A plethora of new R Coronae Borealis stars discovered from a dedicated spectroscopic follow-up survey

It is increasingly suspected that the rare R Coronae Borealis (RCB) stars - hydrogen-deficient and carbon-rich supergiant stars - are the products of mergers of CO/He white-dwarf binary systems in the intermediate mass regime ($0.615000$ K). Forty of these belong to the Milky Way and five are located in the Magellanic Clouds. We also confirmed that the long lasting candidate KDM 5651 is indeed a new Magellanic RCB star, increasing the total number of Magellanic Cloud RCB stars to 30. We have increased by $\sim$50\% the total number of RCB stars known, now reaching 147. We also include a list of 14 strong RCB candidates, most certainly observed during a dust obscuration phase. From the detection efficiency and success rate so far, we estimate that there should be no more than 500 RCB stars/HdC stars in the Milky Way.