Record 259 nominations for 2013 Nobel Peace Prize

Indian schoolgirls wear masks of Malala Yousufzai, a 15-year-old girl who was shot at close range in the head by a Taliban gunman in Pakistan, during a campaign to demand better budgetary allocation for health and education of Indian children in New Delhi, India, Saturday, Feb. 2, 2013. Malala has been nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. AP /ALTAF QADRI

OSLO, Norway—The Norwegian Nobel Committee says a record 259 nominations have been received for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, with publicly disclosed candidates including a Pakistani teenager shot by Taliban militants and a US soldier accused of leaking classified material to WikiLeaks.

The secretive committee doesn’t reveal who has been nominated, but those with nomination rights sometimes announce their picks. This year those include Bradley Manning, the US Army private who has admitted sending classified documents to WikiLeaks and 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai who was shot in the head by Taliban militants while on her way home from school in Pakistan.

Fifty of the nominations were for organizations, the committee said Monday. The previous record of 241 nominations was in 2011.

The winner of this year’s prize will be announced in October.