U.S. stock index futures fell on Monday as renewed jitters about Europe's debt crisis and the global economy overshadowed the start of earnings season.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy called an emergency meeting of top officials to discuss the debt crisis, amid fears it could engulf Italy, the region's third-biggest economy.

U.S. lawmakers failed to reach an agreement over a budget deal at a meeting on Sunday. The continued impasse comes after a much-worse-than-expected U.S. employment reading for June hit equity markets on Friday.

Chinese annual inflation rose to a three-year high in June, data released on Saturday showed, increasing chances for yet more monetary policy tightening there.

In the short term, in terms of worries -- not actual events but worries --it's a little bit of a perfect storm for investors, said Oliver Pursche, president at Gary Goldberg Financial Services in Suffern, New York

At the start of U.S. earnings season profits of S&P 500 companies are expected to increase an average of 7.3 percent in the second quarter from a year ago, down from first-quarter growth of 18.9 percent, Thomson Reuters data showed.

S&P 500 futures slipped 14.5 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures dipped 104 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 27 points.

The cost of insuring Italian debt against default jumped to a record high, with five-year credit default swaps rising 30 basis points to 279 basis points, according to data monitor Markit. The cost of insuring Greek, Portuguese and Irish debt against default also rose.

The FTSEurofirst 300 <.FTEU3> index of leading European shares fell 0.5 percent on Monday, extending a 0.8 percent fall in the previous session. Japan's Nikkei <.N225> fell 0.7 percent overnight after three weeks of gains.

Alcoa Inc is set to kick off the second-quarter earnings season, with analysts expecting a profit of 34 cents a share compared with 13 cents last year and revenues up 20 percent to $6.3 billion.

News Corp's $14 billion bid to buy out UK broadcaster BSkyB faces opposition from the British government, lawyers for whom are drawing up plans to block the deal, the Independent newspaper said.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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