Have a script attached to a button that deletes all found records in a table conatining rss news headers and descriptions and then runs an rss feed update to import to the table again.

Is there a script that will check for an internet connection before deleting the records?

(So if it fails i can run a custom dialog "Internet connection needed to update rss" and the existing items wont get deleted)

Just tossing out a possibility;

You could ping www.yahoo.com using the free plugin called SHELL. Then using the Patten Count function check for the existence of "Reply from".

You could also do it without the shell plugin but there would be more steps involved.