Flash AS3 navigation development

I have a job that I've taken over from a third party for one of my clients and I need help with getting some of the functionality working correctly. It's an interactive flash map that pulls a number of location icons onto the stage using an xml file to position and name them.

It also has a right hand menu listing all the locations on the map, also created via the xml file, and when you click on this it moves the map so that the selected icon is centred. I have a couple of problems which I need developer help with.

Firstly when a user clicks on one of the location icons on the map that icon turns blue (by using an alpha reference on e.currentTarget). However, I can't get the location icon to change colour when one of the menu items down the right is clicked on or rolled over.

Secondly, when either a location icon or menu item is clicked a popup box appears with a bit more detail. At present this information is hard coded into a movie clip on stage, however, it would be nice if at all possible if this info could be pulled in from the xml file as well.

And finally, as it's going to eventually be pulling in quite a lot of locations, I could do with it optimising a touch if at all possible to speed the loading time up.

You can view my progress so far here: bit.ly/LrK8kF

And attached is the AS used for the placement and actions of all navigation items.