Morning Splash: Obama Administration to Allow Some Illegal Immigrants to Work; HP May Sell PC Business; San Rafael Hotel Gunman Found Dead

The government will stop deporting many students and other illegal immigrants who are not a public safety threat and permit them to work in the country legally, the Obama administration announced Thursday. A new federal group will review the 300,000 backlogged deportation cases with an eye toward prosecuting criminals and other high-priority cases. But authorities will effectively close the cases of many upstanding high school and college students who were brought here illegally, military veterans, and adults with no criminal record and strong family ties to the United States.

In a flurry of stunning announcements, Hewlett-Packard said Thursday that it's exploring the sale or spinoff of its vaunted personal computer business and admitted defeat in its short-lived effort to promote a rival version of Apple's wildly popular iPad. HP also said it will buy the British business software company Autonomy for about $10.2 billion, as the Palo Alto tech giant increasingly shifts ts focus to more profitable commercial computing products and services, an arena where it is increasingly clashing with Oracle and IBM.

Ending a painful chapter for hundreds of disabled workers at the defunct NUMMI auto factory in Fremont, automobile executives have agreed to a $6 million settlement to help the employees, federal officials said Thursday. An estimated 500 disabled workers claimed that Toyota and New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. discriminated against them by giving them much smaller severance packages than the companies offered nearly all the other employees at the auto factory.

An assault suspect who barricaded himself in a San Rafael hotel room was found dead Thursday of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. The man was identified as Peter James Thomas, 38, who was suspected of slashing several employees with a knife during a shoplifting incident Sunday at United Markets in San Rafael. His last communication with police was late Wednesday night.

Marin voters will be asked to approve taxes to support municipal services, local schools, paramedic services and fire protection when they go to polls on Nov. 8. In addition to Measure D, which asks Fairfax residents to approve a half-cent sales tax to help pay for general town services, there will be seven other measures on the ballot seeking to create, renew or increase taxes.

The Santa Clara County Vector Control District is scheduled to fog the 95136 ZIP code of San Jose after adult mosquitoes collected in the area tested positive for West Nile virus. In order to prevent the virus from spreading to humans, the district will apply insecticide to the area for several hours on Tuesday starting at 11 p.m. The area undergoing the fogging is roughly bordered by Hillsdale Avenue to the north, Glenmont Drive to the west, Monterey Road to the east, and Highway 85 to the south.

State Sen. Leland Yee, who has vowed not to "wine and dine" City Hall power brokers, raised more than $11,000 for his San Francisco mayoral campaign during a steak-and-lobster dinner at a Colma casino that has been one of his major political donors, according to campaign finance documents and people who attended the event. Yee's latest campaign finance reports make no mention of payment for the June $125-a-plate meal at the Lucky Chances casino, although after a Chronicle inquiry his campaign provided an invoice and copies of a check covering at least part of the event.

...The National Union of Healthcare Workers filed new evidence Thursday with federal officials alleging that rival Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West is colluding with the health care giant to sway worker allegiance in what continues to be a highly contested dispute. The filing comes after the National Labor Relations Board on Aug. 10 ordered a rerun of last fall's elections involving more than 44,000 Kaiser employees after discounting the results due to allegations of misconduct.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris stood before a bank of news cameras Thursday morning and declared war on unscrupulous lawyers. The occasion: a new lawsuit against three Southern California law firms, who stand accused of taking millions of dollars from homeowners who expected the lawyers to help them get mortgage relief. But the attorneys simply pocketed the money, Harris said.

Santa Rosa Mayor Ernesto Olivares supports the decision by police to allow young children to handle fully automatic weapons during a recent community outreach event in the South Park neighborhood. The retired Santa Rosa police lieutenant said he helped organize the first such event three years ago and said it was “unfortunate” that critics have characterized the SWAT team display as inappropriate.

...In the Bay Area as in much of the country, the green economy is not proving to be the job-creation engine that many politicians envisioned. President Obama once pledged to create five million green jobs over 10 years. Gov. Jerry Brown promised 500,000 clean-technology jobs statewide by the end of the decade. But the results so far suggest such numbers are a pipe dream.

As football fans gear up for Saturday's annual preseason battle between the Bay Area's NFL rivals, the 49ers and Raiders are joining forces off the field to discuss sharing a stadium as part of the billion dollar question no one can seem to answer: Where will the two teams play their home games five years from now? Four California cities are vying to build new stadiums in hopes of luring one or both of the teams, with the eyes of millions of fans and taxpayers trained on the debate and untold riches and national prestige at stake.