Officials said Tuesday that they were bracing for forecasted thunderstorms.

Thirty homes were evacuated as a precaution, but Arizona State Forestry Division spokeswoman Judy Wood says everyone was allowed to return home Monday evening.

Wood said no homes or other structures are threatened.

Crews expect the blaze to continue burning away from the town.

Wood said crews initially attacked the blaze with 10 air tankers and 10 to 15 fire engines, an unusually strong offensive because of the fire’s proximity to Bisbee.

But she said Tuesday that three hotshot crews had been released and aircraft had been pulled off, with about 160 firefighters still on the scene.

The cause of the fire began is under investigation.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said he got calls about the object all afternoon on Monday.

He said the object did not show up on FAA radar and was likely a balloon.

Later, Bill Stepp of the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas identified the object as a 4,000-pound research balloon released from a NASA organization used to measure gamma ray emissions in high altitudes.

The balloon was launched at about 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning from Fort Sumner, N.M., and was grounded at about 9 p.m. Monday just south of Kingman in western Arizona.

Stepp said the balloon, which usually floats at an altitude of 130,000 feet, can be seen for about 170 miles on a clear day and has raised concern from Albuquerque to Phoenix.

“It’s something unusual,” he said. “People just don’t know what it is.”

Marshall Valentine, who works in a Scottsdale office, said he and about five other co-workers who spotted the object high in the sky around 2 p.m. Monday had no idea what it was.

“It looks like someone blew a bubble in the sky and it stayed there,” Valentine said. “A plane flew under it and it looked like it was a mountain higher than a plane flies.”

Similar descriptions of an unidentified flying, clear orb were also reported out of Sedona.

Jennifer McCoy, who runs the UFO Store in Sedona with her husband, said a local resident told her about the object around 2 p.m.

She said she went into the parking lot and saw the object in the cloud line.

It “looked like the gigantic bubble from the Wizard of Oz,” she said.

The Arizona Republic reported on its Web site that the lockdown took effect at 3 p.m. Monday at Maricopa County’s Towers Jail, the Fourth Avenue Jail and Lower Buckeye Jail.

“Lockdown will continue until they start eating again,” Sheriff Joe Arpaio said.

The lockdown will prohibit visits, phone calls and television in the jails, and is expected to affect about 4,200 medium- and maximum-security inmates, according to a sheriff’s news release.

Inmates participating in hunger strikes since early May have repeatedly threatened inmates who continue to take their meals.

The news release says six inmates have asked to be placed in protective custody “so they can eat without fear of reprisal.”

Authorities said the hunger strikes were triggered by an anti-illegal immigration enforcement march on May 2. The event drew thousands of demonstrators and about 200 inmates went on strike.

Since then, more than a thousand inmates have repeatedly refused their meals.

Inmates and their representatives have said they’re protesting the quality of the jails’ food. Complaints about the quality of food comes as a dietitian has worked to make sure the jail menus meet USDA guidelines, as U.S. District Judge Neil Wake ordered in a ruling against Maricopa County last fall.

Sheriff’s authorities argue that new healthier menu items fall within 2005 USDA guidelines, but taste worse.

Jail intelligence officers say inmates were displeased with the evening meals, and that most inmates were still eating the morning meal.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents stop traffic recently in a search of weapons headed into Mexico at the Mariposa border crossing in Nogales.

NOGALES – Federal agents tap on car windows, opening trunks, looking in vain for contraband.

“We’re sucking up a lot of exhaust out here,” supervisory Customs and Border Protection officer Edith Serrano says, shrugging in her uniform.

This is what the Obama administration’s new commitment to help Mexico fight its drug cartels looks like.

President Obama this spring promised his Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderón, that the United States would fight two of the biggest contributions U.S. residents make to the drug cartels Calderón has vowed to eradicate: cash and weapons, the latter hard to come by in Mexico.

For the past five weeks, hundreds of agents participating in a newly intensified $95 million outbound inspection program have been stepping into southbound traffic lanes, stopping suspicious-looking cars and trucks.

The Associated Press fanned out to the busiest crossings along the Mexican border – San Diego, Nogales, El Paso and Laredo – to see how effective the inspections are.

The findings? Wads of U.S. currency headed for Mexico, wedged into car doors, stuffed under mattresses, taped onto torsos, were sniffed out by dogs, seized by agents and locked away for possible investigations. No guns were found as the reporters watched; they rarely are.

“I do not believe we can even make a dent in (southbound smuggling) because that assumes the cartels are complete idiots, which they’re not. Why in the world would they try to smuggle weapons and currency through a checkpoint when there are so many other options?” said Border Patrol Agent T.J. Bonner, president of the agents’ union.

According to CBP, between March 12 and April 30 officers seized:

• Fifty-one pieces of ammunition, weapons parts and guns, a minuscule fraction of the 2,000 weapons the Mexican government estimates are smuggled south every day.

• $12 million in cash, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the $17 billion to $39 billion the U.S. Justice Department estimates is illegally sent to Mexico from the U.S. annually, but more than the $10 million seized in outbound checks in 2008.

• Sixty-one people on charges involving weapons or currency offenses and on outstanding warrants.

Millions of cars pass into Mexico from the United States every year. The federal government doesn’t keep track but a count by Texas A&M International University’s Texas Center for Border Economic and Enterprise Development shows more than 27 million vehicles a year drove into Mexico just from Texas.

The outbound checkpoints the AP observed stopped sometimes 1 out of 4 cars, sometimes 1 out of 100, and not every day. Even that amount created huge traffic backups at some locations and, agents said, might have allowed spies to call any smugglers heading that way and warn them to put off their Mexico trip.

Agents across the border said the first few minutes of their operation are the most precious. That’s how long it takes for “scouts” watching from a bridge in San Diego lined with taxis to radio ahead to smugglers to stay away. In Nogales, a dozen men dashed along a Mexican hill about 150 yards from the checkpoint last week.

“We tend to see spotters up there,” said CBP agent Brian Levin. “They sit up on those hills and watch everything we do.”

Inspectors retreat, then mount another “surge” after a while standing on the side of the freeway.

Some of those stopped were sanguine, others annoyed.

“I guess they think I have drugs or something,” said Daniel Saucedo, a 15-year-old Albuquerque high school student who clambered out of the passenger side of a small white pickup truck with his two dogs last week in El Paso. “It’s dumb,” he said.

William Molaski, port director in El Paso, said agents at his four El Paso bridges haven’t found much since the focus on outbound checks started in early April – one handgun and only about $400,000 – “but not for lack of trying.”

Without providing any numbers, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told attendees at the Border Trade Alliance International Conference on April 21 that, just a few weeks into the intensified outbound inspections, she was amazed at how much had already been seized. “It’s unbelievable,” she said. “So the notion that there wasn’t a river of cash and a flood of guns going into Mexico is a myth. I mean, there was. We want to stop that river.”

CBP’s 2010 budget request, released May 7, includes an additional $46 million specifically targeted at southbound enforcement.

Customs inspectors’ techniques range from primitive to high-tech, with about an equal success rate. Sometimes a small white truck drives slowly alongside vehicles that have been pulled over, beaming X-rays at them to reveal hidden cash or weapons. A smaller X-ray unit scans spare tires or pieces of luggage, a hand-held density meter called a “Buster” can reveal hidden compartments loaded with cash, a fiber-optic scope snaked into gas tanks looks for hidden cargo and trained dogs can sniff out cash or weapons.

But before they get to any of the gadgets, officers knock with a knuckle or flat palm on a car’s body panels. And they ask, again and again: “Do you have any weapons? Cash? Merchandise?”

Often the dogs make the finds.

Grill, a “currency canine,” smelled something on 63-year-old Isabel Ortega Garcia on April 3 in Hidalgo, Texas, when Ortega was walking into Mexico. When Grill got excited, agents patted Ortega down and found $148,000 in neat wads of $100 bills taped around her waist.

Two weeks earlier in Laredo, Akim sniffed cash under the floor of a southbound bus. Under the seats, in a hidden compartment, were 75 bundles of bills totaling $2,997,510.

But even finding that much cash doesn’t always yield an arrest. Without a U.S. attorney’s say-so, the best an agent can do is seize any cash amounts over $10,000 that the traveler does not declare, hand them a receipt and send them on south.

The best case scenario for agents who seize undeclared currency is that federal prosecutors decide to bring charges and begin a forfeiture procedure. But often it is a race against the clock as inspectors on the scene try to collect enough evidence to make it an attractive case for prosecutors.

Obama said while campaigning that he favored a ban on sales of assault weapons. But Congress isn’t budging on the issue, and guns in the U.S., particularly in southern border states, remain easy to buy legally.

“The real issues of assault weapons and bulk cash do not initiate at the border and cannot be solved there,” said David Shirk, director of the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute. “But gun control? That’s a discussion the current administration is reluctant to wade into.”

Mexican customs inspector Ricardo Briseno, 27, says the increase in U.S. inspections of Mexico-bound cars has made his job easier, even though the only effective solution would be to stop every car.

“At least it’s something,” he said. “We are working together on a shared problem.”

Valinda Jo Elliott was lost on White Mountain Apache land for two days in 2002 when she started a blaze to get the attention of a television news helicopter. That fire merged into the Rodeo-Chediski fire.

She wasn’t criminally prosecuted, but the tribe brought a civil case against her.

After she tried unsuccessfully to have the case dismissed in tribal courts, she turned to a federal district court.

That court held that Elliott must exhaust her tribal court remedies and dismissed the case without prejudice.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling Thursday.

ABC News’ “20/20,” a newsmagazine show, will delve into the unsolved case as part of a series of shows featuring people who have disappeared.

Darien Biggs, Mikelle’s father, remains convinced that a sex offender sentenced to more than 100 years in prison for the brutal rape of a neighbor is responsible for his daughter’s murder.

While suspicion has focused on the convicted rapist, Mesa police consider Mikelle’s disappearance an open case and have never named a suspect. They say there isn’t enough evidence to charge anyone.

Mikelle disappeared about 6 p.m. on Jan. 2, 1999, at Toltec Street and El Moro Avenue in central Mesa. Mikelle had heard an ice cream truck and ran out to meet it. Her sister, Kimber, went home to get a jacket. Tracy Biggs, their mother, sent Kimber back to tell Mikelle to come home.

Only 90 seconds passed, but Mikelle already was gone, less than a block from the family’s house.

Mikelle’s body never was found. No one apparently witnessed what police still believe was an abduction. Police found Mikelle’s bicycle and two quarters she planned to use to buy the ice cream.

Elizabeth Vargas, an award-winning reporter who worked in Phoenix early in her career for KTVK (Channel 3) from 1986-1989, interviews the Biggs family as part of the show.

“It’s such a heartbreaking case,” Vargas said. “Within two minutes, she vanishes into thin air.”

Vargas said she has worked on profiles of 10 to 15 cases where people have vanished; some eventually were solved and others remain unsolved.

“I think the thing we have found repeatedly in these shows is that not knowing is the worst,” she said.

Darien Biggs called the “20/20″ interview another in a series of attempts to finally find out what happened to Mikelle after more than a decade.

“I won’t be a whole person again until we know for sure,” Biggs said. “I think there has to be more than one person in the world who knows what happened. It’s so hard to keep a secret.”

His hope is that the “20/20″ profile will jog memories and generate more tips for police, perhaps from someone who once lived in Mesa but has moved out of state.

“I just hope that someone will say something. You never know,” he said.

Gotcha! A traffic camera flashes to catch a speeder on the Piestewa Freeway in Phoenix. But the person driving may not get a speeding ticket.

Motorists activated photo-enforcement cameras on Arizona highways more than 471,000 times from December through February – more than 5,200 times each day – but on average, only about one-third of those drivers received tickets from the state Department of Public Safety.

An Arizona Republic analysis of three months of records shows Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. and the DPS threw out more than 65 percent of the photos captured.

The reasons for rejecting tickets vary but are relatively uncomplicated: Sun glare, dirty windshields and traffic rank as top causes.

Redflex, a Scottsdale-based company that operates Arizona’s statewide system, has a goal of issuing tickets 80 percent of the time the cameras are activated, DPS Lt. Jeff King said.

A Redflex spokeswoman clarified by saying that figure applies only to photos that aren’t compromised by factors such as the weather. Redflex refused to comment on the expectations or success of the program in Arizona.

King wouldn’t characterize the DPS’ position on the number of activations and the percentage of tickets issued but said the agency is pleased with photo enforcement’s impact on public safety.

“I think there’s always room for improvement, but we also recognize that there are some things outside of everybody’s control. It’s nature. You cannot fix the sun,” King said. “Between sun glare, dirty windshields, shade, there’s really not a whole lot you can do with that.”

Part of the problem in Arizona, King said, is that the state has a driver-responsibility law, like Colorado, California and Oregon. That distinction means DPS officers have to match the photo of the speeder with one on a driver’s license.

Authorities issue notices of violation to owners when a speed camera captures a clear picture of a license plate and a driver. But the vehicle’s owner may deny being the driver. If authorities can’t then match the camera image to a driver’s-license photo, they can’t issue a ticket.

Other states, like Louisiana, have a registered-owner responsibility law, which requires authorities to match only the license plate with a registered owner. The owner gets the ticket, even if he or she wasn’t the one driving.

“I don’t think you could ever get to that perfect 80 percentile that they’re targeting,” King said. “We have to actually be able to look in the picture and identify that person.”

Redflex officials would not discuss the technology that operates the photo-enforcement system, but the cameras have high-powered lenses, King said. The cameras are designed to take high-resolution photos across multiple lanes of traffic.

“We can just about zoom in and see stuff on the dash,” King said.

Motorists occasionally beat the cameras by blocking their faces or having a fortuitously placed visor.

Walter Figueroa’s case, though it didn’t arise from a freeway camera, shows that other factors can be at work, too.

Figueroa received a violation notice in his Laveen mailbox earlier this week for driving 50 mph through a 35-mph zone in Mesa on his motorcycle on April 25.

But Figueroa doesn’t own a motorcycle.

He drives a Nissan SUV, as the violation notes, with a license plate of ONIX.

The citation also contains a picture of a man on a motorcycle, making an obscene gesture toward the camera, with a license plate of ON1X.

“I’m just a little bent. Two people physically signed this ticket,” he said.

American Traffic Solutions operates Mesa’s photo-enforcement system. Figueroa called the toll-free number on the back of the violation, and the operator forwarded his dispute to Mesa police, who issued the ticket.

“What if I was out of state or out of the country and never acknowledged that and missed the court date, then my license is suspended because of their mistake,” Figueroa said. “Did it not behoove you to check my registered vehicles? I don’t even own a motorcycle.”

Legislators approved the statewide program in July, giving the DPS a mandate to install 100 fixed and mobile cameras on Arizona highways.

The DPS suspended the program’s expansion in mid-January, with 36 fixed locations and 42 mobile units in place. The suspension coincided with a wave of anti-photo-enforcement efforts that included residents’ protests and legislative efforts to end the program, but DPS officials insist they suspended the program to seek the best locations for the remaining cameras.

The most recent data from the DPS shows cameras snapped motorists more than 1 million times on Arizona highways during the program’s first seven months.

More than 80,000 drivers have paid the fines.

Arizona has collected nearly $12 million through the process, with more than $1.3 million going to Redflex, according to terms of the contract.

King and other DPS officials cite statistics that show traffic fatalities have dropped dramatically in areas where photo-enforcement cameras are stationed. Critics deride that data, which compared the same 80-day periods in consecutive years, as incomplete.

The April 19 murder of Redflex employee Doug Georgianni while he worked in a mobile photo-enforcement unit near Seventh Avenue and Loop 101 in Phoenix brought the program, and the controversy surrounding it, into the spotlight again.

DPS authorities have tried to focus on photo enforcement’s safety benefits from the beginning but have been plagued by a 2008 prediction from then-Gov. Janet Napolitano that the program could generate as much as $90 million in revenue in the first year.

Critics point to that prediction as evidence that speed cameras are nothing more than a revenue generator masquerading as a safety program.

By JJ Hensley, Matt Wynn

PHOENIX – The state House has overwhelmingly approved a bill that would permit a gun owner to keep a weapon out of sight in a locked vehicle in a parking lot or garage.

House approval of the bill on Wednesday on a 41-10 vote sends it to the state Senate, which has not yet begun considering non-budget bills during the current session.

Supporters said the bill would serve Arizonans who want to have guns in vehicles for self-defense and recreational purposes. Critics said it tramples on private property rights and overturns employers’ bans of weapons on their property.

The bill, which Republican Rep. John Kavanagh of Fountain Hills has said he introduced at the behest of the National Rifle Association, would not apply to parking areas of detached, single-family homes.

Hardworking Arizonans already have been secretly leaving guns in their vehicles while going to work at places where guns are banned, said Rep. Frank Antenori, R-Tucson. “But they don’t have to worry now about being potentially fired or penalized for doing that.”

This 2008 photo shows the type of surveillance equipment to be deployed on the border.

Construction has begun on towers for the final version of the virtual fence project in southern Arizona, and project leader Mark Borkowski said Tuesday he’s confident the multibillion dollar will system work well.

Borkowski, executive director of the Homeland Security Department’s Secure Border Initiative program office, said he’s 75 to 80 percent confident in the engineering of the revamped project.

“And I have higher confidence than that that if there were issues, they’d be issues that we could solve,” he said.

Plans call for extending the towers along almost the entire Mexican border by 2014 — at a cost estimated at $6.7 billion.

President Obama has not requested that money, nor has Congress appropriated it — yet.

“Right now, the administration and the Congress are both very interested in continuing this program,” Borkowski said. “What level will it be at — $200 million a year or will it be $2 billion a year? That’s part of the broader national debate about what are the priorities and budgets. But there seems to be a continued interest and priority in this at some reasonable level.”

The virtual fence is designed to use radar and cameras with about a six-mile range, including infrared devices and other technologies, to detect smuggling attempts. The sensors are designed to be able to distinguish people from animals and allow operators to direct Border Patrol agents to intruders.

The first section will cover about 53 miles of Arizona’s border with Mexico, with additional towers, up to 120 feet tall and spaced miles apart, to follow on the remaining 320 miles of the state’s southern border. Virtual fencing then will go up in New Mexico, followed by California and most of Texas.

Borkowski said towers with cameras, radars and sensors and communications gear won’t stop people or substitute for a physical fence. But he said it will tell the Border Patrol where people are entering the country illegally.

“Technology’s not going to secure the borders,” Borkowski said. “Frankly, the personnel fundamentally are going to secure the borders.”

The Federal Aviation Administration says only airline, law enforcement and air ambulance aircraft will be allowed to fly in that zone between 5:30 p.m. and 10:05 p.m. That will stop private operations at Phoenix Sky Harbor, Scottsdale, Falcon Field and Chandler airports.

From 12 to 30 miles from the airport, pilots will only be allowed to fly if air traffic controllers can handle their requests. Pilots must have filed flight plans, use transponders and be talking to controllers.

Obama is making the commencement address at ASU’s Sun Devil Stadium.