Description of problem:
If there are no topology data (default 512b alignement), fdisk should align new partition start to 1MiB.

Unfortunately, not true if you use SI units:

fdisk /dev/sdb
n -> primary, start is default 2048 sectors (ok), size +256MB
n -> primarym use default

and you will see this:
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1            2048      502047      250000   83  Linux
/dev/sdb2          502048   312499999   155998976   83  Linux

502048 is not aligned to expected 1MiB. it should be 503808

Fixed here
https://github.com/karelzak/util-linux/commit/c0175e6185ac81843cbad33cbea75abd033f0e66

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
util-linux-2.21.2-2.fc18.x86_64

How reproducible:
see above