python: unicode problem

Question

I am trying to decode a string I took from file:

file = open (\"./Downloads/lamp-post.csv\", \'r\')
data = file.readlines()
data[0]

Answer 1

This file is a UTF-16-LE encoded file, with an initial BOM.

import codecs

fp= codecs.open("a", "r", "utf-16")
lines= fp.readlines()