Nigerians have filed suit against ChevronTexaco, alleging the oil giant’s responsibility for deaths of...villagers...at the hands of armed thugs...ChevronTexaco doesn’t deny that it hired the Nigerian military and police officers responsible for the killings, but it claims that it did not authorize the use of deadly force. The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in late 2006, and a class-action lawsuit will be heard in 2007...Shell...lost a court battle in Nigeria in early 2006 over pollution on the Niger River delta and must pay local tribes $1.5 billion. Shell has indicated that it will appeal...The U.S. State Department issued a scathing report in 2003 on human rights and democratic conditions in Kazakhstan, but after a month of intense lobbying from oil companies, the Bush administration certified that the Nazarbayev regime had shown “significant improvement” in human rights...