regex_combining = re.compile(u'[\u0300-\u036f\u1dc0-\u1dff\u20d0-\u20ff\ufe20-\ufe2f]',re.U)

def remove_diacritics(s):
    """ Decomposes string, then removes combining characters.
        Hand this a unicode string, not an encoded one
    """
    #TODO: Figure out whether the NFC is unnecessary
    return unicodedata.normalize('NFC',
               regex_combining.sub('',unicodedata.normalize('NFD', unicode(s)))
    )