Shares of Apple ( AAPL ) are down $2.34, or 0.7%,a t $338.19 after Blooomberg’s Michael Wei in Beijing reported there has been an explosion at a plant in Chengdu owned by Foxconn, the Taiwanese firm that manufactures many of Apple’s products.

In case you missed, Saudi prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal was on CNBC this morning — he’s 26th on the Forbes billionaire list with $19.6 billion in personal net worth, in case you’ve lost count — and he was talking about about Apple ( AAPL ), among other things. “We got into Apple at $9 many years ago, and Steve Jobs is my friend, I always visit him in California,” said Al-Waleed

ThinkEquity’s Mark McKechnie this morning initiated coverage of Research In Motion ( RIMM ) with a Hold rating and a $48 target, threading a path between what he sees as the bull and bear cases.

Liberty Media proposed a deal late Thursday to buy the largest U.S. book retailer Barnes & Noble for $1.02 billion through the purchase of the company’s stock at $17 per share, according to Reuters . The offer may seem high for an ailing fleet of retail stores that are seeing declines in print book sales, but Barnes & Noble’s Nook tablet and online marketplace could be very valuable to the right buyer

Or at least one of the things on a wish list that includes a revealing 12-month wall calendar, Zamboni rides, a full deck of cards , karaoke night, an invite to the manse for spaghetti with anchovies , the opportunity to submit designs for the tattoo he’ll be getting on his lower lumbar region, a remastered DVD of home video footage that features his conception, birth, and 3rd place finish in the 8 and under 25m butterfly, a lock of chest hair, one year as his foster child, and higher fees: a new fund. SAC Capital Management LLC, the $14 billion investment firm founded by Steve Cohen, is opening a fund specializing in quantitative trading, its first new fund in six years, according to two people familiar with the decision

Shares of GameStop ( GME ) are down $1.67, or almost 7%, at $25.01, after the retail chain this morning reported fiscal Q1 results ahead of estimates, but said its profit per share this quarter will miss estimates. Q1 revenue rose 9.5%, year over year, to $2.28 billion, yielding EPS of 56 cents

You’re an investment professional and have been making some trades that would fall under the umbrella of ‘securities violations’ for some time. Your colleague and co-conspirator has been acting a little weird (whenever you talk to him, he’s been asking detailed questions about how exactly you’ve obtained inside information, what you did with it, etc) and you start to wonder if perhaps he’s flipped, is cooperating with the government and has been recording conversations with you in order to get a better deal. If he’s started wearing a cravat and asking you to lean in “closer, closer” while chatting or to slow dance in the office kitchen, you may want to back slowly out of the room and lay low for a while

“ Jeff Bezos is an unstoppable force! An entrepreneurial mastermind! Unwavering in his confidence!” Such is the preview video for tonight’s episode of Bloomberg Game Changers , one of my favorite overwrought, over-the-top businesses documentary series. If past history is a guide, the show will examine in rapid-fire style how the Amazon.com ( AMZN ) CEO got where he is, what makes him tick, and what his big challenges were, and will punctuate it with dramatic quotes from people who’ve met Bezos, all wrapped up in a kind of hyperbolic tempo leading into every commercial break.

Folks, it wouldn’t be Tuesday without a massive report on the outlook for tablet computing . And so, this morning, Jefferies & Co . analyst Peter Misek offers a 115-page note in which he goes through the findings of a survey of 1,400 consumers in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and Asia.

$$$ Consumer Prices Rise as Confidence, Jobs Gain (Bloomberg) $$$ Citi reinstates quarterly dividend at 1 cent (Reuters) $$$ ECB Asks Court to Bar Greek Swap Disclosure, Cites Market-Disruption Risks (Bloomberg) $$$ Emmanuel Goffer Denied Delay in Insider Trading Trial (Businessweek) $$$ Falcone’s Harbinger to Raise $280 Million (Bloomberg) $$$ President of Collapsed Monticello, N.Y., Hedge Fund Charged with Fraud (WSJ) $$$ Surprise – Moody’s accidentally rates a bond too low (FT Alphaville) $$$ SAC Says Cohen’s Ex-Wife Met With Fairfax (Bloomberg) $$$ AIG Cites Bonus Abuse in Sex-Discrimination Suit (Bloomberg) $$$ SEC’s revolving door to Wall Street gets fresh scrutiny (Reuters) $$$ Gold and silver snapped up by bullish Indians (FT) $$$ Long View: Why Jim Rogers won’t sell his gold (FT) $$$ Vikram Pandit: The Best Value on Wall Street (WSJ DealJournal) $$$ Yahoo falls on concerns about Alibaba (MarketWatch) $$$ At Reactor, Damage Worse Than Feared (WSJ) $$$ Rich Russians Buy Bunkers on Apocalypse Angst (Bloomberg) $$$ Beef-Buying Koreans Fuel Record Meat Rally in U.S. Groceries (Bloomberg) $$$ Boston developer wants cut of Winklevoss twins’ $65-million Facebook settlement (LA Times)