Washington - Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf will meet with US President Bush on October 22 in Washington, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino announced Tuesday.

Their talks are expected to include the security situation in Liberia, which suffered civil war for most of the 1990s until 2003. Johnson Sirleaf, a US-educated economist, was elected president in 2005 and took office in January 2006.

She and Bush are also slated discuss efforts in impoverished Liberia to prevent malaria and improve education.

Los Angeles - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency Tuesday as wind-whipped wildfires roared close to Los Angeles killing two people, destroying dozens of structures and forcing thousands to flee.

The Senson and Marek fires burnt some 5,000 hectares in the mountains that ring the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles, sending up huge plumes of thick grey smoke that were visible from the city.

A third fire burnt a further 800 hectares at Camp Pendleton, a massive Marine base near San Diego.

Washington - The US government's deficit exceeded projections for the just-ended 2007-08 budget year, hitting a record 455 billion dollars, federal officials announced late Tuesday.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Jim Nussle, director of the Office of Management and Budget, issued a joint statement summarizing the government's revenues and spending for the 12 months through September.

The deficit represents 3.2 per cent of gross domestic product in the 14-trillion-dollar US economy.

The 2006-07 deficit was 161.5 billion dollars, or about 1.2 per cent of GDP.

The previous record deficit was 413 billion dollars in 2004.

San Francisco - Global computer sales from July to September grew 15 per cent from 2007, but tougher economic conditions around the world meant that many of the 80.6 million devices sold were less expensive notebooks, according to research issued Tuesday by Gartner.

Growth was slowest in the United States, where sales increased 4.8 per cent from the third quarter of 2007.

"The US home market saw definite softness," said Gartner analyst Mika Kitagawa, while the Asia Pacific region was impacted by slowing PC sales in China. "The global PC market finally felt the impact from global economic downturn."

San Francisco - Intel, the world's dominant maker of the microprocessors that run computers, reported record third quarter revenue of 10.2 billion dollars Tuesday.