Here are the business stories making the headlines across the country this morning.

Black cab drivers sue Uber for £250m over illegal London licence claims

Thousands of London taxi drivers have launched a £250m lawsuit against Uber, claiming the minicab app illegally obtained a licence to operate in London.

More than 10,000 cabbies have signed up to the lawsuit, which lawyers claim could result in compensation of £25,000 per driver.

The High Court claim comes just weeks after Uber sought to bury a long-running battle with black cab drivers by allowing them to accept rides through its app.

The legal action is being brought by claims company RGL Management and lawyers at Mishcon de Reya. They said they had signed up close to 11,000 taxi drivers – more than half of the roughly 18,000 registered in the capital.

Wait for interest rate cut leads to surprise dip in house price growth

Shifting expectations for UK interest rate cuts have contributed to a dip in house price growth, according to a closely watched measure.

Nationwide reported a 0.4% fall in average property costs last month compared with March, taking the annual rate of growth to 0.6% from 1.6%.

Economists polled by the Reuters news agency had expected month-on-month growth of 0.2%.

The lender's report said the easing reflected "ongoing affordability pressures, with longer term interest rates rising in recent months, reversing the steep fall seen around the turn of the year".

Apple working to fix alarming iPhone issue

Apple says it is working to quickly fix an issue that caused some iPhone alarms not to play a sound, giving their slumbering users an unexpected lie-in.

For many people, their phone is an indispensable alarm clock and some over-sleepers turned to social media to vent.

One TikTokker complained that she had set "like five alarms" and they didn't go off.

Apple has confirmed it is aware of the issue - but is yet to spell out what it believes is causing it, or what users can do to avoid a late start.

GSK raises profit forecast on the back of strong vaccine sales

Strong sales of asthma medicine and a blockbuster shingles vaccine has helped GSK to raise its full-year profit forecasts.

The FTSE 100 pharmaceuticals company posted sales of £7.4 billion in the first quarter, up 10 per cent, or 13 per cent excluding Covid medicines.

Vaccines sales rose 16 per cent, with Shingrix, GSK’s shingles vaccine, up 18 per cent at £945 million and sales of Arexvy, its new respiratory syncytial virus vaccine for older adults, generating £182 million.

Sales of Trelegy, its chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma inhaler, rose 33 per cent to £591 million.

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