NEW YORK, Oct 10: Malala Yousufzai, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize among others, was in New York on Thursday, the eve of this year`s prize announcement, to promote her memoir of her campaign for girls` education and surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban.

Malala was in the city for an interview, just hours after the announcement she won the $65,000 Sakharov Award, Europe`s top human rights award. The accolade and buzz for Malala came almost exactly a year after she was shot in the head for her outspoken support for girls` education.

The Nobel Peace Prize committee will say only that a record 259 candidates, including 50 organisations, have been nominated this year.

Besides Malala, others getting attention are congolese surgeon Dr Denis Mukwege, an advocate for women`s rights; Svetlana Gannushkina and the Memorial human rights group she heads in Russia; Egyptian computer scientist Maggie Gobran, who chucked her academic career to become a nun and run a charity; and Chelsea Manning, the US soldier convicted of giving classified documents to WikiLeaks.-Agencies