In May, the board of trustees of WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh made an offer to buy Rex Hospital from UNC Healthcare. UNC has owned Rex since 2000.

Try calling your local hospital to find the price of a procedure, or a surgery. You can’t find it, in part because everybody pays something different.

Researchers at UNC Chapel Hill will be leading an effort to find a cure for HIV AIDS. The National Institutes of Health awarded a $32 million, 5-year grant to UNC. That money will then be distributed to 19 different laboratories at 9 different academic institutions. David Margolis is a professor of medicine, microbiology, and immunology in the UNC School of Medicine and is a lead researcher with the project. He says previous efforts have lead to anti-retroviral drugs that have improved and prolonged the life of people with HIV.

The FDA has approved a Triangle company's method of treating dry-eye disease. The medical-device company TearScience announced today it will start producing its product called LipiFlow. TearScience president and CEO Tim Willis says it's a treatment that includes a series of procedures to open obstructed oil glands in the eyelids that usually keep eyes moisturized.

North Carolina entrepreneur Josh Whiton had his first business at the age of five when he sold tadpoles to his neighborhood friends. Now, he is the CEO of TransLoc Inc., a company that tracks city buses in real time.

The “Freedom Rallies” of 1963 were remembered and honored yesterday with a North Carolina Highway Historical Marker. 

The “Freedom Rallies” took place in the town of Williamston – in Martin County.  For 32 days – hundreds of mostly African Americans held mass meetings and marches, anchored at Green Memorial Church.  Diane Carr was 12-years-old during the “Freedom Rallies” and remembers singing and marching to the courthouse to demand equal rights.

The National Park Service is accepting public comment about rules governing off-road vehicles on the Outer Banks. North Carolina environmental groups filed a lawsuit in 2007 that said regulators did not have proper rules in place to protect wildlife from vehicles that might disturb sea turtle nests and other natural habitats. At the same time, some North Carolina lawmakers lobbied for beach access to support local businesses. Mike Murray is the superintendent of Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Big game hunting could be coming to the Currituck National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern North Carolina. A new proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would allow limited hunting for white tail deer and feral hogs. Mike Bryant is a refuge manager for six areas including Currituck. He says the rule changes would mark the first time deer and hog hunters would be allowed in the refuge.

EPA officials are working to clean up tractor trailers containing barrels filled with chemicals on a residential property in Rocky Mount. The owner of the property said the trailers had been there since he inherited the land from his father. When crews arrived on-site they reported strong chemical odors and a trailer was leaking black material. Kenneth Rhame of the EPA says they have determined the air around the site is not contaminated, but soil contamination is still a worry.

UNC-Chapel Hill is taking the largest budget cut in the university system. Chapel Hill will receive 18 percent less funding from the state this year.

The world we live in is a complex, evolving ecosystem. North Carolina State University ecologist and evolutionary biologist Rob Dunn wanted to explore how mankind’s interaction with other living species has come to define who we are and why we act the way we do. He found that the human body itself plays host to a myriad of living creatures, some good and some bad, and that our relationships with these life forms are as mysterious as they are vital to our existence.