Malala Yousafzai now lives and goes to school in the UK 
 
 Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai was shot last year by the Taliban for campaigning for defying a ban on female education - and now the group is threatening to kill her again. 
 
 Pakistani Taliban spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said the group stands by its decision to target 16-year-old Malala who he said has "targeted and criticised Islam". 
 
 "She accepted that she attacked Islam so we we tried to kill her, and if we get another chance we will definitely kill her and that will make us feel proud. Islam prohibits killing women, but except those that support the infidels in their war against our religion," he added. 
 
 The new death threat came as Malala was named among the favourites to win the Nobel Peace Prize, which will be revealed on Friday. 
 
 The announcement is the latest in a series of impressive accolades for Malala's campaign for girls' schooling. 
 
 During an interview with the BBC's Panorama, Malala said that winning the prize would be "a great opportunity" but that universal education remained her true goal. 
 
 Malala addressed the United Nations in July on her 16th birthday 
 
 "If I win Nobel Peace Prize, it would be a great opportunity for me, but if I don't get it, it's not important because my goal is not to get Nobel Peace Prize, my goal is to get peace and my goal is to see the education of every child," she said. 
 
 Malala now lives in the UK with her family but told of her plans to return to Pakistan when she had received a full education and was "fully empowered". 
 
 She described the Taliban's rule of fear which had led her to speak out in the first place. 
 
 "The Taliban's punishments were like slaughtering people on the Green Chowk (the main square in Malala's home town of Mingora), throwing acid on women's faces or abusing them or killing them. 
 
 "I was afraid of my future. And at that time there was fear all around us, in every street and in every square of Mingora." 
 
 On Tuesday, Malala will publish her autobiography entitled I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up For Education And Was Shot By The Taliban. 
 
 Malala was treated at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham 
 
 Malala's first thought was "Thank God I'm not dead" as she woke up terrified in a UK hospital after a Taliban gunman shot her in the head, according to extracts from the book published in the Sunday Times. 
 
 The schoolgirl added that she was unable to talk, had no idea where she was and was unsure even of her own name when she emerged from a coma after six days. 
 
 The last thing she recalled on October 9, 2012, the day she was shot, was sitting with her friends on a bus as it rounded an army checkpoint on the way to school in the Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan. 
 
 Friends told her that a masked gunman boarded the bus asked "Who is Malala?" and then lifted a gun to her head and fired. 
 
 Seriously wounded, Malala was flown to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham for surgery on her skull and ear. She returned to school last March in the UK after recovering from her injuries. 
 
 Malala attracted the anger of the Taliban by writing a blog for the BBC Urdu service chronicling the challenges of daily life under the Islamists. 
 
 After the shooting and her move to Britain that she gained widespread adulation in the West, but remained the subject of suspicion among many conservatives in Swat. 
 
 Maulana Gul Naseeb, a prominent figure in the JUI-F, one of Pakistan's leading religious political parties, said: "America created Malala in order to promote their own culture of nudity and to defame Pakistan around the world." 
 
 Meanwhile, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said Malala has been invited to a palace reception promoting education in Commonwealth hosted by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh on Friday, October 18. 
 
 It is thought the Queen was impressed by the teenager's bravery. ||||| She has been adopted as an emblem of peace in a region beset by violence and has provided a voice of quiet protest in a sea of angry rhetoric. Now Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old who was shot in the head by the Taliban for daring to want to go to school, could provide a turning point in Pakistan's history, according to her father. 
 
 Ziauddin Yousafzai, speaking after arriving in Britain to visit Malala with his wife and two sons, said his daughter would not be beaten by the Taliban but would "rise again". 
 
 Clearly moved by the support his family and daughter have received, he said the attack, in which Malala was shot by a Pakistan Taliban gunman while making her way home on a school bus, had united his nation in approbation. 
 
 "When she fell, Pakistan stood and the world rose," Yousafzai told a press conference in Birmingham, where his daughter is being treated after being flown to the UK from Pakistan. "This is a turning point. In Pakistan, for the first time, all political parties, Urdus, Christians, Sikhs, all religions prayed for my daughter." He added: "She is not just my daughter, she is everybody's daughter." 
 
 He thanked all those who supported her cause of "peace and education" (video) and condemned the violence that had been inflicted upon her. 
 
 "An attacker, who could be called the agent of Satan, he attacked," he said. "But after that I found angels on my side, everywhere, all around me, until this time and this place […] I'm thankful to all the people all over the world. They condemned the attack and prayed for my daughter." 
 
 Malala had gained global influence and respect since starting a blog documenting her desire to get an education in her home city of Mingora in the Swat Valley. She wrote compellingly for the BBC about the daily struggles of getting an education in a region where the Taliban has occasionally banned girls from attending school. Gradually she became a more public figure, promoting education for girls in interviews and advising local authorities on education. 
 
 But her own schooling was violently interrupted on 9 October: she was shot at point blank range and two other girls were injured in the attack which the Taliban said was punishment for "promoting secularism". 
 
 The bullet hit her just above the back of her left eye and came within inches of killing her. But as her father put it: "When she fell, the person who attacked her wanted to kill her … She fell temporarily, she will rise again, she will stand again. She can stand now." 
 
 Immediately after the attack surgeons in Pakistan battled to save the teenager's life, performing an emergency operation to remove a bullet lodged in her neck. But with the threat of further retribution hanging over the family, the decision was taken to airlift Malala to Britain, where it was hoped she could recover in peace. 
 
 Her father spoke of the joy of seeing his daughter alive again when they were reunited this week at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham. 
 
 The reunion was particularly emotional, he explained, because the family had started to mentally prepare themselves for her funeral. "A time came … when, God forbid, I told my brother that you should make preparations for her funeral," he said. "To be very short, I can say that she got the right treatment, at the right place, at the right time." He added: "I love her. Last night when we met her there were tears in our eyes out of happiness. For some time we all cried a bit." 
 
 Yousafzai paid special tribute to Dr David Rosser, who is treating Malala, and thanked him for keeping the lines of communication between the UK and Pakistan open since Malala was transferred. 
 
 Rosser said Malala was continuing to make good progress and was now able to eat, talk and walk with only a little help. He added that her short and long-term memory seemed to be fine. "We're very much in a phase of her care that is about her recovery, both physical and psychological," he said. "She's very tired but she managed a big smile for her mum and dad and her brothers." 
 
 Since the attack Malala has been nominated for the International Children's peace prize by Desmond Tutu and has won Pakistan's first National Youth peace prize. Despite promises from the Taliban to kill Malala if she goes back to Pakistan, Yousafzai insisted the family would return home: Malala has already started preparing for her exams. ||||| Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban for advocating education for girls, marked her 16th birthday with an impressive speech at the United Nations, where she said education could change the world. 
 
 Wearing a pink head scarf, Malala told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and nearly 1,000 students from around the world attending a Youth Assembly at UN headquarters in New York that education was the only way to improve lives. 
 
 "Let us pick up our books and pens. They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution," she said. 
 
 "The terrorists thought that they would change my aims and stop my ambitions but nothing changed in my life, except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born." 
 
 The UN has declared her birthday, July 12, as "Malala Day". 
 
 The Pakistani teenager, who first came to public attention at the age of 11 for speaking out against a ban on girls' education, was shot in the neck and head by Taliban gunmen last October on her way home from school in Pakistan. 
 
 She left a Birmingham hospital in February after she recovered from surgery during which doctors mended parts of her skull with a titanium plate and inserted a cochlear implant in her left ear to help restore hearing. 
 
 Malala used her speech at the UN to ask the UN secretary-general and any listening world leaders on the need to keep a promise to provide universal primary education by the end of 2015. 
 
 She also handed over a petition to Ban signed by about four million people calling on the 193 UN members to finance teachers, schools and books to meet the education. 
 
 "From the day that terrible shooting - assassination attempt - took place, Malala Yousafzai is a symbol for the rights of girls, and indeed the rights of all young people, to an education," said UN spokesman Martin Nesirky. 
 
 Taliban threats 
 
 UN Special Envoy for Global Education, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, said Friday's event was not just a celebration of Malala's birthday and her recovery, but of her vision. 
 
 "Her dream that nothing, no political indifference, no government inaction, no intimidation, no threats, no assassin's bullets should ever deny the right of every single child ... to be able to go to school," said Brown. 
 
 The terrorists thought that they would change my aims and stop my ambitions but nothing changed in my life, except 
 
 this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born Malala Yousafzai 
 
 Now, more girls are attending schools in the Swat Valley. But the UN estimates that 57 million children of primary school age do not get an education - half of them in countries at conflict, such as Syria. 
 
 Pakistan has 5 million children out of school, a number only surpassed by Nigeria, which has more than 10 million children out of school, according to UN cultural agency UNESCO. Most of those are girls. 
 
 James Bays, Al Jazeera's Diplomatic Editor, reporting from the United Nations, said that campaigners for global education are hoping that this speech will make a change in trying to encourage countries around the world, to support the plan to try and get all children in school by 2015. 
 
 According to Ban's annual report on children and conflict, 115 schools were attacked last year in Mali, 321 in the occupied Palestinian territories, 167 in Afghanistan, and 165 in Yemen. 
 
 Malala and her family briefly left Swat during a government offensive on the Taliban-controlled territory. 
 
 On their return, they were threatened by armed groups before the attack on October 9 last year. 
 
 The family now lives in Birmingham, where Malala has undergone surgery and rehabilitation. In March, Malala joined pupils at Edgbaston High School for Girls in the neighbourhood. 
 
 She is one of the favourites to become the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate this year. 
 
 She has already been named as one of Time magazine's most influential people in 2013 and has reportedly secured a $3m contract for a book on her life story.
– It's been a year since Malala Yousufzai was shot by Pakistani Taliban—and new threats aren't stopping the 16-year-old in her fight for girls' education. Traveling to her native Swat Valley, the BBC offers a new window into Malala's background and life story. The region launched boys' schools in 1922, and within a few years it offered girls' schools as well. Standing out from its neighbors, "Swat was proud of its record on education," says the grandson of former leaders. But in 2008, the Taliban demanded that girls' schools shut down—or face danger. Despite the threat, Malala blogged and made public appearances to describe her educational experience. "I didn't want my future to be just sitting in a room and be imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth to children," she tells the BBC, which gives a detailed account of the shooting and the risky surgery afterward. Now attending school in England, Malala continues to face danger from the Taliban. "She accepted that she attacked Islam, so we tried to kill her, and if we get another chance we will definitely kill her and that will make us feel proud," says a spokesman, per Sky News. But there are bright spots on the horizon, the AP notes: Malala has been invited to a reception with Queen Elizabeth, and she's a Nobel Peace Prize contender.