What is the word or phrase?

What number comes next in the series?

5 15 5 18 5 24 14 20 _

Birbal was jester, counsellor, and fool to the great Moghul emperor, Akbar.
The villagers loved to talk of Birbal's wisdom and cleverness,
and the emperor loved to try to outsmart him.
One day Akbar (emperor) drew a line across the floor.
"Birbal," he ordered, "you must make this line shorter, but you cannot erase any bit of it."
Everyone present thought the emperor had finally outsmarted Birbal.
It was clearly an impossible task.
Yet within moments the emperor and everyone else present had to agree that Birbal had made the line shorter without erasing any of it.
How could this be?

Double it and multiply it by 4. Then divide it by 8 and you’ll have it once more. What number is it?

A family is trapped in a jungle. There is a bridge which can lead them to safety. But at one time, the bridge can only allow two people to pass through. Also, all of them are afraid of the dark and thus, they can't go alone.

Father takes 1 minute to cross, the mother takes 2 minutes, the son takes 4 and the daughter takes 5 minutes. While crossing the time taken will be according to the slower one. How can they all reach the other side in the minimum possible time?

A deaf and mute man goes to the train station. Tickets for the train are 50 cents each. The man goes to the ticket booth and hands the man inside just a dollar. The man in the booth hands him two tickets.

How did the man in the booth know to give him two tickets without even looking at him?

Can you find any error in the following sentence?

A taxi was standing outside a fort at night. A man came out of the fort, opened the gate and hit the taxi driver killing him instantly. He took all the money out of the meter and started running till he was caught by a local sheriff.

There is a straight highway. Four different villages lie on that highway. The distance between them is different. The third village is 60km away from the first village; the fourth is 40 km away from the second; the third is 10 km near to the fourth that it is to the second.

Can you calculate the distance between the fourth and the first village ?

Irene killed hundreds of people mercilessly and yet the police were not able to put her behind the bars. Why?

Three doctors said that Bill was their brother. Bill says he has no brothers. How many brothers does Bill actually have?