Can paginate_links() be customized for a specific category or tag?

The tag template page began displaying posts for specific tags once I replaced the argument statement with the following, which is great!!:

$tags = get_the_tags();
$tag = $tags[0]->name;

$args = array(
    'post_type' => 'post',
    'post_status'=>'publish',
    'category_name' => 'NEWS',
    'tag_slug__and' => $tag,
    'posts_per_page' => 2,
    'paged' => $paged
);

However, when I click on a pagination link on the tag archive page, Chrome returns ‘This localhost page can’t be found’…