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’…