For the first issue, make sure you have no extra spaces or carriage returns. If you take a close look at the last HTML code, you will have something like this (code copied from my website):
<div class="s5_is_slide_css">
<h3>header</h3>
<div class="s5_is_css_hidden">some small text<br /><a href="index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31&Itemid=219">Read more...</a>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="clear: both; height: 0px;"> </div>
</div>