Among the international stories worth noting this morning as the end-of-year news slowdown begins:

• Carrie Fisher, Star Wars royalty and bestselling author and performer, is dead at age 60. It’s all over the internet, but here’s Reuters’ and the New York Times’ coverage to get you started. [Redacted] you, 2016.

• The New York Times lifts the veil on spending by Saudi royals in a the exceptionally well-researched “Saudi Royal Family Is Still Spending in an Age of Austerity.” Absolutely worth a read — stash it in Pocket to sift through this weekend on your flight to Gouna / Sahl Hasheesh / Paris / wherever if you don’t have time to read it today.
• US Secretary of State John Kerry will lay out a vision Middle East “peace process” today in a speech he’s due to deliver at the State Department, VOA News reports.

• China’s Xi Jinping is going nowhere? As in “showing signs he will not step down” as would be customary after his upcoming second term in office, the Wall Street Journal speculates, noting that Xi has both solidified his personal control over the economy and the armed forces and sidelined potential successors.
• The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) confirmed it has approvedproposals to start talks to create free trade zones between the EAEU and Egypt, Iran, India, Singapore. Chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Commission, Serzh Sargsyan, said it will “start an intensive process of preparation of signing agreements with those countries.”