I've dealt with and fixed this problem for this app once before, but I don't recall exactly what fixed it. The only thing I remember doing is downloading fresh copies of jQuery, jQuery Mobile, etc; but I've done that again and it hasn't fixed the issue.
This character, "Â" shows up for every control that would have an icon, like listviews with a ">", and the buttons seen here.
The character is actually being added to the source of the page as jQM is modifying it (see the span contents):
<a data-icon="maps" id="maps-button" data-role="button" target="_blank" href="http://example.com/map/" data-corners="true" data-shadow="true" data-iconshadow="true" data-wrapperels="span" data-theme="a" class="ui-btn ui-shadow ui-btn-corner-all ui-btn-icon-left ui-btn-up-a">
<span class="ui-btn-inner ui-btn-corner-all">
<span class="ui-btn-text">Maps</span>
<span class="ui-icon ui-icon-maps ui-icon-shadow">Â </span>
</span>
</a>
Any ideas?