Regarding the category link colour/style:
The name of the category displayed in the banner serves as a link. This is useful when displaying a subcategory - as this is shown as Parent category name: Subcategory name. Clicking on the parent category name then serves as a breadcrumb link to take you up to that parent category page.
The styling of that link was done so that it displays in the same colour as the rest of the title. This makes the breadcrumb link less obvious but it looks better in my view.
Please feel free to change that in your install by commenting out/removing the a: styling you’ve highlighted.
I note others have commented on wanting to have any links they have included in the first paragraph of the about message to display in the category header. If that’s useful I may add a class to the header so the ‘same colour’ styling will only apply to the breadcrumb links, if that would help?