ANSWER: Yes, a variety of exercises can help improve your balance. Most are simple and take no more than about 10 minutes a day. These exercises can increase your stability, help prevent falls and enhance your overall fitness.

Opening night at the Regent Theater is bustling with an enthusiastic audience.

[Nicholas Tragas, Accountant]:
The show was really inspiring, great, insight into the Chinese culture which we as Westerners dont really know about as much as we should. And being so close to China, I think its a must for all of us to become more aware of Chinese culture.

[Charles DeLonge, Opera Singer]:
These people are marvellous, they take me to another dimension!

[Laurenna Toulmin, TV producer]:
The dancing was spectacular. It was just wonderful.

Established in 2006 the New York based company draws inspiration from Chinas divinely inspired culture, performing Chinese classical dance, an art form that traces back to ancient times.

[Laura Anderson, Chairman of the Loreal Melbourne Fashion Festival]:
It was about beauty, it was about one with nature. It was about embracing the past but still celebrating the future and the present.

[Gary Hipworth, Business Consultant]:
It was really wonderful to see all this tradition and compare it to modern life.

There are three Shen Yun companies touring the world simultaneously. Each company has nearly 100 artists on tour.

[Dianne Harris, Artist]:
It was fresh and interesting. The artistry was beautiful. It was precious.

[Charles DeLonge, Opera Singer]:
I think Im coming tomorrow night again.

Shen Yun performing arts is the first company in the world to present Chinese classic dance on a large scale. With over 100 cities on their touring map it seems that no one will miss out.

Gina Shakespeare, NTD News, Melbourne, Australia.

On Monday members of the school’s student council dropped by the Bay of Islands SPCA in Curling with a $5,000 donation for the animal shelter.

Vice-president Rebecca Pike said the money was raised through a recent “rockathon” that was sponsored by the student council.

Pike, a Level 3 student at the school, said the council had heard about a similar event from another school last year and decided to try it at Corner Brook Regional High. Student council then voted on the organization to support.

She said the group really wanted it to benefit a local organization.

“The SPCA has done so much for our community, we thought that would be a great organization to do it for.”

The fundraiser was held at the school on March 9. It started at 8 pm and ran for 12 hours with participants from 22 teams, consisting of four or five people, rocking in rocking chairs the whole time.

Pike said students were invited to sign up for the event as individuals, with four or five friends making up a team, or to represent the various sports teams and other groups at the school.

The event actually raised $6,600 with $1,600 going to some of the sports teams and organizations at the school including a volleyball team, the Amnesty International and Envirothon groups.

Pike said having the event raise so much money left her with an amazing feeling.

“I was just so proud of our student council for taking the initiative to get the SPCA on board. I was just so happy that was what we were doing it for,” said Pike.

“I think it’s so important for I guess ourselves to feel like we’re doing something to give back to our community.

“Our community has done so much for us and I think it’s a great opportunity to give back and to say thank you.

“I can’t wait to see how they use the $5,000. I’m just ecstatic for them.”

Someone else who was equally enthused with the donation was Judy Mahoney, president of the Bay of Islands SPCA.

Mahoney couldn’t say enough about the feeling of gratitude she had.

She said the money will help with efforts to open a new shelter.

The SPCA is in the final stages of securing a new location for the shelter on the north shore highway, which Mahoney hopes will be ready for to house animals in June.

The meeting followed a day-long trip that the groups members representatives from Sutter County, Yuba City and Live Oak governments made last week to visit and analyze shelter facilities in Sacramento and Merced counties.

The emphasis in both (shelters) was on adoptions, said County Administrator Stephanie Larsen. We dont really want to just house animals and take care of them, we want to adopt them to good homes.

I learned quite a bit, sad Live Oak City Council Member Diane Hodges, reflecting the tone and content of what became a detailed debriefing session.

Financial concerns still loomed large as authority members discussed and approved a $62,000 amendment to the existing, long-troubled Yuba City facilitys operating budget.

Recent improvements to end the shelters legacy of death and disease have been costly, but appear to be successful.

Larsen reported Monday that no animal deaths at the facility have been attributed to communicable disease in the past four months.

Upgraded hygiene and health protocols, infrastructure upgrades, addition of temporary buildings to better house and quarantine animals, and the implementation of a new vaccination program all went into place in late 2011 and early January following a highly critical and deeply detailed grand jury report.

Renowned shelter medicine expert Kate Hurley of UC Davis said that the facility and care in Sutter County rated among the worst she had seen in California.

The shelters joint powers authority, newly formed after years of friction between city and county leaders, spent roughly $140,000 to begin making the changes last fall. An area veterinarian has since stepped forward to volunteer medical services, and a new animal rescue group has been working since last summer to help place some of the countys adoptable animals, one by one, in new homes.

All those factors have contributed, authority members have said, to a turnaround.

Meanwhile, plans for the new $5.2 million shelter still are being worked out even as the construction bidding process has begun.

Inmate labor, in-house veterinary services, and the pros and cons of caring for cats all are among issues still to be resolved.

But on Monday, authority members and staff vowed to stay focused on creating a people-and-animal-friendly facility along the lines of what they had seen last week, particularly in a new shelter in Merced.

Were trying to bring about something closer to an urban standard now rather than just the old farmers-and-ranchers style of animal control, said County Supervisor Stan Cleveland.

You knew you were in an adoption center instead of an animal control facility, said Authority Chairman Gary Baland, Live Oaks mayor.

Authority members discussed ways in which costs could be saved or recouped to offset construction and operating costs.

Materials varied for interior surfaces of the two shelters the group visited, and could be evaluated for durability and cost.

Suggestions also included a program that would have individual and corporate donors sponsoring animal kennels. One of the shelters they visited featured placards on each kennel advertising the donor for a cost of $150 per year.

Improved management and a well-run volunteer program will be crucial to the new shelters success, according to board members.

Were going to need a healthy and aggressive volunteer program to make sure the costs do not get out of hand. We saw how well that can really work, said Cleveland.

If you dont have strong management to run it, a new shelter is not going to make a difference, Hodges said.

CONTACT Nancy Pasternack at npasternack@appealdemocrat.com or 749-4781. Find her on Facebook at /ADnpasternack or on Twitter at @ADnpasternack.

Its true, the soundtracks to your favorite teen dramas, HBO sports documentaries, and insurance commercials actually fall into a pretty specific genre. Mostly overlooked until recently, ambient/minimalism artists are being championed by the masses with prominent pop musicians dipping their ladles into the pot – Trent Reznor and Jonny Greenwood to name a few. But the few that mainly exist in the music blogoposphere – like Eluvium, Mono, Hammock, and Akira Kosemura – know how to pull on some heartstrings without the use of visual accompaniment. Michael Silver, also known as CFCF, is no different. His latest EP, Exercises, does exactly that and doesnt even leave you tired.

“Exercise #1 (Entry)” is mainly a piano piece (much like Erik Saties “Gymnopedie” and Eluviums “An Accidental Memory”) that knows how to build the listener up with simple, repeating chords. The climax comes when a quiet synth starts manipulating the mood.

“Exercise #3 (Buildings)” sounds oddly like the X-files main theme. Despite this, the square synths that start weaving the main melody bring memories of last 2011s Hurry Up, Were Dreaming by M83. High-pitched square synths (think the lead instrument in video game music) also give nods to Brian Enos ambient work from the late 70s. Thats never a bad thing.

“Exercise #5 (September)” actually features softly-sung vocals, straying from the instrumental path. James Blake comes to mind with the minimalism at full force.

Your mind goes through a lot when listening to ambient works. Exercises, these tracks really are! Other than M83s recent successes, CFCF may be the link between ambient music and pop music. Exercises, like so many similar albums, strives to let the listener actually listen and wait for their hooks. Patience really is a virtue.

Azure exercised the options at A$0.20 each, for a consideration of $128,333.

In doing so, the company now holds about 4.6 million shares inHorseshoe Metals.

Horseshoe Metalshas begun a major drilling campaign at its Horseshoe Lights Copper-Gold Project, with holes up to 450 metres depth planned in the first phase.

The diamond drilling program comprises 1,500 metres across four deep drill holes, with additional holes planned subject to the results of the initial holes.

Horseshoe Metalsis drill testing a major anomaly identified southeast of the existing open pit in a dipole-dipole induced polarisation survey.

To give an indication of the types of copper grades being returned from Horseshoe Lights, in a 2011 reverse circulation drilling programHorseshoe Metalsintersected 16 metres at 4.8% copper from 161 metres, including 3 metres at 11.8% copper, and 14 metres at 3.7% copper from 10 metres, including 3 metres at 9.8% copper.

The company has outlined a JORC Measured, Indicated and Inferred Resource of 8.6 million tonnes at 1.06% copper and 0.13 grams per tonne (g/t) gold for 91,000 tonnes of contained copper and 37,400 ounces of contained gold.