1) 3 miles/Hour
The speed is defined as the distance covered divided by the time taken:

where
d = 1.5 mi is the distance
t = 0.5 h is the time taken
Substituting,

2) 1.34 m/s south
Velocity, instead, is a vector, so it has both a magnitude and a direction. We have:
is the displacement in meters
is the time taken in seconds
Substituting,

And the direction of the velocity is the same as the displacement, so it is south.
Contact forces has to be touching for it to be an actual force. A field force does not have to be touching but it does have to be acting on particles at different positions in a space.