Gold and Precious Metals Expert Joe Foster of Van Eck Global Available to Comment on Price of Gold Reaching 23-Year High.

NEW YORK -- Portfolio Manager of Firm's Flagship Fund, the Van Eck International Investors Gold Fund, Has Headed Van Eck's Gold and Precious Metals Investment Team Since 1998

Joe Foster, an internationally recognized expert in gold and precious metals investing and Portfolio Manager of Van Eck Global's flagship fund, the Van Eck International Investors Gold Fund, is available for comment on gold's recent spike to a twenty-three-year high of more than $500 per ounce.

Mr. Foster joined Van Eck Global in 1996 as a precious metals mining analyst. Since 1998, he has been the portfolio manager of the firm's flagship fund, the Van Eck International Investors Gold Fund, which was first offered to investors almost forty years ago in 1968. In addition, he is a member of the investment team that manages the Van Eck Global Hard Assets Fund and the Van Eck Worldwide Insurance Trust's Worldwide Hard Assets Fund.

Mr. Foster has fifteen years of experience in precious metals mining and exploration. From 1993 to 1996, he was Senior Geologist at Pinson Mining Company, managed the geology department, and was responsible for district exploration, reserve/resource delineation and modeling, and geologic input and/or strategy on mining issues. From 1988 to 1993, as Pinson's Mine Geologist, he planned and supervised up to 30,000 feet of exploration drilling per year and mapped properties in and around the mine areas. Mr. Foster was previously an Exploration Geologist with Lacana Gold Inc. in Reno, Nevada.

Mr. Foster has appeared in Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Reporter, Reuters TV, CNBC, Fox News, Bloomberg TV, and CNN. He is a member of the New York Society of Security Analysts' Non-Ferrous Metals Group, The Society of Economic Geologists, The Society of Mining Engineers, and The Geological Society of Nevada.

About Van Eck Global

Founded in 1955, Van Eck Global launched the first gold fund in the U.S. in the same year. Today, the firm continues its fifty-plus-year tradition by offering global investment choices in precious metals including gold, hard assets, emerging markets, and other specialized asset classes.

Van Eck Global's mutual funds are sold nationwide through retail brokers, financial planners and investment advisers. Designed for investors seeking greater portfolio diversification, they are often categorized in asset classes having returns with low correlations to those of more traditional U.S. equity and fixed income investments.

In addition to its mutual funds, Van Eck Global offers hedge funds and separate accounts. It also offers the Worldwide Insurance Trust Fund, a series of investment choices within the variable annuity contracts and variable life policies of widely known, highly regarded insurers. The firm managed almost $2.3 billion in investor assets as of the end of the third quarter of 2005.