A suspect in the 1MDB scandal has died weeks after being deported to Malaysia to face questioning over his role in the $4.5bn fraud. Kee Kok Thiam died in hospital on Monday following a "sudden massive stroke" and was cremated on Wednesday morning, Kee's family said in a statement. "We urge all parties not to entertain any speculations on this unfortunate event and allow the family the space to grief [sic] on his passing," the statement said. News of the 56-year-old businessman's death comes hours after Al Jazeera reported that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) had confirmed the whereabouts of fugitive Malaysian financier Jho Taek Low – the alleged mastermind of the 1MDB scandal – in Macau based on its questioning of Kee. The MACC said that Kee, who was deported from Macau earlier this month, revealed he had met with Low and other 1MDB fugitives in the Chinese territory and that Low had instructed him "not to return to Malaysia as a witness in the 1MDB case".

In recent years there has been a great deal of interest in the commercial applications of knowledge-based (KB) systems (commonly called expert systems). Interest in KB systems was spurred on by the development of programs that can solve complex tasks at an expert level.

A number of tools that support the development, execution, and maintenance of knowledge-based systems are marketed commercially. Many of these tools, however, are designed for applications that can be executed on personal computers and are not suitable for building large knowledge-based systems. The market for knowledge engineering tools designed for applications that require the computational power of a Lisp machine or an engineering workstation is dominated by a few vendors. This article is an assessment of the current state of tools used to build large knowledge-based systems. This assessment is based on the collective strengths and weaknesses of several tools that have been evaluated. In addition, an estimate is made of the features that will be required in the next generation of tools.