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China’s central bank said Thursday interest rates would rise for the sixth time this year as the government strives to curb rising inflation and stop the country’s booming economy from overheating.

The widely expected hike takes effect Friday in the wake of blistering 11.5 percent economic growth over the first nine months of the year and with inflation at a near 11-year high of 6.9 percent.

“This rate adjustment will be conducive to implementing tight monetary policy to prevent the tendency for fast economic growth to overheating,” a central bank statement said.

It also said the hike came against a backdrop of rising domestic prices and in order to guide public expectations about inflation. The cost of food and natural resources has been blamed for rising inflation in China.

The hike raises deposit rates 27 basis points and the lending rate 18 basis points. The one-year deposit rate becomes 4.14 percent and the one-year lending rate goes up to 7.47 percent.

Analysts say China also wants to curb loan growth and take the fizzle out of potential asset price bubbles, such as in the share and property markets, to try and ensure economic stability.

“What is clear is that sentiment in Beijing is changing — and it’s likely that the first quarter of 2008 will see more aggressive action to attempt to control inflation,” said Standard Chartered economist Stephen Green.

That would have some effect but food inflation would be a stubborn nut to crack for at least the next six months, he said.

Despite the latest rise in interest rates, experts point out inflation exceeds deposit rates — a problem known as negative real interest rates, which encourages people to invest in shares and property rather than bank accounts.

It also ramps up spending by corporations, driving investment in fixed assets, one of the key drivers of Asia’s second largest economy.

Wang Xiaohui, a Shanghai-based economist with Sinolink Securities, said there was little chance of inflation easing before the end of 2007.

“This means that the problem of negative real interest rates will become more serious,” the expert said.

China’s trade surplus was also at record highs and credit growth was likely to accelerate, creating pressure for more measures to cool the economy, he said.

Premier Wen Jiabao has previously forecast 11.5 percent full-year economic growth, which would be the fifth straight year of double-digit expansion.

Beijing has already announced a policy shift in 2008 toward “tight” monetary measures from its long-standing “prudent” stance. It has also made curbing inflation a priority.

Earlier this month the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said China’s economy faced serious inflation risks which, if unchecked, could fuel yet more speculation in stocks and property.

China’s last interest rate hike was in September. It has also raised the amount banks must keep in reserve 10 times in a bid to control loan growth, with the bank reserve ratio set to hit 14.5 percent on Christmas Day.

No kick from Champagne? Sparkling wines from around the globe can be a cheaper alternative and better value, according to leading experts.

“We noticed a real trade down from Champagne to sparkling wines,” said Chris Adams of New York’s Sherry-Lehmann Wine and Spirits.

Shipments of Champagne worldwide plunged almost 35 percent for the first nine months of the year, according to the Comite Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne, the champagne producers’ professional body.

In Britain total shipments were down almost 32 percent, while in the United States they plummeted more than 41 percent,

Prices on non-vintage Champagnes have come down a bit in price in the United States, but are still from one-third to four times as much as their Italian, Spanish, French counterpart.

For consumers looking for something of equal quality, but less pricey, the answer may be in northern Italy and the Trentino region home to Ferrari Spumante, says to Wink Lorch, who writes the online winetravelguides.com.

Its Giulio Ferrari 1997 made from hand-harvested Chardonnay grapes and in the traditional Champagne method, it sells for about two-thirds the price of its tete de cuvee French cousins.

Italy’s answer to Champagne is Franciacorta. The hand-harvested grapes used are Chardonnay, Pinot Blanco and Pinot Nero and the wines are also made in the same method as Champagne.

Most of the producers are small, family-run operations and there is only about 5,000 acres under cultivation, as opposed to the 80,000 acres in Champagne.

Ed McCarthy, editor of the Wine Review Online and co-author of the book “Wines for Dummies,” recommends producers Bellavista and Ca’ del Bosco. British wine writer Hugh Johnson suggests Cavalleri and others recommend Lantieri de Paratico and Villa Franciacorta.

Across Lake Garda is the home of Prosecco. Typically light-bodied, fruity and less crip than Champagne, the best ones have come traditionally from the Conegliano Valdobbiadene area. It is made using the Charmat method, in which the grapes undergo a second fermentation in tanks.

Top producers include Bisol & Figli, Adriano Adami,and Mionetto, writes Karen MacNeil in “The Wine Bible”. Other wine writers add Maschio dei Cavalieri, Nino Franco and Zardetto to list.

Spain’s sparkler is Cava. Its main grapes are Macabeo, Parellada and Xarel-lo and the vast majority of the wine comes from the Catalonia region.

Pale gold in color with the aromas of toasted bread and citrus fruit, the producers also use the Champagne method. As in Prosecco, it pays to spend just a tad more to get a much better quality wine, said wine critic Doug Frost.

Joan Sanda, Agusti Torello, Montsarra, Segura Viudas and Raventos i Blanc are among the region’s top producers.

Champagne is not the only region in France that makes sparkling wines. Cremant d’Alsace, Cremant de Limoux, or Cremant de Jura also provide good alternatives.

Some of Champagnes’ major houses also own vineyards in California, Chile, Argentina and Brazil and produce sparkling wines that are quite good and, because of the exchange rate and transportation costs, less expensive.

And as Robin Goldstein and Alexis Herschkowitsch reveal in the 2010 edition of their book “The Wine Trials” most Americans again preferred Domaine Ste. Michelle Brut from Washington State, over both Dom Perignon or Veuve Clicquot in blind tastings.

There are many other sparklers - Sekt from Germany, Spumante from Italy and Shiraz from Australia. The important thing to remember about drinking sparkling wine is that it’s not so much what’s in the glass as who is holding it. Cheers.

Odd as it sounds, Peter Jackson needed to come down to Earth a bit more in “The Lovely Bones,” his adaptation of Alice Sebold’s best-seller about a murdered girl looking back on her life from beyond.

The visionary filmmaker behind “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy still is in fantasyland, still in the grip of Middle-earth, and the film suffers for it as Jackson crafts lovely but ineffectual dreamscapes of the afterlife that eviscerate much of the human side of the story.

It’s certainly a smaller, more intimate tale than his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and his “King Kong” remake. Yet the hope among fans of Jackson’s early work was that “The Lovely Bones” would hark back to his 1994 drama “Heavenly Creatures,” which put Kate Winslet on the road to stardom.

With modest production, “Heavenly Creatures” presented striking fantasy visuals that complemented Jackson’s dark story of two teenage women whose compulsive relationship results in murder.

Now working on a grander Hollywood scale, Jackson loses the spark of Sebold’s story — a young girl’s lament over a life never lived, a family’s bottomless grief over a child and sister lost — amid his expensive pretty pictures.

Like the book, the film merges first-person and omniscient narration as Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan, an Academy Award nominee for 2007’s “Atonement”) chronicles her journey from sensitive 14-year-old schoolgirl to shattered soul stuck in a nether zone between earth and heaven.

Sweet and somewhat shy, Susie is just developing a passion for photography and on the verge of her first kiss when a creepy neighbor (Stanley Tucci) with a serial-killer past lures her into his secret lair and murders her.

For her family — including parents (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz), grandmother (Susan Sarandon) and younger sister (Rose McIver) — Susie has simply vanished, her body hidden away by her killer.

Years pass, and Susie watches the family crumble, her mom running off to work on a farm, her dad obsessed with finding his daughter’s murderer, to the exasperation of the cop (Michael Imperioli) handling the case.

Through death, Susie gains a razor-sharp focus on what’s truly important, all those glorious little snapshot moments that, for the living, can become lost and forgotten in the cacophony of everyday life.

Jackson’s focus is fuzzier, the film flitting disjointedly from the Salmons’ lingering sorrow to Susie’s limbo, a realm that alternates between her anger and melancholy over what she’s left behind and her wonder over what’s yet to come in her larger existence.

Earth and limbo don’t really seem as though they’re part of the same movie. The vibrant, sometimes ominous fantasyland where Susie dwells disconnects her from the life on which she reflects, puts her at a distance from the people she loves and misses.

We’re supposed to think she can’t let go, when much of the time, it feels as though she’s already gone.

The images often are striking — ships inside giant bottles shattering on the rocks of a forlorn shore, candy-colored landscapes where Susie romps as she begins to sense the freedom of passing into the cosmos.

But the spectacle Jackson creates is showmanship, not storytelling, distracting from the mortal drama of regret and heartache he’s trying to tell.

The actors all are earnest and engaging. As Ronan did with her breakout role in “Atonement,” though, McIver kind of steals the show here, playing Susie’s sister from age 11 to her late teens with a spirit and energy that outclasses Ronan’s sometimes subdued performance.

It’s nice to see Imperioli (a mobster on “The Sopranos”) play sympathetic rather than savage as the devoted detective. You do have to ask how good a cop his character is when a weirdo neighbor who lives alone, has no kids yet makes intricate dollhouses as a hobby doesn’t jump right to the top of the suspects lists.

“The Lovely Bones,” a DreamWorks Pictures release distributed by Paramount, is rated PG-13 for mature thematic material involving disturbing violent content and images, and some language. Running time: 135 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.