If a recent night out at Denny's is any indication, public life may not go back to normal any time soon for one California police officer even after being acquitted of murder.

Former Fullerton, California, police officer Manuel Ramos was one of two officials accused of beating a homeless schizophrenic man named Kelly Thomas to death back in 2011. Thomas was beaten and tasered multiple times during the confrontation, which left him in a coma. He died five days later in a hospital bed.

In a controversial trial that ended in January, both the 39-year-old Ramos and former Corporal Jay Cicinelli were found not guilty.

Although Ramos has been spared jail time, the rest of his public life looks like it's going to be more complicated, at least in the short term. Ramos doesn't live in Fullerton anymore, but some time after his acquittal he found himself visiting a local Denny's restaurant in the area, and local diners were not pleased to see him there.

According to a blog post by Orange County Weekly, Ramos was confronted by customers sitting next to him to the extent that he stood up and left the restaurant. A photo was also snapped of Ramos and posted on Facebook, with the caption reading:

Angry residents in a flood-hit flat block have blasted a "total lack of support" from Christchurch council and their MP, saying they have been forced to buy their own sandbags.

Residents in Conifer Close - some of whom were evacuated on Christmas Day - say they are the "forgotten corner" of Christchurch and living in fear of further flooding.

Residents say they requested sandbags from the council but were told they would have to purchase Floodsacks at £30 for a pack of four.

Today, as the Government insisted councils shouldn't charge for sandbags and the cost would be met centrally, Christchurch council clarified their position saying they don't charge for them in an emergency and if the Environment Agency put out a red warning, they will provide them free of charge.

A spokesperson said at the moment people are concerned and are requesting them just in case, and in instance they charge £30 for a flood pack.

Residents at Conifer Close have suffered flooding issues since Christmas Day.

And yesterday, while PM David Cameron promised that "money is no object" when it comes to helping flood victims, Conifer Close residents told the Daily Echo they have had to buy their own sandbags and plastic sheeting.

They have also asked for help from their MP Chris Chope, but say he has not accepted their invitations to visit them.

Thousands of people have turned out in Romania to protest plans by a Canadian company to develop Europe's biggest gold mine. The open-cast mine would involve the use of cyanide and the razing of four mountains.

An estimated 4,000 people demonstrated in the capital Bucharest, 3,500 people took to the streets of the northwestern city of Cluj and another 600 demonstrated in Timisoara to demand the mine project in Rosia Montana be dropped. They also called for the government to resign. Protesters marched past government headquarters on Sunday shouting "Your treason is measured in gold!"

The mine is believed to contain 314 tons of gold and 1,500 tons of silver which would be extricated in a couple of decades, according to the project plans.

Prime Minister Victor Ponta had opposed the project when he was a member of the opposition but is now backing it. The bill clearing the way for the mine to be developed has yet to be approved by parliament.

In what should be filed under: ''most impressive Olympic medal news ever,'' Sochi brass have announced that all gold medals to be handed out on Feb. 15 will be embedded with shards of meteorite.

The move will mark the one-year anniversary of the Chelyabinsk meteor strike, which injured nearly 1,500 people.

"We will hand out our medals to all the athletes who will win gold on that day, because both the meteorite strike and the Olympic Games are global events," said Chelyabinsk Region Culture Minister Alexei Betekhtin.

Energy secretary to raise concerns about political consensus breaking down as other parties denounce science

Britain's climate change policy is under threat from a "diabolical cocktail" of nimbyism, denial of science and fear of Europe from politicians on the right, the energy secretary will say on Thursday.

Amid growing warnings about a potential link between global warming and extreme UK weather, Ed Davey will raise concerns that the politicial consensus about the need to tackle climate change is in danger of breaking down as some in the Conservative and Ukip parties try to discredit the science.

He will say that the actions of climate deniers are "undermining public trust in the scientific evidence for climate change" and that "we can see around us today the possible consequences of a world in which extreme weather events are much more likely".

Grey-haired and grinning, two dozen couples hold champagne flutes at a Warsaw ceremony in their honour. They survived 50 years of marriage and in Poland, that is reason enough for a presidential medal.

"To qualify, you have to put in over 18,000 solid days of work. Other medals require less, so it really is a considerable feat to have spent the last half century together," Warsaw mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz says at this month's event.

The lucky-in-loves take turns walking down the red carpet to accept their medals -- silver-plated with intertwined roses at the centre and a pink ribbon -- while family members cheer and play paparazzi at the back of the room at the so-called Wedding Palace.

The tradition is regularly played out in cities across the heavily Catholic country, with a hefty average of 65,000 medals awarded each year according to the president's office.

True, marital milestones are also recognised elsewhere. In the United States, a golden anniversary will get you a greeting from the White House, while Britain sets the bar a notch higher: couples have to make it through six decades without splitting for a message from the queen. She herself qualified seven years ago.

Yet no other country honours marathon marriages with a presidential medal, something more often associated with military feats for example.

"It's really quite unusual. I haven't found any other (medal) that's specifically for sustaining a marriage," says Megan Robertson, a 54-year-old computer programmer who runs the website "Medals of the World".

"Although, many countries have awards for raising large numbers of children -- something popular in Communist countries," adds the Briton who has herself been married for nearly 30 years.

Socialist-era Romania for example had "what they called the Order of Mother Hero, which I think she was, because you had to have 10 children to get it. That sounds pretty heroic to me."

Robertson says medals offer an indication of what a country finds important, whether it be a particular profession or trade or churning out enough children to fill factories and armies.

Rather than grovel and beg for the U.S. government to respect our privacy, these innovators have taken matters into their own hands, and their work may change the playing field completely.

People used to assume that the United States government was held in check by the constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and which demands due process in criminal investigations, but such illusions have evaporated in recent years. It turns out that the NSA considers itself above the law in every respect and feels entitled to spy on anyone anywhere in the world without warrants, and without any real oversight.

Understandably these revelations shocked the average citizen who had been conditioned to take the government's word at face value, and the backlash has been considerable. The recent "Today We Fight Back" campaign to protest the NSA's surveillance practices shows that public sentiment is in the right place. Whether these kinds of petitions and protests will have any real impact on how the U.S. government operates is questionable (to say the least), however some very smart people have decided not to wait around and find out. Instead they're focusing on making the NSA's job impossible. In the process they may fundamentally alter the way the internet operates.

A San Diego police officer accused of using his badge to gain sexual favors used fear to get what he wanted, the attorney of one of the alleged victims told 10News in an interview on Monday.

Local attorney Dan Gilleon said Christopher Hays - a four-year member of the San Diego Police Department who is accused of groping female suspects during searches - "victimized" his client, and his fellow officers, through his alleged actions. Gilleon represents a sixth accuser in the case.

Gilleon said his client, who came forward over the weekend, was forced to give Hays oral sex in October 2012 after he pulled her over. Gilleon said she felt "humiliated and degraded but didn't think anyone would believe her."

"He came in contact with her, got her in his car in the front seat and drove her home," Gilleon said. "And outside her house is where he said 'listen, either do this or things are going to be bad for you.' And the way she took it was that she was going to go to jail. So basically oral sex or jail. And she chose oral sex."

Gilleon said the woman told her family about the incident, but didn't feel that anyone else would believe her. He said it wasn't until she saw Hays' picture on her Facebook news feed, from a 10News post, that she recognized who he was and decided to come forward.

Parents are outraged after students at a Queens elementary school were allegedly told they couldn't write reports about Malcolm X as part of a Black History Month assignment.

Last week, a technology teacher told fourth-graders at P.S. 201 in Flushing to chose a prominent African-American figure to write about.

Initially, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Malcolm X were all considered acceptable options, but that changed after the teacher realized Malcolm X had a criminal history and supported change by any means necessary, CBS 2′s Elise Finch reported.

"My son came home one day and said, 'We can write about a civil rights leader, but we can't write about Malcolm X because he was bad,'" parent Frank Brown said.

"He couldn't write about Malcolm X because he was deemed violent," added another parent, Angel Minor.

Parents demanded a meeting with the teacher who made the comment and the school's principal, which took place Monday morning.

The parents were joined by members of the City Council's Black, Latino and Asian Caucus.

My DH suffers from OAB (Overactive Bladder) due to past problems with prostate cancer. (He is only 36 by the way and has been done with it for 3 years) We fly frequently and to be safe he usually wears a disposable brief (an adult diaper). He has been screened many times with the full body scanner and patted down many other times. On a few occasions, if he was being patted down, he has mentioned his "protection" and passed without further scrutiny.

Never an issue until last week. While waiting in the security line he had a strong bladder spasm and and a large release of urine into the diaper. After he emerged from the scanner the TSA officer (a female) asked if he was carrying liquids in his clothing. He explained his condition and what had happened. In the past, it was embarrassing enough for him to just tell a TSA employee that I was wearing an adult incontinence garment but now he was also announcing that he had wet himself.) She called over to another (male) officer (the boss, I guess) and explained the situation to him out loud in front of everyone else still going through the line. The problem was he did not understand what an "incontinence product" was when she told him. Myself, DH, and the female TSA employee tried explaining a few times before the woman finally just shouted " HE IS WEARING A DIAPER" which caused pretty much everyone to turn and stare at us (smaller airport so not that many people). The TSA officer then snickered which was almost enough for me to go off but I really didn't want to make an even bigger scene then there already was.

He then told us that the scanner was unable to tell what was under his clothing and that "further review" was required. I asked him what that meant and he asked us to get our bags and follow him. We were taken through an office area into a room in the back. After waiting a couple of minutes 4 new TSA officers(one of which went to college with DH but dropped out his freshman year- still embarrassing to know someone in a situation like this though) came in and one asked DH if he had any liquids in his pants. By now we were both getting quite annoyed with being asked the same question over and over and he replied that he was wearing a diaper and that he had pi---d in it while waiting in their ***** line. Probably wasn't the best idea for him to get that mad but at that point he didn't even care about people knowing he had a medical condition and we just wanted to get out of their.