White births in the United States are no longer in the majority, according to US Census Bureau data made public Thursday.

Minorities -- Hispanics, blacks and Asians and other mixed races -- accounted for 50.4 percent of births over a 12-month period to July 2011, marking a majority for the first time in US history.

The demographic milestone had been expected for years in a country founded by European whites and that early on relied heavily on the work of enslaved Africans, then went through a civil war and civil rights battle over issues of race.

Whites still maintain the largest single share of the total births, at 49.6 percent, according to the census data, and remain the majority -- 63.4 percent -- of the population as a whole, according to the Census Bureau in the latest release of data from its 2010 census

In recent years, the growth of Hispanic populations immigrating from Latin America has hastened a decline in the majority status of white births, the census data suggested.

That trend is expected to continue with Hispanics "squarely within their peak fertility," with a population median age of 27, the New York Times said, citing Pew Hispanic Center demographer Jeffrey Passel.

In the period between 2000 and 2010, more Hispanic births were recorded in the United States than Hispanics immigrants arriving in the country, Passel said.

The tipping point represents a "transformation from a mostly white baby boomer culture to the more globalized multi-ethnic country that we are becoming," William Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer, told the Times.

 The United States warned supporters of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Wednesday it may freeze their assets if they hamper the transfer of power in the Gulf nation.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order allowing U.S. authorities to sanction members of Yemen's government or others who endanger its stability, notably by obstructing a November 23 deal that ultimately brought an end to Saleh's 33-year reign.

The order aims to bolster President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has given Washington much greater latitude to attack the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) group blamed for a failed Christmas Day 2009 underwear bomb attack.

U.S. officials said last week they had foiled an AQAP plot to plant a suicide bomber with an upgraded underwear bomb on an airliner bound for the United States or another Western nation.

An uprising against Saleh last year split the Yemeni armed forces into warring factions and allowed AQAP and its allies to bolster their manpower, resources and control of territory, notably in south Yemen.

The United States has stepped up its drone attacks in Yemen since Hadi replaced Saleh on February 25. U.S. counter-terrorism officials say their ability to conduct operations against AQAP inside Yemen has improved significantly since Hadi's ascent.

In a message to Congress, Obama said he issued the executive order because of the "the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Yemen and others to threaten Yemen's peace, security, and stability."

The order, however, did not identify any of the people who might find their U.S. assets frozen. U.S. officials said it aimed bolster Hadi by deterring anyone seeking to undercut his government.

"I'm not going to name names here ... but it is definitely meant today as a message to those who are trying to block a transition that we have this tool to use against them and that they should think again about the policies that they are pursuing," said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

"SHOT ACROSS THE BOW"

"This is a shot across the bow -- using potential sanctions as a Sword of Damocles -- to help steer toward political stability in Yemen," said Juan Zarate, a Center for Strategic and International Studies analyst who served as a counter-terrorism adviser to former U.S. President George W. Bush.

Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen scholar at Princeton University, said he viewed the order as being aimed at Saleh's partisans and possibly at the former president himself and said it illustrated the mutual dependence of the United States and Hadi.

"This is the U.S. and Hadi entering into an even closer embrace," Johnsen said.

"The U.S. needs President Hadi in order to move away from President Saleh's regime so that it can do what it wants in Yemen, which is to target al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," he added. "Hadi needs the U.S. because (he) himself doesn't have a very strong base of support within Yemen."

The United States appears to have a three-pronged strategy for trying to stabilize Yemen and to attack AQAP militants who hope to exploit the central government's lack of control to launch attacks against the United States and its allies.

The United States is trying to strengthen Hadi by backing his efforts to purge Saleh holdovers from the military and security apparatus. It is also providing humanitarian aid and seeking to revive the country's economy.

On the security side, the Pentagon said last week it would renew military training suspended during last year's upheaval in the hopes that Yemeni security forces will grow strong enough to reassert control over the country.

Finally, with Hadi's support, there have been increased American drone and other strikes against suspected high-value targets in Yemen who may be seeking to attack the United States. military trainers into the Gulf Arab country.

 Iran is installing more centrifuges in an underground plant but does not yet appear to be using them to expand higher-grade uranium enrichment that could take it closer to producing atom bomb material, Western diplomats say.

They say Iran's production of uranium refined to a fissile concentration of 20 percent, which it started two years ago, seems to have remained steady in recent months after a major escalation of the work in late 2011 and early this year.

Progress in Iran's controversial nuclear program is closely watched by the West and Israel as it could determine the time the Islamic Republic would need to build nuclear bombs, should it decide to do so.

Getting Iran to stop the higher-level enrichment is expected to be a priority for world powers when they meet with Iran in Baghdad next week in an attempt to start resolving the decade-old dispute over Tehran's atomic ambitions.

"It is still going strong. I hear it is unchanged," one diplomat accredited to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, which regularly inspects Iran's declared atomic sites, said about the country's most sensitive nuclear activity.

"But with installation work going on, at some point there will be an increase."

Tehran took a big step towards the capability of making nuclear weapons material after a previous attempt at diplomacy failed when, spurning U.N. demands to halt all enrichment, it instead ramped up uranium processing to 20 percent purity.

That provoked the West to impose crushing sanctions on its banks and oil exports.

A U.N. nuclear report published in February showed Iran trebling output of 20 percent uranium since late 2011 after starting up production at the Fordow underground plant near the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Qom and later increasing it.

Another envoy said he did not expect to see a "significant expansion" of this work in the next quarterly report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran's nuclear program due later this month.

But installation of machines has continued, the diplomat said, referring to the centrifuges which spin at supersonic speed to increase the fissile isotope in uranium. Typically a set of 174 centrifuges is needed for one production unit.

A third Vienna-based diplomat painted a similar picture.

Nuclear bombs require uranium enriched to 90 percent, but much of the effort required to get there is already achieved once it reaches 20 percent concentration, shortening the time needed for any nuclear weapons "break-out".

Israel - widely believed to hold the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal - and the United States have not ruled out military action to prevent Iran from obtaining atomic arms if negotiations fail to achieve this goal.

IRAN FLEXIBLE?

Iran has steadily increased uranium enrichment since 2007 and now has enough of the 3.5 and 20 percent material for some four bombs if refined further, experts say. The lower-grade uranium is the normal level required for nuclear power plants.

Tehran denies Western accusations of a nuclear weapons agenda and says it has a sovereign right to peaceful nuclear technology, repeatedly rejecting U.N. resolutions calling for a suspension of all uranium enrichment.

But it has at times appeared more flexible when it comes to the refinement to a fissile concentration of 20 percent, which it says it needs to fuel a medical research reactor in Tehran.

Experts say that initially getting Iran to stop this work could open a way to ease the deadlock.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Iran should take steps to "build confidence" in its nuclear activities.

"In particular Iran should take early action to address the concern about its production of 20 percent enriched uranium," Hague told parliament this week.

Britain, the United States, France, Russia, China and Germany are the six powers involved in diplomacy aimed at resolving the long-running row over Iran's atomic plans, which has stoked fears of a new Middle East war.

Many analysts believe it may be unrealistic to demand that Iran suspend all enrichment as its leaders have invested so much national and personal prestige in the project.

In return for allowing limited, low-level enrichment, those analysts argue, Iran would need to accept much more intrusive U.N. inspections to make sure there is no military diversion of its nuclear program.

Algeria's legislative election saw women take almost a third of the seats, making the national assembly the most gender-balanced in the region but activists say the battle is far from won.