Spanish language Q&A Forum

I don't understand why the English translations of the historical present are not in the English historical present. For example, "Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dies in 2013." would be perfectly acceptable in a historical context. To use the past tense in the English examples is just confusing, since the point of the lesson is that the same tense exists in Spanish as well.

I noticed these two sentences used the preposition 'a' instead of 'que' in these sentences. Is there a reason why? 

Las ventas fueron superiores a los costes.

The sales were higher than the expenses.

Los costes fueron inferiores a las ventas.

The expenses were lower than the sales.

Why was this marked wrong?

I selected "eres" and it was marked as incorrect.  The correct answer is "es."  How should I have know they expected a third person answer?

I wonder if there is a discussion of the pronunciation of these two words. Depending on the speaker, they sound the same to me. I have noticed in some accents in the north, there's a slight "l" sound in the ll, and even my late great uncle (from the north of Spain) had explained to me that this is a thing, but also he explained this to me a long, long ago and I just want to know if I'm hearing things correctly or if my brain's making it up. ¡Gracias!