This week: a pioneering climber, an advisor to Ronald Reagan, and a star of The Office

THE climber Charlotte Fox, who has died aged 61, was a pioneering mountaineer who took on some of the highest peaks in the world and became famous for surviving the 1996 Everest disaster chronicled in Jon Krakauer's best-selling book Into Thin Air.

Fox was a fixture in the climbing and skiing scene from the early 1980s and became the first American woman to climb three 8000-metre peaks.

She was one of many climbers — in large groups, small groups and some solo mountaineers — attempting to descend from the summit of Everest when a blizzard killed eight of them on May 10 and 11, 1996. Stranded and thinking she would die, Fox said the cold was unimaginable. "I didn't think I could endure it anymore," she said. "I just curled up in a ball and hoped death would come quickly."

Fox was found dead in her home in Telluride, Colorado. Friends who were staying with her reportedly found her at the bottom of stairs in the house.

THE statesman Frank C Carlucci III, who has died aged 87, began his wide-ranging government career as a diplomat and finished as secretary of defence and advisor to President Ronald Reagan.

During his tenure, he faced multiple crises in the Persian Gulf. In 1988, US Navy ships destroyed two Iranian oil platforms in retaliation for damage to the USS Samuel B Roberts from an Iranian mine in the Gulf. Later that year, the USS Vincennes mistakenly shot down a civilian Iranian airliner over the Gulf, killing 290 people.

Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Carlucci joined the State Department as a foreign service officer and his assignments took him to Africa and South America over a 12-year period. He left the State Department in 1969 to become assistant director of the Office of Economic Opportunity and later served as deputy director of the CIA under President Jimmy Carter from 1978 to 1981.

An official Pentagon biography of Carlucci said he was the first incumbent secretary of defence to visit the Soviet Union. He served at the Pentagon from 1981 to 1983 as the deputy secretary under Caspar Weinberger, and returned to the Pentagon as defence secretary in November 1987 after Weinberger resigned. He served until January 1989.

Current Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said Carlucci had had a transformative effect at the defence department. Mattis said, “He changed the way the department worked with Congress, and managed critical defence issues, such as procuring major weapon systems, and rebalancing military priorities and resources under dynamic and challenging geopolitical circumstances.”

THE actor Hugh Dane, who has died aged 75, was best known for his role in the American version of Ricky Gervais's ground-breaking sitcom The Office.

The US version of the show, which ran from 2005 to 2013 and starred

Steve Carell in the Gervais role as the awkward manager of an non-descript office, was considerably different to the original and featured Dane as a no-nonsense security guard.

The actor broke into acting in the late 1980s and played two characters in the comedy The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He also appeared in movies, including Little Fockers and Bridesmaids.

Some of his other acting credits include stints on Friends, Everybody Hates Chris, Boy Meets World and The West Wing.