AT&T is expected to advocate more transparency and consumer control in targeted advertising in testimony today before a House subcommittee conducting a hearing on the practice, Emily Steel reports. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), chairman of the subcommittee, says that a statute is needed to regulate how companies collect, share and use data on consumers' behavior in targeting online advertising. AT&T will say that consumers should have "full and complete" notice of what information is collected about them and how it is used and protected, and should have tools that let them determine whether their Web activities are being tracked. The …

Amy Tennery reports on a new "Seven Sins of Greenwashing" report, which defines the practice as "the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service." And, it names names. Several Green Works products, for example, are cited for containing corn-based ethanol, which the environmental community has targeted for being neither cost effective nor eco-friendly. "Compared with other green cleaning options, like do-it-yourself home cleaners, Clorox Green Works is hardly the best choice," according the story. Green Works was launched through a partnership between the …

Kids In Danger, a Chicago-based non-profit children's product-safety advocacy group, is calling on the Consumer Product Safety Commission to require companies to do more community outreach to make sure the public is informed about product recalls, Kayce T. Ataiyero reports. "What we've found is if a product is recalled, it remains in a consumer's home regardless of the publicity around a recall," says Nancy Cowles, executive director of Kids In Danger. The group also is asking that companies be required to provide a replacement product or refund. Joe Martyak, a spokesman for the CPSC, defends the agency's record …

When his 11-year-old daughter brought home a note that she would be taking a one- to two-hour "Always Changing" class covering personal hygiene and menstruation, an anchor-reporter for a Boston public radio station discovered a program that Procter & Gamble developed in 1984. Funded by Old Spice deodorant and Always feminine products, it reaches 85% of America's fifth-graders, Sean Cole reports. Susan Linn, who heads up the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood in Boston, says the whole purpose of a video that comes with the curriculum is marketing, as is made evident by the ubiquitous Always package in a …

Some drug makers are pegging how much insurance companies pay for their drugs to how effective they are for individual patients, Andrew Pollack reports. Merck is expected to announce today, for example, that it has agreed to tie what Cigna pays for the diabetes drugs Januvia and Janumet to how well Type 2 diabetes patients are able to control their blood sugar.

General Motors plans to essentially quit making cars and trucks in North America for nine weeks from mid-May through July, Sharon Silke Carty and James R. Healey report. Sources say the company will shut 15 of GM's 21 car and truck assembly plants, most of them in the U.S. The company hopes to cut costs and shrink a glut of unsold vehicles at dealers. "They just plan to shut down and come back up with the next model-year (2010) vehicles," says Stephen Spivey, senior auto analyst at Frost & Sullivan. GM will meet with United Auto Workers leaders …