Yes, there is a power icon printed on every start area for the 6 houses, which means that you can move all your units out of your home area and still keep control. Think of it as a permanent free power token.

I'm under the impression that this has been clarified to state that you can have two captured leaders at once, but only one Captured Leader, that is, using the ring. The Carbonite ring allows you to have a second captured leader.
 
3. A leader with the captured ring and a leader with the carbonite ring at the same time?

Craig S. posted:
"I got a response from Corey that I cannot quote directly, but it confirms what most of us suspect: one leader can have the Carbonite ring while another has the captured ring, for a total of two leaders captured at one time."
From: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1558827/official-rules-clarifications-ffg

The card flips and adds another point of hull damage. 
 
 "Suffering" damage in the normal mechanic of the game rules applies to shields first, then hull, as the damage is dealt to the ship. When you flip cards face up you have to look at the wording on the crit side to see how it will be applied. If the crit says "suffers damage" it goes to shields first, then hull. Direct hit card text just says that the card "counts as 2 damage", so damage is not suffered and gets applied directly to hull.
 
Crits such as Console Fire, Minor Explosion, Minor Hull Breach all add on damage that is "suffered" so it follows the regular mechanic of damage application.

The X-Wing would be destroyed. Shileds only work when you "Deal Damage" (p13 of the rule book). Any effect that delas a damagecard (or in this case flips over a card) instead of delaing damage will ignore shields. And a ship is destroyed when "the number of Damage cards dealt to a ship equals or exceeds its hull value", how many shields you have at that point is irrelevant.