Taiwan president set for historic meeting with US House Speaker in California

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen is set to meet U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday in the first such meeting on U.S. soil, a plan that has drawn threats of retaliation from China, which claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own. McCarthy, a Republican who through his House position is number three in the U.S. leadership hierarchy, is due to host Tsai in the morning at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley California, near Los Angeles. It will be the highest-level meeting with a Taiwanese president on U.S. soil since Washington switched diplomatic recognition from…