Defense bill includes appropriations for SoCal

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Soldiers in the 1st Infantry Division wait outside at a deployment ceremony as more soldiers at Fort Riley prepare to leave for another tour in Iraq August 13, 2009 at Fort Riley, Kansas. The Army is requiring that all soldiers take suicide awareness classes and mental health well being training as the relentless pace of deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years have taken a toll, sending Army suicide statistics higher.

A defense bill passed Saturday and awaits the president's signature would support several Southland recipients, Sen. Barbara Boxer announced today.

The bill would extend unemployment benefits set to expire at the end of the year for two months and tax credits aimed at helping people afford health insurance, Boxer said in a prepared release.

Southern California appropriations included in the bill were:

— $4.8 million for research aimed at developing clean-burning military vehicles at Pasadena's National Automotive Center;

— $3.2 million for UCLA to help institute Web-based programs aimed at training Department of Defense social workers;

— $2.88 million for Cal State Long Beach for developing foreign-language programs in Arabic, Mandarin, Korean, Persian and Russian;

— $2 million for research at Cedars-Sinai aimed at improving combat medicine and surgery;

— $1.6 million for UCLA to support a program aimed at helping public health authorities respond to bio-emergencies;

— and $1 million for USC's Institute for Creative Technologies in Marina del Rey, where researchers are working on brain-imaging techniques aimed at helping diagnose and treat post-traumatic stress disorder.