[Editor's Note: A month ago, I reported that Washington Mutual was going to charge off the mortgage on the Davis home. Apparently, that has changed.] PEPPERELL The nightmare continues. Home lenders Fannie Mae and Washington Mutual have apparently reneged on prior assurances that the Davis family would not be responsible for a $227,000 loan on their 20A Shawnee Road home.

Nancy Davis was told about a month and a half ago that she could expect a "charge-off" on her mortgage because her house is badly infested with toxic mold. Now, that has all changed, she said Friday. "It's Friday the 13th, and I just got a letter saying Fannie Mae changed their mind and will foreclose on the property," Nancy Davis said. "They will put the property up for auction on Sept. 8 at 10 a.m."

Q: In the process of selling my home, the buyers requested a home inspection. My problems started when the mold inspector reported elevated spores were four to five times the amount found outside. After paying a contractor to clean and treat for molds, the follow-up test showed the levels were even higher. The buyer refused to complete the deal. What made the mold grow so fast, and did we get ripped off by the contractor?

A: With a little investigation, I was able to gain some additional information about the sale of your home. It seems that soon after the initial inspection, the home was left vacant with the utilities off. The resulting enclosed dark and damp environment created an almost perfect situation for mold spores to grow. .

Mattress retailer Select Comfort Corp. saw its shares sink to a new 52-week low on heavy volume Friday after a brokerage firm downgraded the stock on worries that fallout from complaints about mold growing in the company's mattresses could be greater than expected.

Select Comfort said mold-related warranty claims typically affect less than 1 percent of its customers at a cost of less than $200,000 each year. Adams Harkness Inc. analyst Mark Rupe estimates the total cost of the situation at $100,000, and said while incidents have been limited mainly to the Minneapolis region, the problem could become more widespread.

ANDERSON -- When the Vassar family moved into their new home in April, the last thing they expected to do was move out in July. "This was our dream home we had a lot of plans here," Lisa Vassar said.

Vassar said she fell in love with the 2,600-square foot home as soon as she saw it. "Everywhere you look there's just little details that really make this home so appealing," she said.

Cerritos, Calif., August 2004 - A new "Fan Coil UVC Kit" that provides mold and IAQ control, energy savings, and reduced maintenance is now available from Steril-Aire, Inc. Each kit contains a UVC Emitter (TM) and power supply, plus all necessary hardware components to retrofit a fan coil with UVC. The retrofit kit makes it possible to install UVC lights in some of the most difficult to maintain yet widely used A/C systems in the HVAC industry. Applications include hotels, schools, apartments, office buildings, patient rooms, or anywhere fan coil units are located.

Designed for fast and easy snap-in installation, the space-saving kit fits all major fan coil brands. Emitter tubes come in a choice of six lengths from 16" to 42": The correct quantity of kits and/or tube lengths must be selected to irradiate the entire coil. Installed across from the cooling coil, the Emitters irradiate high output UVC energy to eliminate surface contaminants and reduce airborne microbial contaminants.

Mold in the home is not just a health issue. Mold can trigger asthma and other serious health problems -- but it's also risky to your financial health

Charles Perry, a member of the Mortgage Bankers Association's mold task force, said the average cleanup costs more than $40,000.

The goal of the Fungal Genome Initiative is to provide the sequence of key organisms and their related species across the fungal kingdom and thereby lay the foundation for work in medicine, agriculture, and industry through comparative studies. The FGI represents a partnership between the Broad Institute and the broad research community, and is directed by the FGI Steering Committee of fungal biologists. The FGI fungal sequencing has been supported by NHGRI, NSF and USDA and has included collaborations with a number of academic and commercial groups.

In November 2000, Dr. Gerry Fink invited a small group of fungal geneticists and biologists to discuss ways to accelerate the slow pace of fungal genome sequencing. Participants included academic and industrial fungal scientists as well as those with experience in genome sequencing and analysis.

MARTINSVILLE, Ind. -- As Judge Jane Spencer Craney weighed a decision on a child support case, defendant Sondra Hayes had a question. As she sat inside a small room in the Morgan County Jail, Hayes leaned over and whispered to Deputy Prosecutor Robert Hagee: "Why are we having this hearing here instead of the courthouse?" Nobody can answer that question -- at least not precisely.

A mysterious smell inside the Circuit Court chambers July 28 was the first hint that something was amiss at the Morgan County Courthouse. Since then, county employees -- primarily in Craney's Superior Court 3 and Circuit Court -- have battled illness and moved to temporary quarters.

August 10, 2004 - A group of parents sues to keep their kids out of school in September. Ten Gloucester County parents have filed suit against the Washington Township School Board demanding that their children be transferred to the town's only middle school with clean air.

The parents say a chronic mold problem at Orchard Valley and Chestnut Ridge schools is making their children sick. Students and staff have complained of headaches, fatigue and difficulty breathing. The lawsuit says their symptoms grew worse because the district mishandled the cleanup.

Two consumer watchdog groups say Texas homeowners are paying too much for insurance. Leaders from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) want Texas insurance companies to pay back $400 million in premiums.

Representatives from AARP and the group Texas Watch spoke in Waco Thursday. They claim insurance companies have been over-charging homeowners, despite insurance reform promises. As a result, the groups say, nationwide, the insurance industry saw a 900 percent increase in profits.

"Come see what an uninsurable property lookslike," Mark Christiansen laughed. The 37-year-old graphic artist and his wife, Amy Lodato, were in a mad scramble to get insurance for their 1940 Russo-style duplex in San Francisco's Lone Mountain neighborhood.

Uninsurable? Images run rampant through my mind: A mildewed shack, teeming with rats, perched atop a cliff. A burned-out hovel inhabited by squatters on the edge of a brush-fire zone. A straw-bale house in a flood zone.

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Looking for a good laugh? Check "No Joke Too Obvious" for some of the funny e-mail chains people have forwarded, thinking the stories were true. The doctored photos section is great, and has snopes- like explanations for how the photos were made.