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Summary: This book is a reprint of papers in the Special Issue published in Education Sciences under the title "Online and Distance Learning during Lockdown Times: COVID-19 Stories". It includes papers covering Higher Education (post-secondary) sector representing international experience of teaching and learning from the start of the first episode of lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Summary: This reprint comprises 17 papers published in the Special Issue entitled "The Impact of COVID-19 on Financial Markets and the Real Economy", centered on socioeconomic models affected by the pandemic (Vasin, 2022); the COVID-19 impact on various sectors or the economy as a whole, for instance in Canada (Singh et al., 2022), China (Habibi et al., 2022), Slovakia (Svabova et al., 2022), the United States (Rodousakis & Soklis, 2022) or Vietnam (Huynh et al., 2021; Nguyen et al., 2022); the benefits of teleworking on the continuity of operations across various sectors (Santos et al., 2022); research of the tourism and recreational possibilities of Russia and Kazakhstan's cross-border regions and the threats these areas faced during the pandemic (Tanina et al., 2022), the impact of the new coronavirus infection on the Russian labor market (Rodionov et al., 2022); the factors driving young Vietnamese people's intention to use financial technology in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak (Khuong et al., 2022) or those influencing access to credit for informal labor sector (Vu and Ho, 2022); predicting and analyzing Jordanian insurance firms' performance (Altarawneh et al., 2022) or developing an early warning system for solvency risk in the banking industry (Hidayat et al., 2022) during the COVID-19 pandemic; the impact of the pandemic on European stock markets (Keliuotyte-Staniuleniene and Kviklis, 2022); the drivers of cross-border mergers and acquisitions during the pandemic (Lee et al., 2021); examining the financial and fiscal variables of Ecuadorian economic groups (Tulcanaza-Prieto and Morocho-Cayamcela, 2021).

Summary: In this book, the articles published in the special issue of the journal Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050), entitled "Sustainable Integrated Clean Environment for Human & Nature" are re-printed. The objective of this book is to answer the following questions regarding technical, economic, and social approaches:1. What is the current state of the environment? Is it clean?2. How can we make our environment clean and suitable for humans as well as nature?3. How can we keep our environment clean through sustainable practices? The re-printed research articles and review papers aim to cover the subjects mentioned below: 1. COVID-19 and the sustainability of a clean environment for humans and nature: visions, challenges, and solutions2. Clean technologies and nature-based approaches, including environmental remediation and resource circulation3. Global sanitation, hygiene, and public health issues4. Economic approaches, including the development of economic models, life cycle assessment, and the circular economy5. Social awareness and effective education on human rights for procuring clean air and water Through including the latest studies in the above-mentioned fields, this book addresses the technicians, economists, social activists, and decision-makers who are concerned about clean environment concepts for sustainable development of the current and next-generation through respectful interactions between humans and nature.

Summary: This is a reprint of the MDPI IJERPH Special Issue entitled "COVID-19 and Environment: Impacts of a Global Pandemic". The reprint consists of 17 papers with different topics related to the COVID-19 pandemic and environmental impacts using data from different countries all over the globe.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, remote working (RW) has been a way to producing despite limiting contacts. In Italy, about a half of the workers experienced, at least for a part of their working time, RW during the years 2020 and 2021. In this paper we analyse the data collected through a web-based survey conducted in the second half of 2021 at a convenience sample of Italian adults. The survey was aimed at highlighting how Italians experienced the pandemic and how they perceived their future. Also, we measured the frequency and the intensity of the RW phenomenon, the feelings of those who practiced and the opinion of workers about the possibility to practice it in the future. The data show that so many adults practiced RW during the pandemic. Their judgement of the experience is largely positive: 60.8% stated they were inclined to pursue it again as a normal work strategy. Though, there are distinctions. The type of job and the recent experience entail people’s commitment towards RW. Even what people expect from work may influence their disposition to take in RW as normal. The convolution of wells of the RW disposition, scouted through a multivariate statistical analysis, showed that, on top of the well-known suitability of RW to certain job types (white-collar, gig activities, self-employed), the workers’ propensity to RW is higher if commuting cost saving, own time optimisation and not-too-open schedules, work-family balance and a free time surplus, the possibility of interaction and socialisation with other company’s employees and customers and a secure web connection characterise their jobs.

The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 calls for the establishment of peaceful, just and inclusive societies. The security sector has the potential to contribute to SDG16 through the fulfilment of its traditional and non-traditional security tasks. However, the security sector can also detract from SDG16 when it acts outside the confines of the law. Good governance of the sector is therefore a prerequisite to achieving SDG16, and parliaments can make an important contribution to accountability and good governance. Parliaments contribute to both transparency and accountability of the sector through their various functions and act as a counterweight to executive dominance, including in the executive’s use of security forces. Yet, in times of crisis, states run a risk of executive dominance and executives are often quick to resort to the use of the security sector to address an array of challenges. This risk also emerged during the global Covid-19 pandemic where states used the security sector, notably the military and police, in various ways to respond to the pandemic. This study reviewed the utilisation of the security sector in South Africa, the Philippines and the UK during the first year of the Covid-19 outbreak, resulting in varied outcomes ranging from positive humanitarian contributions to misconduct and brutality that led to the death of citizens. The initial lockdowns in these countries constrained parliamentary activity, resulting in a lack of adequate parliamentary oversight of security sector utilisation when it was most needed. Parliaments did recover oversight of the sector to varied degrees, but often with limited depth of inquiry into the Covid-19 deployments. To prevent the security sector from detracting from SDG16, the study identified a need for a rapid parliamentary reaction capability to security sector utilisation, especially in cases of extraordinary deployments coupled with an elevated risk of executive dominance.