tilde) or just plain invalid characters due to transmission errors.