Use external website as "data source"

I'm busy with this sample application to practice and play around with new stuff.

OK, I got this windows form, where I want to list all the countries of the world, with their flags.

Now, that is easy when you store the countries and pictures of their flags in your appliation, but I was wondering if one can use a reliable external website (for instance this CIA page ) and if a user is connected to the internet, compare wht you currently got in a folder where you save this information.

Can this be done? Can one read / get information and resources from a site?

You'd have to just parse the text of the site to get the location of the image files associated with each country name and then download the images.

If you want to more adavanced source , look up some webservices that provide forecasting services for free .It can even give cities but i think without flags .