Full width and menu errors in IE and Chrome

Hello all. I am a wordpress newbie here trying to develop a writing site. Right now I am having issues with IE and Chrome and the way they are displaying my page. The site can be found here: asiapundits.com

The first issue is that in Chrome and Explorer my drop down menu’s are not displaying correctly. For example, in the categories with drop down menus – Regions Covered, Asia Life, and Expat Life – Chrome and IE are making the parent category invisible. I would like to solve this because sometimes a user may want to click on the parent category. This is no issue in Firefox.

The second problem I am having his how IE and Chrome display my site. The site is supposed to be set up in full width with some black spacing on the site. However, in IE and Chrome the site is showing up as all white and entirely too wide. Any help would be much appreciated.

I have tried running the w3.com validation and I am getting all kinds of errors that I do not know how to fix. Please help me. I am going crazy trying to figure this out!

Here is my Custom CSS code:

[CSS code moderated – the link yo your site is enough to access the stylesheet]

Here is the custom functions code:

[code moderated - please use the pastebin for all codes longer than 10 lines]