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Asia-specific, coming soon with me, Marika Oi.
Hello, I'm Celia Hatton.
Welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service, coming to you live from London.
A little later in the programme,
we're going to bring you the search for the American journalist Austin Tice,
who's been missing inside Syria for more than a decade.
And we'll also look at the lengths some chefs will go to to serve authentic food amidst the US tariff wars.
Now, we're going to have more on those stories in a moment.
But now we're going to start with Ecuador.
It's a South American country that's facing a series of big decisions.
It hopes to answer with a referendum today.
Polls opened an hour ago.
Chief among those big choices facing voters,
should the United States be permitted to set up military bases?
inside their country.
Daniel Naboa, Ecuador's right-wing president, says yes.
He argues a U.S.
presence would arm Ecuador to address soaring crime rates.
With Colombia to the north and Peru to the south,