import unicodedata


def toAscii(s):
    """
    Sanitarize the given unicode string and remove all special/localized
    characters from it.

    Category "Mn" stands for Nonspacing_Mark

    Curtesy of StackOverflow.
    """
    try:
        return ''.join(
            c for c in unicodedata.normalize('NFD', s)
            if unicodedata.category(c) != 'Mn'
        )
    except:
        return s