3 questions about Path redirect...

Issue Summary

Hi,

I have post this inquiry at Global redirect, but they suggest my inquiry is under Path redirect. My post goes...

I have these 3 URLs:

http://kapitbisig.com/content/biag-ni-lam-ang-ifugao-epic
http://kapitbisig.com/index/789/bilingual-tagalog-english-version-biag-n...
http://kapitbisig.com/node/789

pointing to only 1 content and currrently I'm using .htaccess to redirect these 3 URLs (script below):

RewriteRule ^content/biag\-ni\-lam\-ang\-ifugao\-epic$ http://kapitbisig.com/index/789/bilingual-tagalog-english-version-biag-n... [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^node/789$ http://kapitbisig.com/index/789/bilingual-tagalog-english-version-biag-n... [R=301,L]

I have 3 questions:
1. I'm thinking which is more effective redirecting URLs (if I have thousands of URLs to redirect): .htaccess or Path redirect?
2. And I'm wondering, can the Path redirect handle 3 URLs redirect to only one content?
3. I have some URLs containing special UTF-8 characters (like: ò and â in http://kapitbisig.com/content/punò-nang-salitâ) and I would like to redirect it to other URL, but I can't make it work in .htaccess:

RewriteRule ^content/punò\-nang\-salitâ$ http://kapitbisig.com/index/942/florante-laura-ni-francisco-baltazar-com... [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^node/942$ http://kapitbisig.com/index/942/florante-laura-ni-francisco-baltazar-com... [R=301,L]

Can Path redirect handle this?

Thank you in advance.

Regards,
arpeggio