use LWP;
my $url = 'http://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/perl?format=xml';
my $agent = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $request = HTTP::Request->new(GET => $url);
$request->content_type('application/xml');
my $response = $agent->request($request);
if ($response->is_success) {
  print "HTTP response is good\n";
  # Parse XML here
} else {
  die "Awooga! HTTP request failed with ". $response->status_line;
}