RSS: xml invalid

How can I get the RSS Feed button in my blog header to not give the error page “Internet Explorer cannot display this feed — More Information: Invalid xml declaration. Line: 2 Character: 3 <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>”.

Here’s what I’m getting when I type my feed into https://validator.w3.org/feed/:

1) “This feed does not validate. line 1, column 1: Blank line before XML declaration.”
[! I’ve looked at the header.php file and removed all blank lines — what file should I look at instead?]
[! Also, Feedburner tells me: “line 2 … processing instruction target matching “[xX][mM][lL]” is not allowed”. Validator.w3.org shows the 2nd line as “<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>” — what options do I have? what file is this coming from?]
[! Note – I’ve installed the Feedburner plug-in but don’t know what URLs to type into it because I only get errors from Feedburner — is this chicken-and-egg issue, or is there something I don’t get?]

2. “Interoperability with the widest range of feed readers could be improved by implementing the following recommendations. line 12, column 103: Self reference doesn’t match document location … rel=”self” type=”application/rss+xml” />
[! is there a better way to write this line of code?]

3. FYI, here’s the code I’m using:
HEADER.PHP – HEAD:
<rss version=”2.0″ xmlns:atom=”https://www.w3.org/2005/Atom”&gt;
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> RSS Feed” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>” />
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/atom+xml” title=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> Atom Feed” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘atom_url’); ?>” />

HEADER.PHP – NAVIGATION:
” id=”feed” title=”Subscribe”><img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘stylesheet_directory’); ?>/images/feed.gif” alt=”RSS Feed” />
<atom:link href=”https://clearaction.biz/blog/rss.xml&#8221; rel=”self” type=”application/rss+xml” />

Any help with the above is most appreciated!!