A group of United Nations' member-states on Thursday elected the Assad regime to a leadership post of a special committee dealing with decolonization, sparking protests from a human rights group that had earlier urged U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon to intervene. At a meeting in New York, the committee's newly-elected chairman, Venezuelan ambassador Rafael Ramirez, asked the member-states whether there were any objections to putting forward Syrian ambassador Bashar Ja'afari as its "rapporteur" for the coming year. Hearing no objectives, Ramirez declared Ja'afari -- as well as three nominated vice chairmen, the representatives of Cuba, Sierra Leone and Indonesia -- "elected...