The Transport Department urges the public to pay attention to special traffic arrangements for the East Asian Games opening ceremony on Saturday evening - particularly the service suspension of inner harbour and outlying island ferries in phases from 7.30pm.

As the opening will be staged in Victoria Harbour, designated water areas will be closed from 7pm to 10.15pm.

Seven inner harbour ferry services will be suspended from 7.30pm to 10.15pm. Seven ferry services between Central and the outlying islands will be suspended from 7.45pm to 10.15pm. Besides on-vessel announcements, flyers about ferry service changes will be distributed and notices posted at ferry piers.

In full swing: The 2009 East Asian Games flag-raising ceremony takes place in Hong Kong Park. The games enter into the third day of competition.

Special arrangements

Temporary road closures and traffic diversions will be implemented in phases from 5pm at the Lower Peak Tram Station, and in Wan Chai, Central, Admiralty, the Peak, Tsim Sha Tsui and Jordan until after the fireworks display.

Public transport operating in the affected areas, including 87 franchised bus routes, 25 green minibus routes and cross-boundary coach services, will be re-routed, suspended, reduced or truncated. Their stops, taxi stands and on-street parking spaces within the closure areas will also be suspended or relocated.

Click here or call 1834567 for details of the special transport arrangements for the opening ceremony.

Fine and dry weather is forecast for the ceremony, with temperatures in urban areas reaching about 18 degrees Celsius. Call 1878 200 or visit the Hong Kong Observatory's dedicated website for the games to check the latest weather information.

A flag-raising ceremony was held today at Hong Kong Park's Olympic Square, with the delegation members of the nine participating countries and regions taking part.

Meanwhile, the Leisure & Cultural Services Department announced today all tickets for the table-tennis competitions have been sold.

Games results

The East Asian Games engine - into the third day of competition - was now cruising at normal speed. With almost 70 games spread across indoor and outdoor venues, the one sport that joined the early starters - basketball, volleyball, cue sport and football - was squash.

There was no stopping the Chinese intrusion in the field of snooker dreams: Both Tian Peng-fei and Yu Delu gave their semi-final opponents, Kim Do Hoon of Korea and Chinese Taipei's Wu Yu-Lun, an exhibition in superb potting. The two Chinese players will meet on Saturday for a clash of titans and a gold.

In the nine singles matches played out at the Hong Kong Squash Centre, Hong Kong medal hopes were running high with two men and two women marching into the next stage with a 3-0 romp in each match.

Queen Elizabeth Stadium was the scene of table-tennis action in 39 matches, starting with the morning mixed-doubles preliminaries to the evening crunch quarter-final matches. Here the usual occupants were the China and Hong Kong singles players.

Of the four basketball encounters - two women's preliminaries and Group B men's - there were a few surprises. Chinese Taipei came out on top of Japan 76-63, while the Korean men's (108-67) and the women's (102-51) dazed the Hong Kong side with convincing final scores.

The well-oiled Democratic People's Republic of Korea footballers made the Macau team pick up the ball from the net eight times. The underdogs hardly went past the mid-field zone and went into the dressing room at half time 3-0 down.

HK team's effort

The Hong Kong male spikers had an easy time in their preliminary showdown with the Guam team, coming out 3-0 victors.

Hong Kong's women had a tough time facing up to the stronger and taller opponents from Korea. The 3-0 result did not show how hard they tried as they succumbed 25-16, 25-17 and 25-17.

The final volleyball clash in the Group B women's preliminary saw old adversaries, China and Japan, cross swords, with the Chinese coming out on top in a convincing 3-0 win.

In cue sport event, Hong Kong's Marco Fu managed to shake off his first day stumble and teamed up with Fung Kwok-wai to beat the Korean team 3-0. They now enter Saturday's final to clash with the Chinese Taipei pair and hope to bring home a gold.   

In the women's nine-ball pool singles clash in the semi-finals, Chihiro Kawahara scrapped through 7-5 to book her place in the final. Her gold-medal opponent will be Kim Ga Young of Korea who sent her Chinese Taipei opposite packing with a 7-3 end-score.