The women were reportedly picked up by the limo in the city of Oakland and were being driven across the bridge to Foster City.

BBC: Bride among five dead in US stretch limo fire

Wales needs another 700 families willing to become foster carers in order to bridge the gap which has meant that brothers and sisters are being split up and divided among different families.

BBC: Cash crisis has left Wales short of 700 foster families

The development is the latest Millennium Commission-funded project to be surrounded in controversy, following the financial woes of the Dome and the structural problems of the Millennium Bridge, which was designed by Lord Foster, the architect of the British Museum's new glass roof.

BBC: British Museum opens to controversy

Mr Matsuura welcomed the proposal as a "great initiative that will help to bridge the knowledge divide, promote mutual understanding, and foster cultural and linguistic diversity".

UNESCO: Communication and Information

"We were driven by the scale of the idea and a shared passion for the poetic dimension of engineering and its sculptural potential, " says Norman Foster in "Millau Viaduct, " a slim monograph on the bridge.

WSJ: A Concrete Ribbon Through the Clouds | Millau Viaduct | Masterpiece by Joseph Giovannini

The designers buried the foundations deeply, so that the piers supporting the bridge would shoot up from the ground like "blades of grass, " Mr. Foster said, with no apparent support.

WSJ: A Concrete Ribbon Through the Clouds | Millau Viaduct | Masterpiece by Joseph Giovannini