1) Using a remote checkout method like paypal payments standard, you wont have the option to use universal email to send the email receipt in the wizard.
2) on the confirm page, look for a hidden form element named "return" and make sure the value is a full URL to the checkout success page
<input type="hidden" name="return" id="return" value="http://www.mydomain.com/checkout_sucess.php" />
3) This is a limitation to the way paypal standard works. see this thread for a description of the flow of paypal standard, it should explain why the order information is stored before going to paypal:
showpost.php?p=73977&postcount=4
the same IPN page that would be used to update the status of the order would be used to send the email, see this post as well:
showthread.php?p=97452
4)the shipping country is stored in a session variable named "eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country" you can configure the shipping rule to trigger on the value of that session.
