neo4j V2.0.0 M5 "java.lang.NullPointerException"

neo4j V2.0.0 M5 "java.lang.NullPointerException"

After upgrading to Neo4j V2.0.0 M5 I ran into the subject error when
running a cypher query in my web app. To isolate the issue, I tried the
following similar queries in the basic Neo4j console
(http://console.neo4j.org/) as follows:
START n=node(*)
WHERE n.name ='Neo'
RETURN n
Result: (6 {name:"Neo"})
Next tested match on regular expression using "=~"
START n=node(*)
WHERE n.name =~'Neo.*'
RETURN n
Result: Error: java.lang.NullPointerException
Next tested on case insensitive by pre-pending a regular expression with
(?i) START n=node(*) WHERE n.name =~'(?i)Neo' RETURN n
Result: Error: java.lang.NullPointerException
And finally tested for both regex and case insensitivity with =~ '(?i)neo.*'
MATCH n
WHERE n.name =~ '(?i)neo.*'
RETURN n
Result: Error: java.lang.NullPointerException
I believe the issue is with "=~." Shouldn't all of these queries resulted
in returning the "Neo" node? If not, please let me know why?
Thank you,
Jeff