regex woes

["miki"]

once upon a time i was the queen of sed i was nearly a master of regex in perl. 
 However i was never able to translate that ability into coldfusion regular 
expressions.    I can't explain it.

 However, that puts me in a spot when i have to format large blocks of text.  
So i have two problems:

 1) I didn't do TOO badly, however i cannot add to the following an apostrophe 
for the life of me...therefore my regex stops when it encounters a '
 (code sample for this regex attached)
 Here is the text for the first code sample 
 "Assessment Grant
 $200,000 for hazardous substances
 MyOrg has selected the City of Metropolis for a silly assessment grant. 
Hazardous substances grant funds will be used to conduct about nine Phase I and 
five Phase II environmental site assessments in the city's Empowerment Zone. 
Grant funds also will be used to support community outreach activities."

 2) i'm stumped at how to translate a line that begins with * (or possibly tab 
star) into a valid unordered list.  Any suggestions? 
 (There is no code sample for this question)
 Text for second code sample:
 "The Pilot has:

     * Conducted seven discussion sessions between property owners, tenants, 
Metropolis City, Myagency, and the responsible party. The purpose of these 
meetings was to discuss the integration of the assessment and cleanup with 
future land use and redevelopment plans. 

 The Pilot is:

     * Assisting property owners in assessing the affects of various 
remediation plans and development options on property values; and 

     * Developing an Agreement in Principle between the property owners, the 
City and the responsible party, which will summarize individual contributions 
to support the integration of assessment and cleanup with redevelopment. 

 Leveraging Other Activities 

 Experience with the Metropolis Pilot has been a catalyst for related 
activities including the following.

     * Presenting land use plans to the City Council for review and public 
input which will demonstrate how brownfields assessment and cleanup fits into 
transportation system plans. 

     * Documenting the agency process in order to demonstrate successful 
strategies that can be used by other communities."




 Code sample 1
 <!--- regular expression to format the text--->
        <cfscript>
                awardBlurb = fs_award_text;
                //Replace Special Characters
                // Grant Type headings - look for any combination of letters 
and spaces 
followed by "Grant" then a newLine character
                //awardBlurb = REReplace(awardBlurb, '([a-zA-Z ]+Grant)', 
'<h4>\1</h4>', 
'all');
                awardBlurb = REReplace(awardBlurb, '([a-zA-Z ]+Grant+[s])', 
'<h4>\1</h4><p>', 'all');
                // Award amount lines -  look for a dollar sign followed by any 
combination 
of characters then a newLine character
                awardBlurb = REReplace(awardBlurb, "(\$[A-Za-z0-9, ]+.)", 
"<em>\1</em><br/>", "all");
  
                // Award blurb text - look for the phrase "... has selected" 
followed by a 
string of alpha-numeric characters and standard punctuation
                awardBlurb = REReplace(awardBlurb, "(MyOrg has 
selected[a-zA-Z0-9&@## 
.;:!?,-]+)", '</p><p>\1</p>', 'all');
        </cfscript>

        #awardBlurb#