I'm only using Firefox, and have no intention of checking with some obsolete browser. It is quite possible that the error is on my end, some add-in/setting, although I have not changed anything but Fx versions (together with updated ver. of NoScript and uBlock Origin, and filter rules for the latter obviously). The changes are usually on the other end; they change layout, service providers, scripts, media players etc. And then something breaks.
Now that I pointed my finger in the other direction,

I do clean cache, cookies, and session more times than I would like to admit; so, that's out of the question. It's quite the opposite at times; it can in some cases help to have visited a site some short time earlier during the same session. But it should work with a clean cache etc.
Bookmarks, well, not that interesting in this case, however in, for example, the case of the BBC News I know that I have a bookmark to their .co.uk domain but get redirected to their .com domain. Perhaps a problem related to that? Nope, changed to .com and got the same result.
I have allowed session cookies for bbc.com.
Firefox console? I see one error "Uncaught (in promise)", well something wasn't "caught". It (in the console) complains about blocked cookies for .co.uk, shouldn't be needed, and a bunch of script and other resources.
But I have since a very long time allowed scripts for bbc.co.uk; bbc.com; bbci.co.uk, and more recently for something called gsconttxt.net (in this case bbc.gsconttxt.net) since otherwise all videos and many images were not loaded.
So, what's going on? Firefox DNS Prefetching? Hmm, nope, network.dns.disablePrefetch is already set to "true".
Not much research as I said; but I noticed that when Fx successfully loaded the page the BBC has a message there; they're hiring people! So, if anyone can press F12 in Fx they can get this secret message and perhaps help them help me download their news pages.
