diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 1c68c50f1..401e5ad9b 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Type: Package
 Package: datawizard
 Title: Easy Data Wrangling and Statistical Transformations
-Version: 0.8.0.7
+Version: 0.8.0.8
 Authors@R: c(
     person("Indrajeet", "Patil", , "patilindrajeet.science@gmail.com", role = "aut",
            comment = c(ORCID = "0000-0003-1995-6531", Twitter = "@patilindrajeets")),
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 721ecd2ee..798796a56 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -29,6 +29,10 @@ BUG FIXES
   naming arguments, like `grepl(pattern, x = a)`) were mistakenly seen as
   faulty syntax. 
 
+* Fixed issue in `empty_column()` for strings with invalid multibyte strings.
+  For such data frames or files, `empty_column()` or `data_read()` no longer
+  fails.
+
 # datawizard 0.8.0
 
 BREAKING CHANGES