does/will python support unicode?

[Shaun Hogan]

i hear the ASCII character set is soon to be replaced by "unicode", The
Unicode Standard is the universal character encoding standard used for
representation of text for computer processing. It is fully compatible with
the International Standard ISO/IEC 10646-1; 1993. The design of Unicode is
based on the simplicity and consistency of ASCII, but goes far beyond
ASCII's
limited ability to encode only the Latin alphabet. The Unicode Standard
provides the capacity to encode
all of the characters used for the written languages of the world. It uses a
16-bit encoding that provides
code points for more than 65,000 characters. To keep character coding simple
and efficient, the Unicode
Standard assigns each character a unique 16-bit value, and does not use
complex modes or escape codes. to find out more about it go to
www.unicode.org
what i need to find out is will python support unicode?
can anyone tell me?
reguards
Shaun