diff --git a/etc/NEWS b/etc/NEWS
index 9f97d764aee..4c14e20e157 100644
--- a/etc/NEWS
+++ b/etc/NEWS
@@ -1265,6 +1265,12 @@ Emacs 24.2 and earlier, which did not support unary '/'.
 that happen, 'unhandled-file-name-directory' now defaults to calling
 'file-name-as-directory'.
 
+** The URL package now insists on sending only unibyte strings to server
+This means packages that use URL cannot bind `url-request-data' to
+multibyte strings.  If non-ASCII characters should be part of the URL
+payload, then `url-request-data' should be encoded to become a unibyte
+string.
+
 
 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 25.1