WelcometoCanada, X-Men, and a Laughing Orangutan

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11 December, 2015

This is What's Trending Today.

Syrian Refugees in Canada

Justin Trudeau became the Canadian Prime Minister in November, and on Thursday night he may have made his biggest social media impression of his young term.

Trudeau was one of the first to welcome 163 Syrian refugees arriving in Canada. The refugees are among 25,000 Canada promised to accept by March.

As news spread of the refugees' arrival, Canadians began celebrating their country's openness with the hashtag #WelcomeToCanada.

Canadians like Twitter user @BriannaErnest wrote messages of support, saying, "my home is now your home, my country is now your country, and this safety is now your safety."

Trudeau said, "You are home, you're safe at home now," to the first group of refugees to leave the plane.

A Syrian refugee said to the Toronto Star, "We feel as if we got out of hell and we came to paradise."

Two viral videos

There are already seven films based on the X-Men comic books. Get ready for another one.

The trailer for "X-Men: Apocalypse" launched on YouTube on Friday morning and received almost 300,000 views in its first four hours.

The series follows characters like Wolverine, Professor Xavier and Magneto. They battle each other and various human enemies of mutants.

The films are guaranteed blockbusters. Since the first one came out 15 years ago, the Hollywood Reporter says the series sold $3 billion of tickets around the world.

The movie comes out in May.

Some might consider the powers of various X-Men characters "magical." After all, no one in real life can use mind control or see into the future like the X-Men characters can.

But one everyday magician posted a funny video to Facebook and YouTube, and in just a few days, it was seen over six million times.

Dan Zaleski of Connecticut went on a trip to Spain and visited a zoo. He showed an orangutan a little magic trick where he made a seed "disappear" using a paper cup.

The orangutan loved the trick and fell to the floor with laughter.

If you watched the video, we bet you're laughing, too.

And that's What's Trending Today.

I'm Dan Friedell.

Dan Friedell wrote this story for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

How did Canada's reception of the refugees make you feel? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or on testbig.com.

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Words in This Story

apocalypse – n. a great disaster : a sudden and very bad event that causes much fear, loss, or destruction

blockbuster – n. something that is very large, expensive, or successful

comic book – n. a magazine that is made up of a series of comic strips — often used as comic-book before another noun

paradise – n. a very beautiful, pleasant, or peaceful place that seems to be perfect

trailer – n. a selected group of scenes that are shown to advertise a movie


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