Poliglot

India set a world record on January 1, with the most number of babies born—67,385—on New Year’s Day. Unicef data says around 392,078 babies were born across the globe on that day. China stands second with 46,299 newborn babies, followed by Nigeria (26,039), Pakistan (16,787), Indonesia (13,020) and the USA (10,452). Sadly, India also has a high infant mortality rate. In 2018, around 2.5 million newborns didn’t survive their first month—around one-third of them died on the first day itself.

Bhoot Vigyan

Aspiring Ayurvedic doctors at Banaras Hindu University can now expeditiously breach the frontiers of medical science. A six-month course in bhoot vidya (ghost science) offered by the university will teach them to cure not only diseases caused by bacteria and viruses but also those caused by misanthropic spirits. Some scholars suggested the name be changed as it is deals with psychosomatic disorders (caused by mischievous ghosts), others called it pseudoscience.

Brevis