PHP 5.4 Panels & Ctools issues

Our host recently upgraded php to 5.4, and we came across some issues related to panels, ctools and views.

They are simple issues, but I thought I'd collect here for future reference and to help anyone else who has run into problems.

Unicode issue:
http://drupal.org/node/1444006

Strict Warnings issue:
http://drupal.org/node/1781516

Ampersand issue:
http://drupal.org/node/1469736

Joe