NORTHFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- A bus overloaded with members of an Amish church group clipped the front of a semitrailer Thursday, flipping the bus onto its side and sending 14 people to the hospital, including several children, authorities said.

The driver swerved left to avoid a slower vehicle entering southbound U.S. 23 and clipped the front of the semitrailer, said State Trooper Randy Phare. The bus turned onto its side and skidded to a stop along the highway in Northfield Township, about 40 miles west of Detroit.

Another vehicle then crashed into the back of the stopped truck.

LOS ANGELES -- The bodies of the brother of two Southern California congresswomen and his girlfriend have been recovered from the waters off Los Angeles, days after the couple disappeared during a boat trip, authorities said Thursday.

The bodies of Henry Sanchez, 51, and Penny Avila, 48, were pulled from the wreckage of Sanchez's 26-foot motor boat on Wednesday, Coast Guard and Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies said.

Sanchez is the brother of Democratic Reps. Loretta and Linda Sanchez, the nation's first sisters in Congress.

"It is with heavy hearts that we learn of their tragic fate," the congresswomen said in a statement issued Thursday. The sisters also praised the work of rescue crews.

Henry Sanchez and Avila left a Long Beach marina shortly after midnight on Oct. 2, headed for Catalina Island, Coast Guard Capt. Paul Wiedenhoeft said. It appears the boat collided with a supply barge being towed by a tug boat from Catalina Island to the Los Angeles harbor.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Arkansas plans to reverse course and allow unmarried or same-sex couples to take on foster children on a case-by-case basis, even as voters prepare to decide the issue in November, the state Department of Human Services said Thursday.

The agency said it would end its plan to formalize the prohibition, which has been in place since an executive directive was signed in 2005. The department said it will instead propose allowing state workers to place foster children case by case.

"Recognizing that this is a sensitive societal issue, it's important to expand our recruitment base so that we can find a family that best meets the needs of every child," agency director John Selig said.

The change comes as a conservative group campaigns in favor of a November ballot initiative that would ban unmarried couples from adopting or fostering children. The Arkansas Family Council says its measure specifically targets gay couples, though it would affect heterosexual couples, too.

INDIANAPOLIS -- An illegal immigrant serving five life terms for the strangling deaths of his wife, three young daughters and a neighborhood girl apparently took his own life Thursday by hanging himself, authorities said.

Simon Rios, 36, was found in his cell at the Pendleton Correctional Facility northeast of Indianapolis after midnight Thursday, prison spokesman David Barr said. Rios was pronounced dead about 40 minutes later after guards and medical personnel couldn't revive him.

There were no signs of foul play, Barr said. An autopsy was scheduled and prison officials were investigating the death.

Rios's attorney, Michelle Kraus, said he left a note requesting that his remains be returned to his native Mexico.

"I'm very sad. I know he did a very evil thing, and he always knew he did a very evil thing. He always expressed remorse to me," Kraus said.

The prosecutor in Rios's case said any remorse the man may have felt had little weight, given the heinous nature of his crimes.

"I don't want anybody to ever lose sight that he is not a victim here," Allen County prosecutor Karen Richards said Thursday. "He killed his wife and four little girls. They are the victims here."

ATLANTA -- One in four teen girls have rolled up their sleeves for the relatively new vaccine against cervical cancer, federal health officials said Thursday.

The figures represent the government's first substantial study of vaccination rates for the Gardasil vaccine -- Merck & Co.'s heavily advertised, three-shot series that targets the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, or HPV.

The vaccine protects against strains of the virus that cause about 70 percent of cervical cancers.

Health officials recommend that girls get the shots when they are 11 or 12, if possible, before they become sexually active. Also, age 11 is when kids are generally due for another round of vaccinations.

The survey only covered children in the 13-17 age range.

Vaccine proponents had been hoping for much higher vaccination rates, saying the shots could dramatically reduce the nearly 4,000 cervical cancer deaths that occur each year in the United States.

But many families are cautious about the safety of new vaccines, said Patti Gravitt, a Johns Hopkins University associate professor of epidemiology.