1. P. 39 will answer your question, although investing into multiple ranks of Lightning Reflexes might help somewhat, at least for drawing it... In fact, with enough ranks of this talent, you could drop a weapon as a free action, heal someone, and then pick it up as a free action. :P
2. I'm not aware of any talents which would help do that (although, this would be a good idea for a new talent), so I guess you,re stuck doing it the hard way of putting yourself in between the enemy and your allies... XD
3. No official rule about that AFAIK, but Dex did seems to have houseruled that when someone dropped a torch in our last adventure (luckily, I picked it up before it wend out)...