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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Virginia pitcher Josh Sborz slips a pinch of chewing tobacco between his cheek and gum every now and then, even though the NCAA banned the substance 20 years ago,

"I enjoy the taste. It's not like I'm addicted to it," Sborz said. "I just enjoy it, definitely. I do it maybe once a month or every other week."

Sborz said this week's death of Hall of Fame baseball player Tony Gwynn might give college players some pause. Gwynn died at 54 of oral cancer believed to be connected to his long use of chewing tobacco.

"It should have an impact when such a star-studded player's life was ended by the addiction he had. It's sad," Sborz said.

Whether Gwynn's death has any real impact is an open question and it comes amid some concerns: Baseball players acknowledging using spit tobacco at least once in the previous month rose from 42.5 percent in 2005 to 52.3 percent in 2009, according to the NCAA's quadrennial survey substance use trends among its athletes. Results of the 2013 survey have not yet been released, though preliminary results suggest a drop since 2009.

About 15 percent of teams in each NCAA sport are asked to participate in the anonymous survey, with a total sample size of about 20,000 athletes. Among all male athletes, 16 percent acknowledged using tobacco in 2005 and 17 percent in 2009.

Sborz said he thinks the survey is "skewed" when it comes to ball players.

"All those people don't do it every day," he said. "If people do it every day, that's where it becomes a problem. If they do it once every week, I don't see any issue with it."

Minor-league baseball banned tobacco in 1993, a year before the NCAA. Tobacco is not banned in the major leagues.

Though tins of tobacco aren't visible in college dugouts like they were before 1994, that doesn't mean players aren't dipping when they're away from the ballpark.

"It's 100 percent part of baseball culture," said Virginia second baseman Branden Cogswell, who estimated half his teammates chew tobacco at least occasionally. "It's kind of a habit for people, kind of a comfort thing. I've never been a part of that group, but so many guys do it. People take those risks. It's their choice."

Dave Keilitz, executive director of the American Baseball Coaches Association, said he was surprised to find out so many baseball players were using tobacco.

"I think most of our coaches, if not all of our coaches, are very aware of the danger and also don't want their players using it," Keilitz said. "In my 20 years of doing this, I haven't seen any evidence of that taking place in dugouts, in games. I hope the same holds true in practice sessions."

Keilitz said his organization adamantly opposes the use of smokeless tobacco and participated in the making of a video that illustrates the dangers.

Virginia coach Brian O'Connor said he chewed during his playing days in the late 1980s and early '90s. Like Keilitz, he was surprised so many players acknowledge using tobacco.

"If kids are doing it, they're doing a heck of a job of hiding it," he said.

The NCAA said the ban was put in place as part of its charge to protect the safety and welfare of athletes. The penalty for violating the ban was left to the committee that oversees each sport. The Baseball Rules Committee instructed umpires to eject any player or coach who is using tobacco or who has tobacco in his possession. Enforcement was spotty until the committee made it a point of emphasis in 2003.

In spite of the warnings the players receive, Texas coach Augie Garrido said he knows some members of his team chew tobacco.

"There's a lot more of it in Texas," he said, "because it's not only about the baseball. It's about hunting, it's about fishing, it's about being a man."

As for Sborz, he started chewing for a simple reason.

"I saw an older kid do it, so I thought I'd try to do it," he said.

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Online:

NCAA's 2009 substance use survey: http://www.ncaapublications.com/p-4266-research-substance-use-national-study-of-substance-use-trends-among-ncaa-college-student-athletes.aspx

NCAA preliminary 2013 substance use survey overview: http://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/convention2014_drug-use-preliminary.pdf

CLEVELAND (AP) — A man twice convicted of killing a woman and eight children at a birthday sleepover in Cleveland's deadliest house fire was sentenced Friday to 35 years in prison.

Antun Lewis, 30, had asked the judge for mercy and expressed condolences to the families of the victims, some of whom he knew. He said someone committed the crime "but it's a lie that person was me."

Lewis was deemed ineligible for the death penalty because of a mental disability. His attorneys presented evidence he has an IQ of 70 or less.

The fire killed 33-year-old Medeia Carter, four of her children and four other youngsters attending a birthday sleepover party on May 21, 2005.

Carter's mother, Evelyn Martin, also spoke at the hearing, recounting the aftermath of the blaze.

"I had to stand there and watch them bring them out one by one," Martin said.

She recalled seeing several of her grandchildren zipped in body bags at the medical examiner's office and seeing skin falling off one of her grandsons, who later died.

"I hope you live long enough so all the skin falls off your damned body," she told Lewis at sentencing.

Authorities said Lewis, upset over a drug debt, doused the three-story building's first floor with gasoline.

Lewis said he was at home, several blocks away, when the fire started. He and his attorneys have claimed there was no drug debt and he has twice passed polygraph tests that show he is telling the truth.

U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver presided over Lewis' first trial, in early 2011. While a jury convicted Lewis of a count of arson, the judge overturned the verdict because of concerns about the reliability of jailhouse informants who testified against him. The defense portrayed the jailhouse snitches who testified against him as witnesses willing to say anything in return for lighter sentences.

The 6th U.S. District Court of Appeals upheld Oliver's ruling in February 2012 and ordered that Lewis be given a new trial.

The appellate judges pointed out that one witness had a 30-year criminal record with a sixth-grade education, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder and had spent half his life between state hospitals and prisons. That witness also gave numerous inconsistent and contradictory statements about the night of the fire to investigators and at trial, and phone records showed some of them were completely inaccurate, the judges said.

Prosecutors used some of the witnesses during the second trial, in December 2013, and a jury returned another guilty verdict. Lewis testified in his own defense at the second trial.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Dozens of actors and athletes are joining a U.S. government effort to support girls' education worldwide.

Jennifer Garner, Susan Sarandon, Alicia Keys, Anne Hathaway, Tyler Perry and pro basketball player DeAndre Jordan are among the stars speaking out about the importance of education for girls around the globe in an online video for the new Let Girls Learn initiative.

"A threat to girls' education anywhere is a threat to progress everywhere," "Modern Family" star Julie Bowen says in the two-minute video, which premiered Friday.

The stars were moved to make the video after the recent kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls in Nigeria and the Taliban's 2012 attempted assassination of Pakistani schoolgirl and education activist Malala Yousafzai. The U.S. Agency for International Development is supporting the effort with $201 million in new education programs announced Friday that will help provide safe learning opportunities for girls in Nigeria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Jordan and Guatemala.

"All around the world, people want to change the injustices but often times don't know exactly what they can do about it," Keys said in a statement. "I really wanted to participate in this (video) because empowering women changes the course of our world."

The Let Girls Learn website offers various ways for individuals and organizations to get involved.

Research shows that an educated girl is more likely to educate her children. A girl with a basic education is three times less likely to contract HIV. An additional year of education can increase a woman's earning potential by as much as 25 percent. More than 60 million girls around the world are not in school.

"An educated girl really is the key to a healthy, more stable, more prosperous country," said Cathy Russell, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues. "Educating girls is really one of the best investments we can make."

This is also true in the United States, notes Soledad O'Brien, who also appears in the video.

"Investing in girls can actually move the needle in communities," she said, "...and can actually benefit boys, because girls are the mothers of boys."

Research shows that countries where women constitute at least 30 percent of political representation are more egalitarian and democratic. Women comprise about 20 percent of American elected officials in the House and Senate.

Nick Cannon got involved with Let Girls Learn because becoming a dad made him a more passionate education advocate

"It's really about equal opportunity around the world," he said, "and at the same time knowing how much anyone's life is furthered with the proper education."

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen at www.twitter.com/APSandy.

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Online:

http://www.usaid.gov/letgirlslearn

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians, including a 13-year-old, in clashes during West Bank raids Friday, as a search for three Israeli teens feared abducted in the territory entered its second week.

Two other Palestinians were seriously wounded by army gunfire during raids in four towns and refugee camps. The two Palestinians killed Friday raised to three the number of Palestinians shot dead by troops during search operations this week.

The three Jewish seminary students disappeared June 12 while hitchhiking in the West Bank. Israel has blamed the Islamic militant Hamas group for the apparent abduction, but has offered no proof.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has used the search to promote two other objectives — a new crackdown on Hamas and an attempt to discredit the Palestinian unity government formed earlier this month by Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas, which is supported by Hamas.

Hamas has praised the abduction of the teenagers but has not claimed responsibility for it. The group has abducted Israelis in the past to press for the release of thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

In Hebron, families of Palestinians arrested recently in Israeli raids protested after weekly Muslim prayers. They gestured with three fingers, one for each missing teen, in a sign of their support for the abduction.

The gesture has become popular on social media among Palestinians and others who support the abductions of the teens.

Over the past week, thousands of Israeli troops have searched hundreds of locations in the West Bank and arrested more than 300 Palestinians, many from Hamas.

The Israeli military said it conducted raids in four towns and refugee camps early Friday, detaining 25 suspects and searching about 200 locations. The army said it searched nine institutions linked to Hamas and confiscated materials.

In one raid, in the town of Dura near Hebron, Palestinian youths threw stones at soldiers, drawing army fire. A hospital official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media, said 13-year-old Mohammed Dodeen was killed by a bullet in the chest. The official had earlier said he was 15.

The army also opened fire during a raid in the Qalandiya refugee camp, where three Palestinians were seriously wounded, said Ahmed Bitawi, director of Ramallah's hospital. One of the three, 23-year-old Mustafa Aslan, later died of his wounds.

The army confirmed soldiers used life fire, saying they were responding to life-threatening situations, and added that the troops engaged in sporadic confrontations during Friday's raids.

Palestinians threw homemade explosives, firebombs, fireworks and stones, the military said. In Qalandiya, a soldier was lightly hurt by a grenade thrown at troops, it said.

A senior Israeli intelligence officer said Friday that anyone linked to Hamas was potentially a target for arrest.

He acknowledged that despite recent government declarations of a major crackdown on Hamas, both Israel and Abbas' Palestinian Authority have already dismantled much of the movement's West Bank infrastructure in recent years.

"But there are a lot of small places that are supporting Hamas," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with military briefing regulations.

"We'll go to every place that has a sign of Hamas on it, and we're going to hit it. Whether it's small or large. We really don't look only for the big symbols. There are no big symbols ... the Palestinian Authority did it (the crackdown) before and we did it."

One of the locations targeted Thursday was the office of the Islamic student union at the West Bank's Bir Zeit University. A military spokesman said Hamas paraphernalia were confiscated as well as computers and databases, which are being searched.

Hamas activists said they had used the office to store materials for protests, such as flags and posters commemorating slain militants.

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Associated Press writer Yousur Alhlou in Tel Aviv, Israel contributed to this report.