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CHICAGO (AP) — Juan Soto homered off Wrigley Field’s right-field scoreboard, helping Max Scherzer win his third straight decision in the Washington Nationals’ 4-3 win over the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday night.

Soto became the 16th player to hit the scoreboard that was installed in 2012, hitting a 421-foot drive on a 3-2 slider in the fifth from Jake Arrieta (4-4) that gave Washington a 4-1 lead. Soto also singled twice.

“He’s been hitting the ball hard, but now he’s starting to elevate the ball,” manager Dave Martinez said.

Soto hit his fourth homer this season. He missed time with a strained left shoulder.

“It’s just feeling better,” Soto said. “I put the ball in the air a couple of times and it feels almost normal again. We’re catching the ball out there and just letting it fly.”

Scherzer (4-2) allowed two runs and five hits in five innings with eight strikeouts and four walks. The three-time Cy Young Award winner labored at times against the Cubs but has given up just four runs over his last four starts.

Scherzer wasn’t happy with his four walks, but credited the Cubs hitters with tough at-bats that drove his pitch count to 100.

“I did what I had to to get though,” he said. “I just didn’t execute when I should have executed. I always shoulder the blame when it comes to walks and that’s probably why the pitch count got out of control.”

Kyle Finnegan, Daniel Hudson and Brad Hand combined on three-hit relief. Hand struck out three in the ninth for his fifth save in seven chances despite allowing Javier Báez’s solo homer.

Ian Happ’s RBI single had pulled the Cubs to 4-2 in the fifth.

Arrieta allowed four runs and seven hits in five innings in his second start since coming off the injured list caused by a cut in his right thumb. Washington stopped the Cubs’ three-game winning streak and dropped Chicago to 21-21.

“I came out a little flat,” Arrieta said. “I just didn’t get into a rhythm. A tough night, not what I want, especially going up against Max.”

Ian Happ and Nico Hoerner had RBIs for the Cubs, who slipped to 21-21. Jake Arrieta (4-4) yielded four runs on seven hits in five innings in his second start since coming off the injured list.

Nico Hoerner’s bloop single in the second drove in the first run.

Trea Turner hit an RBI single in the third and scored on a wild pitch, and Victor Robles’ run-scoring single gave Washington a 3-1 lead in the fourth. Robles would have reached second, but tripped over first base and stayed down for a few minutes while training staff checked his right ankle.

THAT’S HIS BAG

Martinez was ejected in the seventh in an argument with first-base umpire Chris Conroy.

Turner struck out on a pitch that sailed over catcher Willson Contreras. Turner sprinted to first, but was called out for running outside the baseline and creating interference as Contreras’ throw went into right field.

Martinez picked up the first base bag, slammed it to the ground and then kicked it.

Turner said he was running straight to the base. Martinez watched replays after being thrown out and said he just got even more frustrated.

“I sat there and was beside myself every time I watched it,” Martinez said. “Trea ran as straight as he possibly could have run to the base.”

SPECIAL K

Scherzer passed Hall of Famer Jim Bunning for 19th place on the strikeout list. Scherzer has 2,860 strikeouts.

ROSTER MOVE

The Cubs selected P.J. Higgins from Triple-A Iowa before the game and designated C Tony Wolters for assignment. Higgins, listed as a catcher, made his major league debut when he pinch hit in the fourth, then stayed in the game to play first.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Nationals: An unidentified player who is vaccinated and asymptomatic tested positive for COVID-19, Martinez said before the game. That player was deemed to have been in close contact with another Nationals player who is not vaccinated. The Nationals placed RHP Erick Fedde and RHP Tanner Rainey on the injured list before the first pitch. RHPs Kyle McGowin and Paolo Espina were activated from Washington’s taxi squad to fill the spots.

After the game, Scherzer said that Fedde was the vaccinated player and that vaccinated asymptomatic players should be allowed to play.

Robles left the game in the seventh with after his ankle soreness worsened. He’ll have tests on Thursday.

Cubs: RF Jason Heyward left in the fourth inning with left hamstring tightness. … 1B Anthony Rizzo was held out of the starting lineup with lower back tightness. … SS Baez also didn’t start, put pinch hit in the seventh and stayed in the game.

UP NEXT

Washington RHP Joe Ross (2-3, 5.80) faces Chicago RHP Trevor Williams (2-2, 6.27) in the series finale on Thursday.

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Allen Minish was alone and surveying land for a real estate agent in a wooded, remote part of Alaska, putting some numbers into his GPS unit when he looked up and saw a large brown bear walking about 30 feet away.

“I saw him and he saw me at the same time, and it’s scary,” he said by phone Wednesday from his hospital bed in Anchorage, a day after being mauled by the bear in a chance encounter.

The mauling left Minish with a crushed jaw, a puncture wound in his scalp so deep the doctor told him he could see bone, lacerations and many stitches after a 4½-hour surgery. He also is wearing a patch over his right eye, saying the doctors are worried about it.

All that damage came from a very brief encounter — he estimates it lasted less than 10 seconds — after he startled the bear Tuesday morning just off the Richardson Highway, near Gulkana, located about 190 miles (306 kilometers) northeast of Anchorage.

The bear, which Minish said was larger than 300-pound black bears he has seen, charged and closed the ground between them in a few seconds.

Minish tried to dodge behind small spruce trees. That didn’t stop the bear; he went through them.

As the bear neared, Minish held up the pointed end of his surveying pole and pushed it toward the bear to keep it away from him.

The bear simply knocked it to the side, the force of which also knocked Minish to the ground.

“As he lunged up on top of me, I grabbed his lower jaw to pull him away,” he said, noting that’s how he got a puncture wound in his hand. “But he tossed me aside there, grabbed a quarter of my face.”

“He took a small bite and then he took a second bite, and the second bite is the one that broke the bones … and crushed my right cheek basically,” he said.

When the bear let go, Minish turned his face to the ground and put his hands over his head.

And then the bear just walked away.

He surmises the bear left because he no longer perceived Minish as a threat. The bear’s exit — Alaska State Troopers said later they did not locate the bear — gave him time assess damage.

“I realized I was in pretty bad shape because I had all this blood everywhere,” he said.

He called 911 on his cellphone. While he was talking to a dispatcher, he pulled off his surveyor’s vest and his T-shirt and wrapped them around his head in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

Then he waited 59 minutes for help to arrive. He knows that’s how long it took because he later checked his cellphone record for the length of the time he was told to stay on the line with the dispatcher until rescue arrived.

At one point, he was able to give the dispatcher his exact coordinates from his GPS unit, but even that was a struggle.

“It took awhile to give them that because I had so much blood flowing into my eyes and on to the GPS, I kept having to wipe it all off,” he said.

He said one of the rescuers called him a hero after seeing how much blood was on the ground.

Rescuers tried to carry him through the woods to a road that parallels the nearby trans-Alaska pipeline to meet an ambulance. That didn’t work, and he said they had to help walk him a quarter mile through swamps, brush and trees. From there, he was taken to a nearby airport and flown to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage by a medical helicopter. He is listed in good condition at Providence.

Before help arrived, he worried about the bear returning to finish him off. “I kept hearing stuff,” he said, but every time he tried to lean up to look around, he became dizzy from the loss of blood.

“He didn’t come back, and so I just lay there and worried about it,” he said.

Minish, 61, has had his share of bear encounters over the 40 years he’s lived in Alaska, but nothing like this. He owns his own surveying and engineering business, which takes him into the wild often.

“That’s the one lesson learned,” he said. “I should have had somebody with me.”

He left his gun in the vehicle on this job but said it wouldn’t have mattered because the bear moved on him too fast for it to have been any use.

He can now add his name to the list of six people he knows who have been mauled by bears in Alaska.

“I guess I feel lucky,” Minish said of his encounter with the bear, after someone told him it’s better than being dead.

“In all honesty, it wouldn’t have mattered either way. You know, if it killed me, it killed me. I had a good life; I’m moving on. It didn’t kill me, so now let’s move on to the other direction of trying to stay alive,” he said.

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DENVER (AP) — Nathan MacKinnon finished his first career playoff hat trick with an empty-net goal to help the Colorado Avalanche pull away late for a 6-3 win over St. Louis in Game 2 on Wednesday night after the Blues avoided a pregame virus scare that nearly sidelined several players.

Joonas Donskoi scored twice and Brandon Saad added an empty-netter as Colorado took a 2-0 lead in the first-round playoff series. Since moving to Denver, Colorado is 13-1 all-time in best-of-seven postseason series when capturing the first two games.

Trailing 3-0, Sammy Blais scored for St. Louis in the second and Brayden Schenn added another with 9:53 remaining to make it a one-goal game. Schenn’s power-play goal followed Nazem Kadri being assessed a five-minute penalty for an illegal check to the head of Justin Faulk.

MacKinnon gave Colorado a 4-2 lead with 4:35 remaining, only to see Mike Hoffman score 15 seconds later. Saad scored an empty-netter with 2:09 left and MacKinnon added another with 11.9 seconds remaining, with fans tossing hats onto the ice in celebration.

It was the first hat trick by an Avalanche player in 24 years. MacKinnon also had an assist.

Philipp Grubauer finished with 32 saves.

Game 3 will be Friday in St. Louis.

Donskoi scored 35 seconds into the game, the second-fastest goal to start a playoff game in Colorado/Quebec history, according to NHL research. The fastest was 29 seconds by Quebec’s Wilf Paiement in Game 2 of the 1982 division finals.

The anxiety level for St. Louis increased well before puck even dropped when several Blues players returned positive COVID-19 tests. Later, they were cleared after the results from a lab were investigated with follow-up tests coming back negative.

Among those missing from the morning skate were forwards Vladimir Tarasenko and Jaden Schwartz, along with goaltender Jordan Binnington. The Blues remained without leading scorer David Perron, who’s been on the COVID-19 protocol list since the weekend.

The speedy Avalanche kept constant pressure on Binnington, who made 29 saves.

Faulk was shaken up when he was leveled by Kadri in the middle of the ice during the third. Faulk stayed down for a moment as officials reviewed the play. The major penalty was upheld and Kadri was removed from the game.

Grubauer helped Colorado weather the long penalty, with one save after another.

MacKinnon’s first-period goal was on a liner from the left side went through the legs of Robert Bortuzzo, then through the legs of Gabriel Landeskog and finally past a screened Binnington.

The difficult-to-defend MacKinnon has 61 points (25 goals, 36 assists) in 42 career playoff games.

KING CLANCY

Blues forward Ryan O’Reilly and Avalanche forward Pierre-Edouard Bellemare were both nominated for the King Clancy Memorial Trophy, which goes to the NHL player who best exemplifies leadership qualities on and off the ice and who has made a significant humanitarian contribution to his community.

“There’s a lot of names on that list, which is really impressive,” Bellemare said. “Just to be nominated, I’m really honored.”

THIS & THAT

Blues D Torey Krug had two assists. … Bortuzzo left the game with an upper-body injury. … Fans cheered when the scoreboard showed former Broncos QB Peyton Manning in the crowd. … Avs forwards Mikko Rantanen and Landeskog both had two assists.

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DETROIT (AP) — President Joe Biden took executive action Tuesday to ensure minorities, low-income Americans and others have better access to quality legal representation after services dwindled during the Trump administration.

Biden signed a memorandum directing the Department of Justice to restore key functions of the shuttered Access to Justice Office and to reestablish the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable.

The plans were laid out in a presidential memo first shared with The Associated Press. The White House said Biden was directing the roundtable to examine the impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on access to justice in both civil and criminal matters.

The pandemic “has further exposed and exacerbated inequities in our justice system” as legal services were curtailed, Biden wrote. He added that the problems “have touched the lives of many persons in this country, particularly low-income people and people of color.”

Tuesday’s memo is Biden’s latest step to work toward reforming the criminal justice system and advancing racial equity. It comes almost a year after the death of George Floyd sparked global protests and demands for action to address structural racism.

It builds on an executive order Biden signed on his first day in office establishing an initiative to prioritize equity in government operations. His proposed budget seeks $1.5 billion to strengthen state and local criminal justice systems, including public defenders. White House officials said the latest step will build on those efforts.

Civil rights organizations and leaders have been pressing the Biden administration to reestablish the Access to Justice Office and its work. The memo doesn’t explicitly reopen the office but requires Attorney General Merrick Garland to submit a plan within 120 days to expand work on access to justice.

The Access to Justice office was begun in 2010 by then-Attorney General Eric Holder and was formally established in 2016 under President Barack Obama. It worked on matters including criminal indigent defense, enforcement of fines, language barriers in the courts and civil legal aid.

The office was shut by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2018, with senior Justice Department officials saying its mission was similar to the role of public defenders. Even before the office was closed, its resources dwindled.

The Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable was first formed in 2012 and was launched as a White House initiative in 2015 to find ways to improve access and help people representing themselves, among other things.

The announcement comes as the Biden Justice Department has been refocusing the agency around civil rights, prioritizing policing reform measures and combating racial discrimination.

In just the past few weeks, the department has opened investigations of police in Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis. Federal prosecutors have charged four former Minneapolis police officers with civil rights violations in Floyd’s death and accused three men of hate crimes in the death of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia.

And many Trump-era policies have been reversed, including the Trump administration’s so-called “zero tolerance” immigration policy and a memo that curtailed the use of sweeping investigations into police departments.

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Stafford is a national investigative writer with The Associated Press’ Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Kat__Stafford. Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report from Washington

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates announced Tuesday it will offer a third shot to recipients of the Chinese state-backed Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine six months after their initial two-dose regimen. The move appears to make the UAE the first country worldwide to formally introduce the booster.

The brief statement comes after some residents in the UAE reported receiving a third shot amid concerns about an insufficient antibody response. China’s top disease control official acknowledged last month that the country’s locally produced vaccines offer low protection against the virus, adding to growing questions over the shot’s efficacy.

The Sinopharm vaccine has become the linchpin of the UAE’s vaccination campaign, among the fastest in the world per capita. The country, home to the oil-rich capital Abu Dhabi and glitzy city-state Dubai, has raced to widespread immunity in hopes of a swift economic reopening. Dubai draws heavily from the service-heavy tourism and aviation industries, which have been clobbered by the coronavirus.

Aside from efficacy numbers, the Chinese manufacturer has released very little public data about its Sinopharm vaccine, prompting criticism for its lack of transparency. Nonetheless, the shot is at the heart of China’s own mass immunization campaign and its vast vaccine diplomacy efforts.

The World Health Organization granted the Sinopharm shot emergency approval earlier this month, potentially paving the way for millions of doses to reach needy countries through the U.N.-backed COVAX vaccine program. A range of governments, including in Hungary, Pakistan, Serbia and the Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, already administer Sinopharm.

This spring, the UAE became the first in the world to manufacture its own local version of the Sinopharm vaccine. Widespread vaccination also plays a key role in preparing Dubai to host the long-awaited World Expo in October this year, expected to draw some 25 million visitors.

“As part of the state’s proactive strategy to provide maximum protection for society, the door has been opened for the public to receive an additional supportive dose of the Sinopharm vaccine for people,” said Dr. Farida al-Hosani, an Emirati health spokeswoman, in a statement broadcast on state television.

The government statement did not reveal any further information, saying only that all approved vaccines undergo strict safety tests. In the first public release of information on the shot’s efficacy last year, the UAE said the vaccine was 86% effective against the virus based on its review of an interim analysis, without providing further details.

In March, an official from a state-linked Emirati company distributing Sinopharm set off a storm of confusion when he acknowledged on Dubai’s state-owned radio that “a very small number” of residents had already received booster shots of Sinopharm. As vaccine recipients became worried about their antibody levels, authorities cautioned the public against mixing different coronavirus vaccines.

Last month, the head of international cooperation at China National Biotec Group, which is a subsidiary of Sinopharm, described the UAE’s use of booster shots as “not included in our clinical plan.”

“The country made their own decision that they found for some immunocompromised part of the population or the elderly group, if they found they have low levels of antibodies then they may give a third dose, but it is not recommended in our formal schedule,” Li Meng said.

Chinese officials made no immediate new comments on the UAE’s decision to drastically expand its booster shoot program.

At first, Abu Dhabi exclusively used Sinopharm for its rollout, while the neighboring emirate of Dubai offered other options, including Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca. However, in recent weeks, Abu Dhabi has started to offer Pfizer as well. Across the country, the majority of low-paid workers from Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East who power the UAE’s economy received the Sinopharm vaccine.

Infections in the UAE have gradually declined from peaks reached in January as tourists fleeing lockdowns back home flooded the country’s bars and beaches. But daily counts of new cases still hover over 1,000 a day, far above last year’s levels, even as the country has administered 117 vaccine doses per 100 residents. Unlike other countries with rapid vaccination drives, like Israel and the United Kingdom, the UAE remained open for business after emerging from a strict lockdown a year ago.

Earlier this month, health authorities in Bahrain, another small Gulf Arab sheikhdom that has relied on Sinopharm for its speedy campaign, reported that a booster shot “will soon be made available to individuals, with the aim of strengthening herd immunity.”

After the Emirati announcement Tuesday, Bahrain said the third shot for its Sinopharm recipients would initially go to a prioritized group, including first responders, residents older than 50 and those with underlying health conditions.

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Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai and Huizhong Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.

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