We have undertaken a systematic search for diffuse radio halos and relics in all of the Abell clusters that are visible in the Westerbork Northern Sky Survey (WENSS). In this survey we found 18 candidates, 11 of which are already known from the literature, and 7 for which we provide the first evidence of diffuse radio emission. All the clusters in this sample show other evidence for a recent or ongoing merger. We also investigate the correlation between cluster X-ray luminosity and radio power

more »

... f halos. We develop a very simple model for merger shocks that reproduces the sense of this correlation, although it is probably not as steep as the correlation in the data. We discuss the implications of X-ray--radio correlations for future detections of radio halos.