Now, China's leadership hopes to propel this impoverished island of six million people into the future.
But that's life at this forlorn hospital on Basilan, the impoverished island where American troops are to begin arriving next week.
But Manhattan is an impoverished island from the standpoint of quiet outdoor sites.
Prosecutors said the real purpose for the invasion would have been to set up tourism, gambling, offshore banking, and timber logging operations on the impoverished island.
If the American forces have held back on the military aspects of their mission, they have moved forward on civil improvements on the impoverished island.
We don't have to come back here to this impoverished little island ever again.
But those who seek to retain commonwealth status say that the impoverished island would be hard-pressed to sacrifice needed United States financing.
It is important that they are focused on the long-term recovery of this terribly impoverished island.
It was an island of peace and plenty in a Europe impoverished and exhausted by six years of war.
France, the former colonial ruler of the three impoverished islands off Africa's east coast, announced it was sending a small, elite police force.