With the Camorra, the organised crime syndicate of the area round Naples, the Sicilian mafia and the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta all extending their operations northwards, moreover, the phenomenon has spread.
Facebook, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft are all extending their operations, and a multitude of smaller US firms are basing their international headquarters in London.
The prospect of loss of life at sea constrains fishers from extending their operations seawards and away from heavily exploited inshore fisheries.
Britain's 16th Air Assault division, which has been protecting the Rumalia oil fields, have also extended their operation northwest toward Highway 6, a major route out of Basra.
Only substantial counter-reinforcement secured the New Georgia group of islands for the Allies, who, moreover, began on August 15 to extend their operation to the island of Vella Lavella also.
Thermal energy storage systems are usually attached to solar power plants to extend their operation beyond sunshine periods.
A second official said that as Mexican cartels extended their operations from Latin America to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the reach of the operations had grown as well.
In a surprising public acknowledgment, President Felipe Calderón of Mexico said last week that drug cartels had extended their operations into the theft of oil, Mexico's leading source of foreign income, which finances about 40percentt of the national budget.
Another fear about the recent weakening of local insurgent groups is that Maoists, identified as India's biggest internal security threat by prime minister Manmohan Singh, will extend their operations to Northeast India.
