In some ways, Wal-Mart has begun to assume a role once played by General Motors, whose large size, healthy profits and corporate generosity inspired the slogan, "What's good for General Motors is good for America".
In the last few years, Lanegan's own solo career, previously impressive but diffuse, has begun to assume greater purpose, with 2012's Blues Funeral and his latest, Phantom Radio, pulling together careworn rock with a new, surprising element: disco.
Expression persists in this ring of pharyngeal endoderm after the tentacles have emerged and the planula has begun to assume the form of the adult polyp (Figure 4L).
In a number of sub-Saharan countries the drinks industry has begun to assume a significant role in designing national alcohol policies.
In Afghanistan alone, she said, the UN estimates that 7.5 million civilians - more than 70 per cent of them women and children - are at risk in a humanitarian crisis that has begun to assume "stunning" proportions.
The newspaper also reports that Mr. Paterson has begun preparing to assume power by assembling a transition team.
However, more recent work in India and Kenya has begun casting doubt on the often-assumed causal link between electricity access and human development [30, 31].
They had begun to assume that no government could be formed without them.
Like many Cubans of his generation he had begun to assume that Castro would be around for ever.
Some may even have begun to assume that, perhaps thanks to the benign influence of America's Federal Reserve, it was normal for share prices to keep going up and up.
